บท 1: Invisible
I remember one day when I was little, during introductory classes in elementary school, the teacher asked each of us what we would wish for if a genie popped out of a lamp. I wished for a sweet little kitten since our previous one had been hit by a garbage truck.
It wasn't a very original wish.
The other kids wished to be Superman or to get a big swimming pool or a toy that was popular at the time.
Some wished to be invisible.
Who would want to be invisible?
I never wanted to be invisible.
Since I was little, I lived in a small town called Cloverhill, where everyone knew each other well. One day, a talent show was organized there. Everyone at school was talking about their acts and what they were going to perform.
So, I also wanted to participate.
I practiced small magic tricks for the entire month before the show. I worked hard. I wanted to show it to everyone.
On the day of the show, the whole auditorium was packed like a can of sardines. Students, teachers, parents, almost the entire town came to see the little talents. I was very nervous, sitting behind the curtains. The show was going very well; I could hear how one person after another performed and received applause and cheers.
Finally, it was time for me to take the stage. I stepped out from behind the curtains with my box full of tricks. However, something was off. The audience was chatting and laughing among themselves.
They didn't pay any attention to me at all.
With each trick, my confidence faded. When I finished my show, the audience clapped, but only out of politeness. The presentation continued, and the person after me received huge applause.
I didn't receive much recognition for my efforts.
Nobody liked my performance.
Nobody acknowledged my hard work.
It didn't end there; the next day, my classmates started laughing at me in school.
I never wanted to be invisible.
I just wanted to be ignored and left alone by the bullies. I liked to think I became invisible to them instead.
My family wasn't poor; we didn't live paycheck-to-paycheck. We weren't disgustingly rich either, but we had enough money. Unfortunately, my parents always said they had to stick to a budget and couldn't buy whatever they wanted.
When I saw a toy that I really wanted to have, they always told me that I needed to wait for Christmas.
But when it came to buying gifts for my classmates, they never skimped.
Despite being practically invisible at school, I received many birthday invitations because their parents knew that their children would receive great gifts from me.
During those parties, I noticed that others didn't give gifts worth as much as mine, so I asked my dad why we give such expensive gifts, and he told me that if I wanted to receive good gifts for my birthday, I had to be generous.
So, I went to a big party for one of the boys in my class. The boy came from a poor family, so my parents decided to give him an even bigger gift than the others.
There was a rare and expensive Lego box that was coming out soon. Commercials were advertising it. It was all over toy magazines. Somehow, my dad miraculously acquired the Lego box before the release date.
The boy was so happy when he unpacked my gift that he started running around the room and showing everyone his new Lego. Everyone except me.
We gathered around the tables to enjoy the birthday cake. But as the plates were passed around, I watched in dismay as everyone got a piece except for me.
I did get a piece of the cake at the very end of the party but that was only because the boy sitting next to me who called for an extra piece needed to leave early, so they gave it to me.
We were sent outside to play party games. I was always at the end of the line and never got a turn until the last game, which was a trick to get us to help clean up.
Each child had their name on a party favor bag provided by his mom. Everyone except me. She did search for one with my name on it, but somehow I seemed to have been overlooked and left without anything.
I knew it wasn't worth dwelling on. Mom had told me repeatedly that this was rude and ungracious. I was there to join in the celebration of their birth with her friends and family.
The same thing kept happening. I wanted to tell my classmates that I was happy they liked my gifts, but my parents said I should forget about it and be quiet about it.
It wasn't about me.
Once, a girl opened her present and she was really happy. She stood up from her chair and looked around.
She asked who gave it to her. But no one answered, so she just shrugged her shoulders and thought that whoever gave her that gift must have really liked her.
Should I have told her and risked getting in trouble with my parents, or should I go hide in a dark corner and cry?
I always felt left out when it was time to play games. I told Mom how sad it made me whenever it happened at a party. She reiterated that parties were only about the birthday kid, not the guests like me. Dad told me to toughen up and deal with it.
Eventually, I stopped staying at the parties. I'd drop off my gifts and leave early.
No one ever called my parents to ask if they had picked me up earlier.
Even though I stopped staying at the parties, the invitations kept coming.
At the end of the year, my mom decided to throw a huge bash for my birthday. She sent out invitations to everyone I knew - kids from school, the neighborhood, even from church. We rented out the entire bowling alley for the party.
Usually, parties mean just cake for the kids, but not this one. Mom made sure the snack bar was open, and we'd cover whatever the guests wanted to eat. They put a lot of effort and money into making it perfect for me. This was their gift for me that year.
But there were no presents to open.
I found myself feeling lonely. No one seemed to notice when I slipped away to a quiet corner to cry.
I hoped someone would come looking for me. No one did.
