Another day, another lecture I barely listened to. The professor's voice was a dull drone, a background noise to the more interesting scenes playing out in my head. On my tablet, hidden just below the desk, was a panel from a comic. The Sentry, ripping a god in half. A million times the power of the sun. Now that was power. Real power.
Not this. Not Ken, the orphan, the scholarship student with two pairs of jeans and a stack of instant noodle cups taller than his career prospects.
The bell rang, snapping me back to reality. The gray, boring reality. I packed my lone bag, the strap fraying, and shuffled out with the crowd. No one talked to me. I was a ghost in the hallway. It was easier that way. Less complicated. My friends were the heroes and villains on my screen, their struggles epic and world-ending. My struggles were figuring out if I had enough loose change for dinner.
The walk back to my tiny studio apartment was through streets that felt just as empty as I did. The city was loud, but I was quiet inside. A hollowed-out thing. I kicked a pebble, watching it skitter across the cracked pavement. This was it. This was my life. A endless cycle of classes, part-time job applications that went nowhere, and the glow of a screen.
My stomach growled, a sharp reminder of my budget. Right. Noodles. Again.
The convenience store was a beacon of fluorescent light in the dimming evening. The bell on the door announced my entrance with a cheap ding-a-ling. The air smelled of stale coffee and industrial cleaner. I didn't even have to look; my feet carried me on autopilot to the aisle with the ramen. I picked my usual chicken flavor. The comfort of the familiar.
I trudged to the counter, placing the cup down with a soft tap.
And then I saw her.
She was new. Didn't recognize her. She had that kind of clean, pretty look that made someone like me feel even grubbier. She was scrolling through her phone, a small, polished smile on her face as she looked at some guy's photo. Probably her boyfriend. Of course she had a boyfriend.
She glanced up as I approached. The smile vanished. Her eyes, which had been bright and amused a second ago, flattened. They swept over me—my old sneakers, my worn-out jacket, the single cup of cheap noodles—and her expression shifted to one of pure, unadulterated annoyance. Like I was a bug. A nuisance interrupting her very important day.
I felt my face grow warm. I opened my mouth, my voice a dry croak. "How much for—"
"I have a boyfriend."
The words were like a slap. They cut me off before I could even finish. They weren't just a statement; they were a weapon. She said it with such absolute certainty, such disdain, as if the very idea that I, a guy buying instant noodles, could be attempting to hit on her was the most insulting, ridiculous thing she had ever heard.
And something in me broke.
It wasn't just about her. It was about everything. It was the stack of rejection letters. It was the lonely nights. It was the kids in class who laughed when I mentioned a comic. It was the feeling of being utterly, completely powerless in my own life. All of that frustration, that rage, that bottomless pit of loneliness, boiled over in a single, white-hot instant.
My hand moved before my brain could catch up.
SMACK!
The sound was shockingly loud, a sharp crack that echoed in the quiet store. The force of it snapped her head to the side. My palm stung, a bright, hot pain. Her phone clattered to the counter.
For a second, there was absolute silence. Then, a red handprint bloomed on her cheek. Her eyes were wide, swimming with a mix of shock, pain, and terror. She brought a hand slowly to her face, her fingers trembling.
"I JUST WANTED TO PAY FOR THIS SHIT!" I roared. The words tore out of my throat, raw and ragged. My whole body was shaking. Adrenaline coursed through me, making my vision pulse.
The girl didn't say a word. She just stared, dazed, holding her cheek. The world had shrunk to this counter, to her horrified face, and the cup of noodles sitting between us like an accusation.
DING-A-LING!
The store door flew open, hitting the wall with a bang.
Everything slowed down.
Two men. Big. Dressed in dark hoodies. Ski masks pulled over their faces. The glint of metal in the hand of the one in front.
"Nobody move! This is a robbery!" the lead guy yelled, his voice muffled by the mask. "Empty the goddamn register! Now!"
The girl finally screamed, a high-pitched, piercing sound of pure panic.
The second robber, startled by the scream, spun towards the counter. His eyes, visible through the holes in his mask, were wide and jumpy. His gun swung wildly in our direction.
"Shut up!" he screamed at her.
His finger tightened on the trigger.
BANG.
The sound was unimaginable. It wasn't loud; it was a physical force that punched the air from my lungs.
And then the pain came.
It didn't start as pain. It was first a sensation of being hit by a sledgehammer. A massive, brutal impact between my legs. It lifted me off my feet for a split second before I crashed down onto the cold, hard linoleum floor.
Then the fire started. A white-hot, agonizing fire that erupted in my groin and instantly spread through my entire nervous system. It was a pain so vast, so all-consuming, that I couldn't even scream. My mouth was open, but no sound came out. My brain was short-circuiting, unable to process this level of agony.
I looked down.
There was a hole in my pants. A dark, wet, spreading stain. It wasn't just red; it was a mess of red and… other things. Things that shouldn't be outside. My mind recoiled. My balls… they were… gone.
The pain intensified, waves of it crashing over me, each one worse than the last. It was a pain that reached into my soul, a violation of the most fundamental part of being a man. It was humiliation and destruction fused into one unbearable sensation. Tears streamed down my face, mixing with the snot from my nose. I curled into a fetal position, but the movement sent fresh lightning bolts of agony through my core.
