I returned to the class of troubles.
Under the roof of this public school, the bandage on my forehead attracted attention like a new stigma added to my ugly birthmark.
Sarcastic laughter rose from different corners of the classroom, its echoes reverberating in my ears like bells.
These same people who stoned me, most of them were in my class, now sitting in their worn wooden seats as if they were innocent angels.
I sat in my seat in the last row as usual, remembering the details of the pain that happened a little while ago. The stinging wounds all over my body were still pinching me.
My glances sneaked toward Kiara sitting in the front row under the classroom window. The sunlight seeping through the dusty glass cast pale shadows on her small face.
I tried to find justifications for her sudden change in behavior - maybe family problems... maybe her need for privacy with her friends.
Or maybe... maybe I made a mistake without realizing it.
But the scene of her repeated conversations with that other child was stabbing my heart like a rusty knife.
Finally, I understood - she got tired of the company of the child with the disfigured face. I should have expected this.
Why did I think that Lady Luck was on my side?
I tried to distract my mind by thinking about the upcoming exams.
My low grade in the first semester (30%) haunts me like a frightening ghost. Repeating the year? No, I can't bear the thought that my mother would find another excuse to take me out of school permanently.
My whole life is hanging by a thin thread of hope, and school is one of those thin threads I need to survive.
I didn't say school is good, and I didn't say it would make me happy or successful either.
But... well, it's clear. The school restaurant is one of the veins that has kept me from dying of hunger.
Really ironic.
Anyway,
When the classroom was empty, I approached Kiara with hesitant steps and in a trembling voice: "K-Kiara... I'm sorry."
She looked at me with unusually cold eyes: "And what are you apologizing for?"
"I... I don't know. I thought I offended you in some way."
She waved her hand as if shooing away an annoying fly and shocked me with her tone full of arrogance: "Get away from me. Did you think yourself special just because I talked to you a little?"
I stood paralyzed before her, my mind trying to comprehend this sudden transformation.
The birthmark on my face began to throb with pain as if reminding me of its ominous presence, but it's not the birthmark that's the reason because she would have noticed it from the beginning and treated me this way from the beginning as well.
Why is she disgusted by me now?
Suddenly, the classroom began to fill with children sneaking in through the door and windows as if they were small soldiers in a cheap game of hide and seek.
Their suppressed laughter and conspiratorial whispers filled the stagnant air in this damned classroom.
The worn curtains swayed with a light breeze as if witnessing a cruel play about to begin.
"Haha, look at his face!" someone shouted from behind, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
"Even the birthmark would be ashamed of itself now!" added another, as if his words were poisoned arrows.
Kiara stood in front of me, her eyes carrying a look I had never seen before - a mixture of cruelty and gloating. She extended her hand to hold my arm, and in a moment of fear and confusion from me, I backed away, and she fell to the ground in an exaggerated theatrical scene. It was clear that this devilish child greatly exaggerated the fall,
Like a professional actress in a cheap school theater.
Her artificial tears began to pour: "How dare you push me?!" she screamed in a pained voice mixed with a hidden tone of triumph.
Why in the name of the creator of hell? Why? What is the reason behind this vulgar act of yours?
As if this was the starting signal, that fat boy advanced with his huge body and his swaying belly. Behind him lined up a small army of bullies, their eyes gleaming with evil and their hands poised for attack.
I remained shocked. It was a stupid scene I couldn't comprehend, but it was really painful as soon as I moved to protect myself.
Punches and kicks rained from every direction. I tried to protect my face - this face that brought me all this misery.
How ironic that I protect something that is the cause of my suffering!
The wooden seats creaked under their feet, and dust rose from the dirty classroom floor.
"Your heart is uglier than your face!" someone screamed as he violently pulled my hair.
"We warned Kiara about you, but she was too kind!" added a girl as she helped Kiara get up.
Suddenly, a child who was guarding the door shouted: "The teacher is coming!"
They scattered like rats, leaving behind a broken body and a shattered soul.