I sat in the corner for an entire hour, hoping that maybe someone would show up for my party. But no one did.
I left my own birthday party feeling unseen and unheard.
My parents finally seemed to understand what I'd been trying to tell them all along. From then on, I stopped attending parties altogether. My mom politely declined each invitation that came our way.
As time went by, it seemed like everyone stopped noticing me altogether.
In high school, it only got worse. People would talk openly about things right in front of me as if I weren't even there. They'd share secrets, gossip, and even confess to doing things like stealing and picking into girls' change rooms, as if I weren't sitting right beside them.
It was like I was invisible to the world around me.
Even the bullies who used to bother me stopped paying me any mind. They were more interested in those who cared if they got bullied.
I became like a ghost, drifting through school unnoticed.
As the years passed, I excelled in high school, earning all A+'s and A's. Teachers saw me as a role model—quiet, focused on learning, with no drama surrounding me. I had no friends so that wasn't hard to accomplish.
Sometime in high school, I decided to take better care of my body and continued to perform 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, and 100 squats alongside running 10 km every day, just like my idol did.
It was during one of these runs that as I sprinted along the familiar route, lost in the sound of my own footsteps, a careless driver distracted by their phone veered into my path.
Miraculously, I survived the ordeal, but not without paying a heavy price. I spent weeks in the hospital, my body broken and battered, as doctors worked tirelessly to piece me back together.
The impact was sudden and violent—a blur of screeching tires and shattering glass as my body collided with the pavement.
It was a long and painful road to recovery, filled with moments of doubt and despair as I grappled with the physical and emotional scars left by the accident.
I enjoyed drawing abstract, dark concepts. I was pretty good at it. It was the only thing that kept me from falling into depression.
I thought things would change when I entered university.
I enrolled in Harvard's art department, expecting a fresh start.
On the first day, the professor announced a group project. I was eagerly looking around, hoping someone would invite me to join their group. But one by one, my classmates formed their groups without even glancing in my direction.
The professor told me that for this project, one solo group is acceptable.
Feeling dejected, I found an empty table and started working on my project alone.
I couldn't help but wonder why I never seemed to fit in or be noticed by my peers.
I longed for someone to reach out and include me, but it seemed like everyone was too caught up in their own world to notice me.
I wished for someone to see me for who I am and appreciate my presence, but it seemed like an impossible dream.
That brings me to today.
I was walking through the park on my way from some shopping to the dorms.
I was thinking about my life as a whole and about where it was going when a teen riding on his skateboard and browsing his phone at the same time drove into me like a battering ram. It caused me to lose balance and slam into the brick path, my back absorbing the force.
As I struggled to regain my senses, the teenager muttered a half-hearted apology before quickly skating away, still glued to his phone.
Once again I got lost in my thoughts, staring up at the sky. The weather seemed to be getting worse. Dark clouds were gathering in the sky; it looked like rain was on the horizon.
I was left alone on the ground, bruised, shaken.
Everything culminated, and my nerves were on the verge of breaking down.
My thoughts wandered into parts of my personality I never wanted to uncover.
The nearby bridge came to mind, and that snapped me out of it.
What was I thinking?
That's not how my parents raised me. They taught me to be strong.
I stood up slowly and brushed the dirt off my clothes.
The first raindrops fell from the sky. It didn't matter to me. I walked as usual, slowly, attentively. Time seemed to slow down for me and only for me as everyone around me sped up, each hurrying somewhere, seeking shelter from the impending downpour.
I just wanted to make it back to the dormitory, but destiny apparently didn't want to allow that.
I trembled as the strong icy wind tried to break the branches of the trees surrounding me.
A man endowed with god-given height ran past me. As he jogged by, his arm bumped into mine, grazing my wool sweater, stitched by my grandmother.
I felt the hair on my head and on the skin all over my body stand on end. The air paused for a fraction of a second. Everything fell silent. I no longer heard footsteps or branches colliding.
That was the fleeting thought that entered my mind before light illuminated everything around me. It was so bright that I felt like I had never really seen light before. Its shade shifting between blue and white.
There was the smell of something burning. My ears started playing a symphony, and my body refused to obey me. I felt like a tiny person in a stampede of charging bulls, dressed in red, as something knocked my body around from all sides.
All I could recall was lying on the floor, body numb, feeling small. No sensation in my limbs, just staring into space.
As I lay there, the light blinding, all I could see was a world of white.
[ Dear Graham Maxwell, You have died. You are no more. Kaput. Nada. Finito. ]
[ But fear not, dear mortal. Your journey is far from over. Due to the extreme unlikeliness of your death, Gods have a proposition for you. ]
[ Do you wish to be bound to an Invisibility System? ]
('Invisibility System? Fuck no.') Was my last thought before everything went black.
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