WebNovels

Chapter 1 - Prologue

The Wish 

Well, people say love is love, don't they? But that's not how it ever felt. At least not for me.

Love, for me, was something that arrived in flashes, very bright, fast-burning sparks that lit up my chest and then vanished before I could even reach out to hold them. It came softly and left violently. I gave my heart too easily, or maybe I gave it to the wrong people to hold, the ones who held it like something fragile, only to drop it the moment it became too heavy to care for.

They say everyone is chasing something real. But reality... reality was nothing like the dream I imagined. It was colder, emptier, like standing in a room full of people and realizing not one of them could see you bleeding.

After a while, silence became easier than hope. Loneliness became a habit I wore like a second skin, invisible, but always there. He was tired. Heartbroken in ways no one else could notice. People saw his smile and thought he was fine. They never saw the storms that raged behind his quiet eyes, the weight of wanting to be seen yet fearing what that visibility might cost. Every day, he played his role flawlessly, the friend, the worker, the listener, until night came, and the mask cracked.

One night, as the moon hung gracefully above New York City, cold weather, silent atmosphere, distant, glowing, and indifferent, he stepped outside. The air was crisp, biting, and the city lights shimmered like they were mocking his pain. Cars whispered by, puddles mirrored fractured stars, and a lonely siren wailed somewhere far away, as though the city itself was grieving. He walked without knowing where his feet would lead, carrying a heart too full of unspoken things. Every breath felt like a confession. Every shadow looked like regret.

Standing in the middle of the road, he tilted his face to the moon and whispered a wish he wasn't supposed to say out loud.

"I wish I was never gay."

The words fell from his lips like glass, breaking as they touched the night. He didn't mean it, not really, but maybe not fully either. Yet in that moment, it felt like the only prayer the universe would listen to. A tear slipped down his cheek, falling silently onto the cold pavement, disappearing into the city that had never truly seen him. He wondered if anyone ever would.

He went back to his apartment, shoulders heavy with exhaustion and sorrow. The silence inside felt louder than his thoughts. His room smelled faintly of rain and cheap wine. He sat on the edge of the bed, tracing the lines of old photographs, faces that once smiled at him and now existed only in memory. He lay down at last, staring at the ceiling, replaying every mistake, every heartbreak, every almost-love that slipped away. Eventually, his breathing slowed; sleep came like mercy.

He never knew that the next morning would betray everything he understood about himself, that life was waiting with a cruel kind of miracle.

Because when he woke up...

He wasn't himself anymore.

He was someone else.

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