Those final words —they were too clinical, too indirect, too well-dressed in syllables to stab. Stella couldn't comprehend them. Not fully. Not yet.
But comprehension wasn't required. Only weight.
The world — her world, this ghostly realm of reflection —began to darken, not like a sunset, but like black paint swallowing itself, over and over again. A recursion of grief.
And yet… it did not go black.
Not completely.
Then came the voice. Not a whisper, not a scream —but that sleep-shaped presence children feel before they fall. The one that stands by the bed before dreams unfold.
And so Stella drifted.
To sleep.
A light bulb blinked open. Click.A subtle illumination — sterile, too precise. Followed by a thud.
Soft. Heavy. Familiar.
Stella watched, but not from her body. She hovered above —a spectator to a scene her bones had begged to forget.
That thud wasn't a noise. It was a memory breaking loose.
She saw herself —the actor, not the dreamer.
A smaller yet more pure version of her, crumpled on the floor, the carpet below absorbing the shape of collapse.
This wasn't a dream. It was a fully immersive flashback. The world wasn't breathing — it was developing, like photographic paper soaked in trauma, each second revealing what she tried to bury in bleach.
Jin (softly, almost kind): "You keep wandering through the dark, even though you can't see. Why?"
His hand left the switch behind him — the one that brought the bulb to life —
and closed the door.
Stella, still curled on the floor, looked up.
He crouched beside her.
Not touching.
Not threatening.
Just close enough to cast a shadow she hadn't seen in years.
Stella (musing, innocent): "I was... trying to find my diary. In the dark."
She looked down, cheeks faintly flushed.
Stella (playfully embarrassed): "I've used it enough by now. I thought maybe... I could find it without looking. Like a challenge."
A giggle escaped her — small, almost pure. It didn’t know what was coming.
Jin reached beside her.
Without glancing, as if to prove he respected the boundary,
he picked up the diary and offered it back with care.
She opened it.
Turned to the last page.
Paused.
Something was wrong.
Not torn. Not smeared.
Just… missing.
Her fingers trembled as she turned deeper.
Jin (casual, matter-of-fact): "Page 234. The one about clouds. It made me sad. So I erased it."
She turned to it.
Blank.
Not whited out.
Not crossed through.
Just—
gone.
Like it had never been born.
The memory of what she wrote burned brighter than the words ever had.
Jin (reassuring, gentle): "Now you won’t remember being lonely."
She said nothing.
He turned another page.
There it was—her handwriting.
Except it wasn’t hers.
The curves were too balanced.
The letters too even.
Too polite.
Too Jin.
Jin (grinning, proud): "I tried writing like you. Your ‘s’ curves weird. Like a five."
He smiled.
Warm. Earnest. Dangerous in its sincerity.
Jin (light-hearted, teasing): "I copied it on the math test. The teacher said you were improving."
Stella felt it then—
a ripple of discomfort, like a breath held too long underwater.
One she’d felt before.
One she’d swallowed.
Again and again.
His smile faded into something neutral.
Jin (quietly, searching): "Do they still look at you? Your friends. Do you feel seen?"
She hesitated.
Then nodded.
Shyly.
The light flickered.
Behind her, the wall changed.
Faces emerged—laughing, blurred.
Ghosts of children she once trusted.
Then they blurred again.
Faded.
Jin (low, firm): "They're fakes."
Jin (softly, unblinking): "None of them see you."
Jin (leaning in, resolute): "Only I do."
Jin (rising, almost lyrical): "Do you know why, Stella? Do you know why?"
Stella (whispering, afraid): "Why?"
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Jin (smiling wide, triumphant): "Because I love you — that's why!"
The words struck with a warmth her heart didn’t know how to doubt.
Like every timid girl hoping she wasn’t broken.
A blush rose on her face.
She looked away—
not out of rejection,
but out of something softer.
Except her eyes caught something else.
A glass box.
In the corner of the room.
Appearing as if summoned.
Inside: a hamster.
Velvet-wrapped.