I gathered all my strength and crawled to my seat, trying to hide the traces of the battle and dust off my clothes. My arms wrapped around my head like a last shield, and my body trembled like a leaf in the wind.
I tried to hold back tears with all my might.
The pain in my stomach,
in my head,
in my back - every part of my body was screaming, but I suppressed the moaning.
Those damn children didn't leave a place in my body they didn't hit.
The teacher's voice cut through the tense silence: "Leon... gather your things."
My heart stopped for a moment. "W-why?"
"Your mother is on her way to you."
I felt the blood freeze in my veins. That school doctor - of course! She told the teacher about my forehead injury, and the teacher in turn called my mother, as parents' numbers are something essential in the student's record.
I tried to protest: "Why did you call her?!"
The doctor's compassionate look was in stark contrast to the teacher's cold looks and my classmates' gloating smiles.
Then what I feared happened. My mother entered in her elegant clothes and expensive perfume.
She looked completely foreign to the simple public school atmosphere. A sudden silence fell over the classroom. Even the fat boy, the king of bullying, seemed shocked: "I-is this your mother?"
My mother's artificial smile lit up the classroom: "Come on, Leon, we'll go home." Her smile was surprisingly warm as she greeted the children in this classroom politely, but I know what's hiding behind it.
At home, the masks will fall.
Hypocrite.
She extended her hand to me.
I stood on trembling feet. On my way to her, I felt my classmates' gazes piercing my back, some shocked and others suppressing a laugh, and a few of them - perhaps - feeling some pity and maybe wondering.
I extended my hand and held hers, and for a second or two, I found that she had deliberately tightened her hand on mine as if threatening something more ominous.
Kiara was watching Leon as he went away with his mother, who was holding his hand. She began to remember his words when she asked him, "Are you from the famous Martinez family?"
She realized he was lying when he replied, "No, it's just a similarity of names."
She said to herself while thinking, "He was lying, but... why?"
I left with my mother from the classroom, leaving behind murmurs and whispers. Each step in the long corridor was bringing me closer to an unknown fate.
My mother's silence frightened me more than her words.
At that moment,
I realized that what happened at school might be just an introduction to what awaits me at home.
Maybe I should say goodbye... not just to school but to all hope in my life.
Maybe this time my body won't survive any punishment.
It seems that this time I will...
Will
.
.
.
Will meet the king of death.
After we left the school gate, she was still holding my hand, and I was looking at her and waiting for when she would turn into her real version.
As I swallowed hard and sweated, I spotted one of our family's servants waiting for us near a luxurious black car.
My mother and I rode in the back seat while the car's engine roared, and we began to move toward the castle of demons.
While I began to see the symptoms from now, as soon as my hand separated from my mother's hand, she was still silent and hadn't let me hear her poison yet, but instead, she took her handkerchief and began to wipe her hands with it.
Her hand that held mine.
Are you telling me that I'm this disgusting then?
It was a small gesture, but it was... enough to make me realize that I really am nothing in her eyes.
It was enough to instill pain in my heart. I can't believe I'm about to cry just from such a gesture.
So what will happen to me when I return home?
But something unexpected happened.
"Are you okay?" my mother said in a cold tone, but I focused only on the words. I looked at her with intense questioning and was shocked. I couldn't respond. Where is her usual obscene talk?
Until she brought me back to reality, "Is there something on my face?"
I said with a very nervous expression, "N-n-no, nothing on it. I'm fine."
What's happening here? Is this my mother?
After we arrived home, my mother didn't say anything. I was still walking behind her, and my brain still hadn't comprehended what happened a little while ago.
It seemed that everything was good in a suspicious way.
Until another miracle happened.
After entering the palace,
My siblings came, and each of them began to ask about my condition in a way that aroused suspicion, all of them except Histori, who was sitting... was standing away from us, but he turned his back and left without expression.
Shock.
Yi Lian, with whom I lived a horror movie last night, says, "What's wrong with your face! Why the adhesive?"
