I learned early that people don't notice what disappears quietly.
They notice fires.
They notice screams.
They notice mess.
But take something small...something already half-forgotten...and the world barely flinches.
That was the first rule.
As a child, I didn't play much. I watched.
While other children ran in circles, chasing noise and laughter, I studied patterns. Who teachers called on. Who they forgot. How long a name could go unspoken before it stopped belonging to anyone at all.
In classrooms, I watched chalk hesitate midair as a teacher squinted at the register, then skipped a name entirely. I watched no one object. Not even the child whose name it was.
At home, before there was no home, I watched promises dissolve. My parents spoke them easily, casually, as if words were immune to consequence. When they forgot, their eyes slid away, already relieved of responsibility.
Cities taught me the rest. I watched neighborhoods erased, people displaced, faces replaced by scaffolding and banners that read development. The vanished were never mentioned again. Progress didn't ask permission.
Some people were anchors.
Others were debris.
No one explained this to me. No one needed to. The world demonstrated it daily.
They called me a genius.
The word followed me everywhere, school corridors, award ceremonies, hushed conversations I was never meant to hear. Teachers praised me too loudly. Adults smiled too tightly. My peers admired me from a careful distance.
Attention surrounded me constantly.
And yet, I was always alone.
In school, admiration curdled into envy. In college, it became competition. At work, it sharpened into quiet hostility. People liked me, but not enough to stay close. Jealousy built invisible walls. Hatred learned to smile.
I was always at the center of the room.
And always untouched.
There was nothing in life I could call fun. No impulse that quickened my steps. No desire strong enough to chase. Days stacked themselves neatly, pointlessly, like files no one would ever open.
Living felt like a burden I hadn't agreed to carry.
My parents left when I was six.
They didn't cry. They didn't shout. They spoke calmly, clinically, as if diagnosing a malfunction.
"You're not human," they said. "You can't live with us."
Not human.
The words didn't wound the way insults are supposed to. They settled instead. Took root. Grew questions that never stopped asking themselves.
If I wasn't human, then what was I?
Everyone else seemed to have something. Ambitions they sprinted toward. People they loved recklessly. Faith. Anger. Dreams they could afford to believe in.
They called it purpose.
What did I have?
What was I living for?
What did this life want from me?
Those questions followed me to the bridge.
The city moved beneath it...cars rushing, lights blurring, lives continuing without pause. The edge was unguarded. Honest. Final.
I stood there longer than I should have.
And for the first time, the thought wasn't dramatic or painful.
It was calm.
Then a voice came from behind me.
"Life can feel lonely, right?"
I turned.
He wasn't imposing. Didn't look like someone who belonged in moments like that. He was just… there. Holding a milkshake, of all things, condensation sliding down the cup and dripping onto his fingers.
"But even a lonely life has colors," he continued, smiling like the idea amused him. "They may not be bright. But they're there."
I remember thinking: What nonsense.
What could he possibly know?
And yet....
Why was he smiling?
He held the milkshake out to me, as if this were the most natural exchange in the world. As if he weren't interrupting the end of something.
I took it without thinking.
By the time I looked up again, he was already walking away.
Something shifted then. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just enough to tilt the world by a fraction.
He looked… golden.
Not beautiful. Not radiant in any obvious way. Just unmistakably present. As if light had chosen him without explanation. He was the first person who had seen me...not the genius, not the anomaly, not the burden...but me.
For the first time in my life, someone had spoken to me without wanting anything.
I waited for him.
I went back to that place. Again and again. I scanned faces. Measured footsteps. Watched crowds thin and thicken.
Nothing.
So I searched.
Days later, I found him behind XY University, crouched near a wall, feeding stray cats with the careful patience of someone who didn't expect gratitude. So...a student haa... That explained the backpack. The quiet hours.
I wanted him to see me again. But it was always me watching him.
Why didn't he look at me the way everyone else did?
I learned things. Small things. He had no friends that lingered. No family that visited. No lover waiting at the end of his days. He moved through the world lightly, as if trying not to leave dents.
Maybe he was lonelier than I was. Then why were you smiling? Why were you shining?
Curiosity crept in. Slow. Delicious. This...this...this was new. This was fun.
I wanted him.
I wanted him to talk to me. To look at me. To...to recognize me the way I had recognized him.
So I approached him.
Up close, the details sharpened, the way his lashes cast shadows on his cheeks, the faint hitch he had in his breath when he noticed someone standing too near. I opened my mouth to speak. And then...
Nothing.
No flicker of recognition, No spark, Just polite confusion.
He did not remember me.
The world tilted again, violently this time. Blood rushed throughout me. My hands...trembled. My thoughts... scattered like startled birds.
Just what was this feeling?
I forced a smile and asked for directions. Something mundane and safe.
"My gaze clung to him alone, as unwavering as Arjuna's on the fish's eye , blind to the world beyond that single point."
And before I knew it, my hand darted to his neck...two fingers, precise, practiced...sharp pressure applied, and his knees buckled as darkness swallowed him.