Eyes open. Still.
A tiny name tag pinned to the side. Red ink.
“Sacrifice.”
Jin followed her gaze.
He reached out —
cupped her jaw with a warmth that shouldn’t have felt safe,
and slowly turned her head back to him.
Jin (tender, proud): "You hesitated. But you did it. That’s why you’re strong."
He let go of her, gently, like she might fall apart from pressure alone.
And in that moment—
the illusions began to peel.
The warmth condensed into fear.
She backed away.
But the room didn’t allow it.
She had already reached the wall.
Jin (softly, almost confused): "Hey... why are you running?"
Jin (gentle, hurt): "We’re closer now. Right?"
He stepped near her again.
Took her hand — gently.
Like a vow.
Like an oath carved from breath.
Jin (quietly, pleading): "You want to be closer to me, don’t you?"
She nodded.
Not out of understanding.
But out of something else.
Obedience, maybe.
Trust, poorly built.
She didn’t know better.
Then—
the stick.
A foreign shape.
Smooth. Sanded.
Carved at the base with swirling lines like roots trying to find soil.
He held it like it was sacred.
Not high.
Not raised.
Just… waiting.
Jin (solemn, reverent): "Do you trust me?"
Her eyes flicked between the object and the boy.
The answer left her mouth before her thoughts could reach it.
She nodded.
The light bulb flickered.
Jin (low, ritualistic): "Try to stay still."
Then—
darkness.
A sound.
A breath.
A sharp inhale she couldn’t swallow.
Her legs flinched.
Stella (fragile, trembling): "Jin… please stop."
Stella (breaking): "It hurts..."
He didn’t stop.
Not for a while.
The memory ended.
Not from weight.
Not from controversy.
But because Somebody got bored.
Stella’s spirit lingered —
a ghost made of syntax, hovering above the scene like a cracked halo.
She saw herself from above:
small, shivering, undone by memory, not time.
The embers of her pain didn’t cool.
They flickered, danced... then turned to glitter.
But glitter, too, vanishes in void.
Her tears didn’t fall — they peeled.
Fire traced their paths.
They landed in nothing, tried to burn, then quietly gave up.
Even with the divine curse of perfect recall,
she had invented ways to forget.
Because clarity, for a mind like hers, would be a loaded gun pressed against the mirror.
Somebody (circling like decay dressed as insight):
"Eight chapters of tears. Eight.
And silence sharp enough to bleed the paper.
And still—nothing changes."
He moved like language before it became grammar.
Smoke with a spine.
A serpent who didn't need fangs to feast.
Not yet.
Somebody (cocking his head like a lecturer gone wrong):
"You’ve done nothing to my story, Stella."
Somebody (with a kind of holy apathy):
"You cried.
You slept.
You dreamed.
Repeat.
Monologue. Collapse. Reset."
Somebody (smiling like a corrupted author):
"And your answer to my first question?
Beautiful.
Too beautiful.
A shame you’ll never write something that pure again."
Somebody (snorting through teeth like glass splinters):
"You know that, don’t you?"
Stella sobbed.
Ugly. Honest.
The kind of crying that didn’t try to be seen.
Mucus and memory tangled together on her face.
A child.
Who remembered too well.
Who wasn't built to carry it.
Somebody (casually cruel, like philosophy dressed as insult):
"But it's all too much now, isn't it?
Too complex.
Readers want emotion that screams.
Not emotion that bleeds silently through the margins."
Somebody:
"They defend garbage like it’s scripture.
They spit out the edible and beg for spoiled sweetness."
Somebody (grinning):
"People worship lies, Stella.
Even when the rot’s dripping from their tongues,
they say thank you and ask for seconds."
He turned toward the void.
It blinked.
Or maybe he did.
Somebody (like a man whispering into God’s trash can):
"I wonder who’s reading this now."
Somebody (tilting his voice like a blade):
"Some came expecting elegance.
Others came for trauma wrapped in tinsel."
Somebody (flatly):
"But none of them wanted truth."
