I was dreaming.
Or maybe I wasn't.
It was hard to tell anymore.
I stood in the middle of the classroom, the voices around me a dull, suffocating hum. The walls stretched and warped, the flickering fluorescent lights above casting elongated shadows that danced across the floor.
I tried to move. My body refused.
I knew this place.
I knew this moment.
It was the beginning of the end.
Then I heard her voice.
"Tsuyu?"
I turned my head.
Mizuki.
Sitting at her desk, long black hair falling over her shoulder, dark eyes filled with something unreadable. The girl I had spent months admiring from a distance. The girl whose voice made my chest tighten, whose presence made my dull, meaningless life feel just a little less empty.
And then, in the smallest voice—
"Do you… want to go out with me?"
Silence.
A pause that stretched into eternity.
Then—
Laughter.
Loud. Harsh. Cruel.
It swelled like a tidal wave, crashing against me over and over.
Haruto was the loudest. His laughter was sharp, mocking, echoing inside my skull.
I couldn't breathe.
My face burned.
I knew this was a dream. I knew I was reliving something that had already happened. But it didn't matter.
The pain felt just as real.
The humiliation.
The hatred.
I wanted to wake up.
I wanted to vanish.
But instead, I just stood there.
Silent. Powerless.
Just like before.
The beginning— AGE 15
The school changed after that day.
Not physically—no, the walls, the windows, the classrooms all remained the same.
But the people? They changed.
The moment I walked through the hallways, I could feel it. The stares. The hushed whispers, the laughter just barely concealed behind hands.
I became a spectacle.
A joke.
It started small.
A shove here. A sneer there.
Then came the notes in my locker. Crumpled, venomous things.
"You actually thought she'd say yes?"
"Just kill yourself already."
"Fucking loser."
I stopped opening my locker altogether.
Stopped eating in the cafeteria.
Stopped speaking.
But silence didn't protect me.
Because Haruto wasn't done.
Because the world wasn't done grinding me down.
Downfall—AGE 16-17
There was a point where I thought I could endure it.
That maybe if I just kept my head down, if I just pretended not to care, they would get bored.
I was wrong.
It got worse.
One day, I found my entire desk smeared with garbage. Rotten food, moldy bread, a puddle of something rancid soaking into my textbooks.
The teacher walked in, took one look, and sighed.
"Kenjiro, clean that up."
Not even a question.
Not even an attempt to find out who did it.
I felt something crack inside me that day.
Like a part of me finally realized the truth.
No one was coming to save me.
Not my teachers.
Not my classmates.
Not my parents, who barely acknowledged my existence to begin with.
No one.
The Night I Died—AGE 18
I don't know why I left my house that night.
Maybe I just wanted to breathe something other than stale air.
Maybe some stupid, desperate part of me thought… if I walked far enough, I'd disappear.
But then I saw her.
Mizuki.
She was on the other side of the street, standing under a broken streetlamp. Her long hair was damp from the rain, her arms wrapped around herself.
And behind her—
Haruto.
He wasn't alone.
His friends surrounded her like a pack of wolves. Laughing, jeering, blocking her way.
I should have walked away.
I should have ignored it.
But something inside me snapped.
Maybe it was rage.
Maybe it was something stupider.
But before I could think, before I could stop myself, I was already moving.
Blood on the Pavement
I didn't even say anything.
I just ran at him.
I swung.
For the first time in my life, I fought back.
For the first time, I let all of it—the anger, the humiliation, the years of suffering—explode out of me in one reckless, desperate motion.
And for a second, I thought—
Maybe I had a chance.
Maybe this time, things would be different.
But I had never been in a real fight before.
Haruto had.
He barely flinched.
Then he grabbed me by the collar—
And punched me so hard my vision went white.
I hit the pavement, pain exploding in my skull.
Someone kicked me. Then again.
And again.
I heard Mizuki screaming.
I heard laughter.
I felt my ribs crack.
I tasted blood.
And then—
Headlights.
Blinding.
Brighter than anything I'd ever seen.
There was no time to react.
No time to move.
Mizuki was standing right in front of the car.
Frozen.
And I—
I shoved her out of the way.
And then everything was—
Pain.
Searing, unbearable pain.
The sound of bones shattering.
The world tilting.
And then—
Darkness.
The Last Thought
I floated in nothingness.
No pain.
No body.
Just cold, endless emptiness.
And a single thought, echoing in my mind.
Over and over and over again.
"I really do wish... I never asked her out."