The exam was over—I had placed second. From an outsider's perspective, it wasn't a failure, but something inside me felt incomplete. My parents' comforting words, Eris cheerfully saying, "You'll be first next time!"… None of it eased the unease within me.
Lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling, I lifted my hands and moved my fingers. No matter what I did, I still felt inadequate. Hikaru's powerful magic kept replaying in my mind.
"Why am I so weak?"
That question was like a dagger lodged in my thoughts. At that moment, it felt as if the doors to my subconscious had flung open, and I was falling into the past.
Middle School – The Dark Days
Back then, I used to sit in the darkness of my room, staring at my computer screen for hours. The colors of life had faded. I walked through school hallways in silence, speaking to no one. Talking to people was exhausting—because it felt meaningless.
To my family, I was just a quiet kid. But in reality… I was lost.
And then she came.
High School – A Shining Light
The first time I met her, it was raining. I had skipped school and was sitting alone in a deserted park. She walked up, opened her umbrella, and sat beside me.
"What are you doing here?"
I didn't even look at her. "Nothing."
"Doing 'nothing' in the rain is an interesting choice," she chuckled.
Strange, isn't it? She was the first person to genuinely smile at me.
The more we talked, the more the emptiness inside me began to fill. Her laughter, the way she dragged me outside, her saying, "The world isn't that bad!"… All of it changed something within me.
But then she left.
"We're moving out of town."
That sentence was the biggest turning point in my life. I couldn't say anything to her—I just smiled. But inside, my world crumbled completely.
To keep myself from falling back into who I was, I had to cling to something. And so… I became an otaku.
Anime, manga, games… They pulled me away from the harshness of reality. I tried to fill the emptiness inside me with fictional worlds. My life was no longer shaped by relationships with people but by the stories behind a screen.
And in the end… when that truck hit me, I opened my eyes in this world.
Now – The End of Darkness
At that moment, something inside me snapped. The anxious little voice in my mind went completely silent. That girl's words, my mother saying, "You have to believe"… Did they really mean anything?
I stood up from my bed and looked in the mirror.
This world had given me another chance. No matter what I had been through before… I was here now.
This time, I won't run away.