Somebody:
"It’s not deep."
Somebody (smiling):
"It’s raw."
Somebody:
"Paragraphs.
Structure.
Prose.
You think they hold meaning?
They're just scaffolding.
A way to tape grief into something that doesn’t scream at dinner parties."
Somebody (in a falsetto, mimicking a reader):
"Where’s the plot?
The action?
The worldbuilding?
The MAGICK??"
Somebody (arms raised like a preacher at a godless funeral):
"Where’s our strong female lead?
The kind who destroys kingdoms with one-liners and eyeliner!"
Somebody (leaning in, sing-song):
"Come on, Stella.
Time to be brave.
Time to smash the illusion called patriarchy with your tiny hands.
Bleed for them.
Bleed prettier."
Silence answered.
Except for her.
Small cries.
Animal and unfiltered.
The kind of sorrow that makes air rot.
The void shifted.
It now breathed with her pain.
Somebody (turning to the darkness like it’s an audience):
"They should’ve let go of all this a long, long time ago.
But they didn’t.
Now they argue.
Debate.
Re-enchant corpses and pretend it matters."
He looked back at her.
Really looked.
And for a second —
his grin flickered like a dying cursor on a forgotten draft.
Somebody (voice snapping back to performative glee):
"C’MON, LET’S MAKE THIS FUN!
FUN! FUN! FUN!"
Somebody (twirling like a game show host announcing a funeral):
"Transmigration!
Reincarnation!
Magic!
Fantasy!
Action!
Comedy!
Romance!
Mystery!"
Somebody (quietly, with venom beneath velvet):
"That’s what they want, isn’t it?"
Somebody (bitter now, hollow):
"Most of them tapped out at Chapter 3.
Maybe Chapter 1.
People love to waste their youth like it’s infinite—
until time reveals the lie when they wilt.’"
Somebody (flat):
"Fine."
Somebody (whisper):
"Give them what they want."
He turned.
And for the first time… he looked at her.
Not her face.
Not her expression.
But the ruin she’d become.
Eyes — drained of focus.
Nose — leaking unfiltered grief.
Mouth — caught between cough and cry.
She was a girl.
Who loved a boy.
Who erased her.
And now she existed only as a leftover stanza in a story that was never meant to let her speak.
stella (quietly, through shaking breath):
"Please stop... please… I can’t—"
“Why me…?”
She wasn't screaming.
She wasn't rebelling.
She wasn’t even asking anymore.
Her voice was just a crack running down the side of a broken statue.
stella:
"Why did you choose me?"
“Out of everyone in the world, in the pages, in the dreams—
why did you put this in me?”
"I didn’t ask to be born into ink.
Didn’t ask to bleed meaning for people I’ll never meet."
"I didn’t want to be strong.
I just wanted to be safe.
To be small.
To be held.
To be forgotten."
She coughed.
Choked.
Wiped tears that wouldn't stop coming.
Her voice glitched —
caught in a loop between confession and collapse.
stella:
"What’s the point of all this?"
"Not the story. Not the plot.
Existence."
"Why pain?
Why pleasure?
Why memory?
Why do we need to keep waking up if we don’t want to?"
"Why bodies?
Why skin?
Why the ache in the chest when no one is watching?"
"Why hope, if it always leaves first?"
"Why was I made to feel everything…
and he got to feel nothing?"
Her voice cracked like paper soaked too long.
stella (almost whispering):
"I don’t want to be strong.
I don’t want to win.
I don’t want to learn a lesson."
"I just want..."
She paused.
"...peace."
"I want to be left alone.
To sleep in a corner of the universe too small to be found.
To forget my name.
To forget my shape.
To forget I ever meant something to you."
"I want to wither like an unused metaphor."
"...I was just tired."
"I just wanted someone to hold my hand."
"Why did you let him hold it first?"
She looked at him — not like a child.
But like a question God couldn’t answer.
"Was I ever real?"
"...or just the most beautiful place you chose to ruin?"