"I-umm... n-nothing important," I said in a stammering and confused way. Speech was very difficult because I found myself making a tremendous effort to understand this radical change in the way they treat me until my mother interrupted us and said, "Okay, leave him. You, go to your basement." Her tone didn't change, but I found myself going and smiling involuntarily. It seemed
Like hope amid a sea of despair.
I went down to the basement after lighting that lamp in the ceiling. It was old. I needed to pull the wick to light it. It had a yellow glow and continued to swing in the ceiling.
After I stepped on the last step,
I found a small round table with something like a plate but with its cover.
I removed it slowly, curious about what I might find inside, and it was food that was still warm with steam rising from it.
Meat?
W-why?
But I didn't occupy my mind too much because hunger was the lethal thing that was gnawing at my insides. It didn't leave me room to think. My stomach was screaming for food, so hunger did its thing to me and consumed me completely.
I started eating immediately and quickly. I wasn't even chewing well. I was swallowing the bite alive.
I had never eaten meat in my life. Its taste was strange but delicious enough to make me tremble and shake as I ate it.
My eyes began to tear up, but for the first time, they weren't tears of pain.
Until I heard the sound of hysterical laughter, and it was my siblings coming down to the basement while those mocking looks were on their faces as usual.
I didn't understand the reason for their laughter at that moment, but I began to wipe my tears.
I said with a nervous expression, "Umm, th-thank you. I've never eaten like this before."
Everyone began to laugh until Yi Lian said in a sarcastic voice, "I told you he's stupid."
Sarah said, suppressing her laugh with her hand, "But seriously, did you really enjoy it?"
I answered yes, and their laughter grew louder, echoing in all corners of the narrow basement.
Karma said with a smile and a sarcastic voice, "Bon appétit, our dear pig."
I found myself not understanding the reason for their continued laughter. I was lost in that flood, and as usual, I found myself trying to understand. I didn't need to be smart to know that something bad was happening.
I felt something deep inside me beginning to move as if trying to connect the details and come up with the worst scenario.
I found myself reasoning bit by bit and understanding gradually
after Arthur, who began talking with tears of laughter wiping from his eye with the back of his left hand, pointed with his right hand to those empty boxes.
I began to get nervous until I noticed a ball of fur in that meat. I began to stare at it, and terror began to creep into my heart like a cold hand holding it.
Until Arthur approached and said with a gloating expression, "Yes, yes, exactly what you're thinking, you naive one."
I began to shake and stood up, and my feet could barely carry me. I ran toward those boxes like a madman, turning them over one after another, opening the closed ones and searching in the open ones with a fearful eagerness. "N-Noel, where are you!!??????"
They began to laugh even more, surprised by the name.
"Noel? Is that the name of a cat or a European general?" Sarah said sarcastically, while Yi Lian leaned her shoulders against the wall, and it seemed that laughing was hurting her stomach. "Oh my God, haha."
I looked at that plate, of which I had already consumed three-quarters, and began to convince myself that my siblings wouldn't go that far and wouldn't go to this crazy extent, but Arthur's voice was like a slap.
"Did you like the taste of your cat?"
I began to vomit violently, expelling what I had eaten while my stomach was trying hard to reject everything.
Their laughter began to become more insane, and I looked at Arthur in a very terrified way. "Y-you... killed him?"
Arthur smiled and opened his arms as if receiving me. "Huh? Want revenge? It doesn't matter. It's your cat, so it will share your suffering."
"W-what? B-but b-but why!"
"Who cares about your disgusting cat? Isn't it wonderful that it's inside you now? It will stay with you for 7 hours until you expel it later, haha."
Everyone began to look as if they were about to lose their minds from laughter, as if they found in this scene the incomparable pleasure and reached with it the peak of entertainment.
While I found myself as if I were falling into an abyss. I was numbed and seemed as if my soul had left my body. I no longer felt anything.
I couldn't even cry.
Is this the reason for their kindness earlier?
But are they humans like me?
Does my ugliness give them a license for all this excess?
