The world had never been kind to me.
From the moment I was born, I was unwanted—a burden passed from one indifferent hand to another. My mother left before I could even remember her face, vanishing like a ghost in the night. My father? He never wanted a child in the first place. To him, I was nothing more than an inconvenience, a mistake he refused to acknowledge.
Love was a foreign concept, something I saw only in movies and fairy tales, distant and unattainable.
I grew up learning that trust was a weakness. Every time I reached out—desperate for kindness, for something resembling warmth—I was met with coldness, cruelty. The orphanages, the foster homes, the temporary guardians who barely looked at me before shuffling me to the next place… each one was just another prison with a different name.
By the time I was a teenager, I had long given up on the idea of family.
I told myself I didn't need it. That I was fine on my own.
But then, she came into my life.
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Her name was Hana.
She was the first person who ever made me feel like I wasn't invisible. Like I wasn't just another forgotten soul drifting through life. She saw me when no one else did, pulling me out of the darkness I had been drowning in for years.
Her laughter was warm, her touch gentle. She made the world feel… softer. Less cruel.
For the first time in my life, I felt something close to happiness.
And like a fool, I let myself believe it was real.
That was my biggest mistake.
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It happened on a cold winter night.
The streets were quiet, blanketed by freshly fallen snow. The air was crisp, the kind that stung my skin with each breath. We had been walking home together, our voices the only sound cutting through the silence. We talked about nothing in particular—the latest drama she was obsessed with, the kind of dog she wanted to adopt one day, whether or not the stars looked clearer in the countryside.
It was normal. Familiar. Safe.
And then she stopped walking.
I turned to her, frowning. "Hana?"
There was something off about the way she looked at me—her warm brown eyes distant, her hands trembling slightly at her sides.
My stomach twisted with unease. "What's wrong?"
She didn't answer.
She just took a step closer.
And before I could react—before I could even process what was happening—pain exploded through me, white-hot and all-consuming.
I gasped, my body jerking as I stumbled back. My vision blurred, my breath catching in my throat.
Blood—warm and thick—spilled down my stomach, staining the snow beneath my feet.
I looked down.
A knife.
Buried deep in my gut.
My heart pounded violently in my ears as I raised my gaze back to her, my mind struggling to make sense of it.
"Hana…?" My voice came out weaker than I expected, shaking. "Why?"
Her lips trembled, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. "I had no choice," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the sound of my own blood rushing in my ears. "They said… they said they'd kill me if I didn't."
I wanted to move. I wanted to scream, to demand answers. But my strength was fading too fast. My legs buckled beneath me, and I collapsed onto the cold, unforgiving pavement.
Betrayal.
That was the last thing I felt before the darkness swallowed me whole.
---
There was no light. No warmth. Just the crushing weight of emptiness.
I was floating in an abyss, suspended in nothingness.
I had spent my entire life searching for love, only to be met with pain, with cruelty, with betrayal.
And now, it was over.
Or at least, it should have been.
Because when I opened my eyes again…
I wasn't in my world anymore.
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End of Pre-Chapter