I could feel the warm pool of my own blood spreading beneath me, soaking through my clothes. The world started to get dark at the edges. The screams of the girl, the shouts of the robbers, it all sounded like it was coming from the end of a long tunnel.
Is this it? a distant part of my mind wondered. This is how I die? Slapped a girl, got shot in the dick… for a cup of noodles?
It was so pathetic. So stupid. So unbelievably meaningless.
A final, crushing wave of shame washed over me, colder than the blood loss. Then, the darkness at the edges of my vision swelled, swallowing the light, the sound, the unbearable fire. Everything faded to nothing.
---
Consciousness returned not with a jolt, but with a slow, dawning awareness that I was… nowhere.
I wasn't standing. I wasn't lying down. I had no body to feel with. I was just a point of view, a thought, floating in an infinite, soundless, lightless void. There was no up, no down. No time. It was utter emptiness on a scale my human mind couldn't comprehend. Panic, a pure, primal terror, tried to grip me, but I had no heart to race, no lungs to hyperventilate.
Then, I felt a Presence.
It didn't appear. It simply was. And because it was, the void had a center.
It was a figure, robed in what looked like a living piece of the cosmos—a swirling, shifting tapestry of deep space black and nebulous, electric blue. And its face… within the shadow of its hood, there was no face. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. Just an endless, deep, limitless black. A void within the void. Staring into it was like staring into the concept of nothingness itself, and it was infinitely more terrifying than the empty space around me.
I was paralyzed. Not physically, but existentially. Its aura pressed down on my consciousness, vast and ancient and cold. It was the feeling of being an ant at the foot of a mountain that was also a god. I was less than nothing. I was mesmerized, humbled, and utterly broken by its mere existence.
"So."
The voice didn't vibrate through the air. There was no air. It resonated directly in the core of my being, each syllable heavy with the weight of eons.
"You died so pathetically."
The words were not mocking. They were a simple, factual statement, and that made it a thousand times worse. There was no judgment, only a cold, dispassionate observation of my worthless end. My entire life, my entire struggle, summarized in one devastating sentence. Shame, hotter than the bullet's fire, burned through my soul.
"I will give you a chance to live again."
Hope. It was a tiny, fragile flame igniting in the infinite darkness. It was a feeling I hadn't truly felt in years. It was so powerful it hurt.
"Who…" I tried to form the question, my thoughts a weak whisper in the face of this entity. "Who are you?"
"You do not need to know," the voice replied, its tone final and absolute, leaving no room for argument. It was a force of nature, not a person to be questioned. "You will have one wish. Do not wish for something beyond my power. If it is within my reach, I will grant it."
One wish.
My mind, an otaku's mind, a library of fantastical possibilities, went into overdrive. The Infinity Gauntlet? Too specific, might be beyond his scope. The Power Cosmic? Potentially too vague. I needed something defined, something incredibly powerful, but with a catch I could remove.
Then it hit me. The Sentry. Robert Reynolds. The Golden God of the Marvel Universe. Power beyond measure. But his power came with a price—the Void, a dark, destructive alternate personality that was the literal balance to his light.
I didn't want that weakness. I didn't want a monster living in my head.
I gathered all the will I had left. "I wish for the power of the Sentry!" I declared, my thought-voice stronger now. "All of it! A million times the strength of the sun! The power of flight, invulnerability, everything! But… I don't want the weakness. I don't want the Void as a separate personality inside me." I took a metaphysical breath. "I want to be the Void. I want to control that darkness myself, to become it without any side effects. I want to wield the light and the darkness as one. That… that is my wish."
The cosmic being was silent. The void seemed to hold its breath, waiting for His response. The swirling patterns on His robes slowed, as if in contemplation.
"An interesting choice," the voice echoed, a hint of something… curiosity? "To wish for the light, you must first embrace the abyss within. To command the destruction, you must become it. There is a balance in your foolishness. Very well."
There was no grand gesture. No flash of light. But I felt it.
A universe of power flooded into me. It was not a gentle stream; it was a supernova erupting inside my very soul. I felt the terrifying, infinite strength of the Sentry—the power to move planets, to shatter stars. And intertwined with it, like the other side of the same coin, was the cold, nihilistic, absolute power of the Void—the power to unmake, to erase, to bring about the end of all things. They weren't fighting each other. They were merging, becoming one singular, immense force that was now mine to command. The darkness was not my enemy; it was my other arm.
The sensation was overwhelming, glorious, and utterly terrifying.
"It is done," the being said, His work complete. "You will be reincarnated. Where… you will find out for yourself."
"Wait!" I tried to shout, to form another thought. I had a million questions! What world? When? Why me? But the power inside me was a roaring tide, and His presence was already receding, the vast attention lifting from my soul.
The void began to dissolve. The comforting, terrifying darkness was replaced by a different kind of blackness—a heavy, pulling, suffocating oblivion. I felt myself being drawn away, spinning into a tunnel of chaotic energy and light. My new consciousness, fragile and overloaded, couldn't hold on.
The last thing I felt was the echo of infinite power thrumming within me, and the chilling mystery of His final words.
Then, everything went black.
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