I saw in my siblings' faces an evil beyond imagination that has no connection to the nature of children. Each of them is much worse than the other.
I began to cry while my siblings found their desired pleasure in hearing the sound of my sobbing until they began to leave after they had their fill of pleasure at my expense.
I continued crying.
For a very long time.
8 full hours.
From the afternoon until midnight, and my tears began to dry up, and my breathing began to become heavy.
I had never cried like this in my life.
I felt I would lose my sight from the intensity of tears because I faced difficulty in seeing due to the wetness of my eyes, as if I were staring through unpolished glass or opening my eyes underwater.
I felt that crying was the only thing connecting me to this world.
I couldn't stop. I felt I was about to die from the intensity of oppression, as if my tears were trying to wash something much deeper than sadness.
Maybe disappointment.
Maybe the complete loss of hope.
But I gathered all my strength to crawl to that worn-out blanket and this bed that I hated because it was never comfortable, but it never refused my refuge to it.
These perforated blankets barely protected me from the severity of the frost.
Cold was always a present guest in this basement, but today I found something more severe.
More painful to the extent that cold and hunger were completely marginalized.
The pain today was like a knife that is not satisfied with stabbing but wraps around the wound in a way that makes the damage multiply continuously, not stopped by time.
I lost that cat... in fact, I a-ate...
I found myself rephrasing that word.
"I ate him..."
I don't know the taste of meat, so it was impossible for me to predict this dirty move, not to mention that it was filled with spices that I didn't recognize as any suspicious taste.
Damn.
My heart was still beating strongly and hadn't rested throughout these hours. It seemed as if it was screaming at me.
I put my hand on my chest. For a moment, I thought it was in my hand. I found myself trembling not from the cold but from fear.
Fear exceeding my most terrifying nightmares.
Death.
I felt it.
It was cold.
Very cold.
Cold in a way that can hardly be described.
And for half a second, I felt completely sure that if I slept tonight, I wouldn't wake up.
It was a terrifying certainty.
When humans realize it's the end, they will immediately stop resisting, and for a child with no power or strength like me, this was like a break I was longing for with yearning.
My blood pressure dropped in a deadly way, and I found myself breathing with difficulty, unable to move. I closed my eyes in pain, ready for what was coming.
That night when the basement was tighter than ever before,
I sank into a heavy sleep as if escaping from a reality I could no longer bear.
It wasn't an ordinary sleep. It was more like a free fall toward a place I didn't know.
I opened my eyes to find myself in a world my feet had never trodden before.
Endless green lands,
Towering trees given eternal life by the winds, and strange-looking birds, despite their amazing beauty, chirping in a melody I had never heard in my life.
There were children playing, their laughter like melodies and their faces shining with indescribable beauty. They moved lightly as if they were flying,
As if they belonged to this place more than I belonged to any place I had known.
I took my first steps cautiously as if I were an intruder in a paradise I had no right to touch.
But amid that beauty...
I felt something strange, as if shadows were dancing behind me.
I turned to find someone standing at a close distance.
He was tall,
Handsome in an inhuman way,
His eyes silver, gleaming like the moon,
And his hair black as the darkness of a starless night.
His smile was calm but carried something mysterious while his hands were in his pocket.
He came down from that low green hill slowly.
"Hello, Leon..." he said in a deep voice carrying a calm tone but full of power.
I, who had never been used to being called by my name kindly, was confused. "Who... are you? And w-where am I?"
The stranger approached with his confident steps as if he knew everything about this place and about me. "I am Agnes, and this... is the Spectrum World.
It's a place between dream and reality, a place untouched by human hands.
A place that doesn't recognize the laws of time and space, but you're here now because you're... special."
I felt confused, but I couldn't back away. "S.spectrum world ?...Special? I don't think I am. I'm just..." I said it in a hesitant way while that man smiled and snapped his fingers. In one second, I saw something behind his foot. It was that cat.
"N-Noel?!"
I found myself approaching him while I began to cry. I said with a confused and very emotional expression while touching him and making sure of the validity of what my eyes were seeing, "Y-you're here? B-but but how?!"
