The rain always came hardest in the afternoons.
Thirteen-year-old Aaren Raithe sat on the rusted bench just outside the school gates, his hoodie soaked and sagging. His fingers trembled as he tugged the inhaler from his bag, pressing it to his lips with the practiced desperation of someone who had done it too many times. The taste of aluminum and medicine filled his mouth.
The school bell rang behind him. Like a swarm of insects, the students poured out—laughing, shouting, living.
"Aaren! Still breathing, huh?" shouted Kieran, one of the louder boys in class, flanked by his ever-present posse. "Thought the wind might've knocked you out this time."
The group erupted into cruel laughter. Aaren didn't look up. He'd learned not to.
He flinched only slightly when someone threw a crumpled paper ball at his chest.
"Why don't you just stay home, Sick Boy?" another voice spat, full of the poison that only middle schoolers seem to master.
He said nothing. He waited for them to leave. When the sounds faded, he exhaled shakily, gathered his bag, and stood. The rain had stopped.
---
That night, Aaren stared at the ceiling of his small room, bathed in the bluish glow of the moonlight. His body ached—not from illness, but from existence. He pressed play on the cheap cassette player beside his bed. A soft voice whispered from the speaker, "You are more than your pain."
He didn't believe it. Not yet.
---
A week later, her name crashed into his life like sunlight through broken windows.
Her name was Mina Cael—new student, sharp eyes, quiet voice. She sat beside him in English class.
"You draw?" she asked, pointing to the edge of his notebook, where a thin sketch of a twisted tree sprouted.
Aaren blinked. "Uh… yeah."
"It's cool," she said simply, and that was it. But something flickered in him—something fragile.
Over weeks, they talked—books, dreams, music. She made him laugh. She didn't stare at his trembling hands. She didn't flinch when he coughed. Aaren began to feel a pulse in his chest stronger than illness or loneliness.
So, on a damp Friday afternoon, he confessed.
And she said:
"Aaren… I'm sorry. I don't feel the same."
It wasn't cruel. It wasn't mocking. But it crushed him all the same.
---
In the mirror that night, he looked at his own reflection—not with hatred, but with clarity.
"I'm tired," he whispered. "But I'm not done."
He started running—small jogs that turned into longer ones. He drank water instead of soda. He pushed through books, he sketched more, he practiced breathing without panic. Day by day, week by week, he carved something new out of the boy called Sick.
People began to notice.
The bullies were quieter. Aaren started answering questions in class. Even Mina smiled more often at him—though the ache remained. But life, somehow, was unfolding.
And then the sky burned.
---
It was a family trip to the mountains. Three days of signal-less peace in a remote lodge—just his parents, little sister, and the smell of pine and woodsmoke.
On the second day, while they were watching stars and roasting stale marshmallows, the ground shuddered faintly.
"Earthquake?" his father guessed.
But the sky to the south… it glowed. It pulsed.
It bloomed like a sun—sick and furious.
They didn't know what it was until the emergency broadcast crackled through a half-functioning radio the next morning.
"A nuclear detonation has struck central regions of—"
His mom clicked it off.
---
When they finally returned home, four days later, the city was ash and silence. Roads warped. Buildings gutted. The school was a skeleton of brick. Trees were charred bones. And the people…
The ones they found weren't the same.
Something had changed in those who survived.
Even Aaren's reflection had.