" I ate it"
"W-what?"
"Isn't that what you wanted to say?" Agnes said in a normal tone after his smile disappeared.
"But - h-how!"
Agnes replied with a sarcastic smile, "I told you before, the Spectrum World doesn't recognize the laws of the living and the dead, so you'll see any dead creature here because it's like a dream but ranks above it."
I said with a terrified expression after I backed away, "W-what do you want from me?"
Agnes laughed a faint laugh, but it was sharp like knives. "Ah, Leon, do you always underestimate yourself? Do you know that thorns are born in the most beautiful roses?"
I hesitated ... I started to feel very scared even though everything seemed incomprehensibly beautiful in this place. Everything here was reassuring, even the soft winds and the sound of children laughing as they played and... Noel. He kept scratching his head with my fingertips but I was scared what would happen next and what was this man's goal? "W.why am I here?"
Agnes sat on a green hill as if telling an old story. "Because you're lost, Leon, lost between the cruelty of the world and your weakness. I wanted to show you something."
"Something? What do you mean?"
"Your truth, and the truth, my little one, is not in the dark basement where they bury you, not in the hunger that gnaws at your stomach, and not the cold that creeps into your bones. The truth is that the world has wronged you in every sense of the word, but you didn't do anything and remained silent... weak... as they wanted you to be."
I felt my tension rising inside me. "But... what can I do?"
Agnes smiled, a malicious gleam dancing in his eyes. "You have to ask yourself... are they really your family? Where were they when you were licking dishes like a dog to stay alive? When you were begging for just one look from them? Aren't they the real monsters while they themselves call you a monster?"
His words were true and harsh and resounding, making me sit as if trying to escape from the words embedding themselves in my mind. "But they're my family... there's some reason."
Agnes laughed loudly. "Your family? And where was this generous family when you suffered alone? When they saw the birthmark on your face, they decided you don't even deserve to be treated as a human?"
Agnes's words silenced me. They were like arrows. He was really skilled in using his tongue. His words hit my heart in a way I couldn't counter.
"I want to ask you a question, Leon."
"W.what is it?"
"If you were in their place, would you treat them as they treat you?"
I hesitated from his question, but I answered without hesitation, shaking my head. "No... I don't think so."
Agnes came closer, and his voice lowered as if whispering a secret in my ear. "Then you're better than them... but they don't want you to know that. They want you to remain at their mercy, to forget that you possess something they don't: will. As for me... I see your strength, and I want you to see it too."
I felt something changing inside me, as if a dark seed had begun to grow in my chest, but at the same time, there was fear controlling me.
"Why are you doing this? Why do you care?"
"Because I know what it means to be alone, and because I see the world as it is: a place that doesn't spare the weak and also doesn't spare the foolish. So be smart now because you don't have a choice, Leon, and because your life depends on your decision."
I began to cry and said, "B-but why? Why me? It could have been someone else, and I wouldn't treat them as they treat me. Isn't that fair?"
Agnes sighed heavily and said, "The world isn't fair. This life is very full of bad events and isn't a beautiful garden. There's no such thing as justice or innocence because I realize that you think you're innocent."
"B-but why not? I haven't hurt anyone, I swear to you."
Agnes began to laugh, enjoying what he was hearing as if I were telling him a joke.
"Listen, you foolish child.
There's no need to swear to me. I'm not a god to judge you.
Also, do you think fate will have mercy on you just because you're a child? Look at life. The strong harm the weak, and no one dares to say anything.
There's no such thing as innocence either because it basically stems from weakness.
There's only power and intelligence.
There's no innocence; there's only a food chain, no more.
The strong always eat the weak.
If you're not a wolf, the dogs will eat you.
Before I could respond, the world began to fade.
The green land... the children... and even Agnes's face.
Everything began to sink into darkness.
I woke up suddenly, my breath accelerated, and sweat pouring profusely.
I was in the basement again, but his last words echoed in my mind: "When the heart dies, the mind begins to work."