Author's Note
From this point forward, the story unfolds through Ajin's diary.
What comes next is not rumor, not assumption, not the polished version the world sees when he smiles. It is his voice, unfiltered. His introduction. His memories. The fragments of his past that shaped him into what he is now.
Every thought written in those pages belongs to him.
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The first thing my mind ever kept.
My earliest memory is laughing while punching another kid in the nose. I hit him hard enough to make it bleed. He cried. I laughed. That was the first time I ever laughed.
My mother was too happy seeing me laugh the first time. She did not see anything wrong with my laugh.
She said it is normal for Kids to fight and Boys to get rough. Childhood nonsense.
My father did not agree. To him, that laugh meant something else. He said it meant there was something wrong with me. Something broken. Something monstrous.
My next memory gave him proof.
That was the day I learned what death was, and how much I liked watching it.
A stray cat wandered into our house. I followed it quietly, curious. It noticed a rat hiding in the corner and gave chase. I chased them too. I was five, and it felt like a game.
The cat caught the rat and bit into it.
The blood coming out of the rat fascinated me. I ran toward them, and the cat dropped it and fled. The rat was still alive. Bleeding. Its legs kicked uselessly, its tail twitching as it tried to crawl toward the fridge.
I stepped in front of it and grabbed its tail.
I did not know what to do next, so I copied the cat. I bit into the rat.
It struggled harder. Blood filled my mouth. I swallowed without thinking.
I did not like the taste.
I spat the rat out. It hit the floor, still alive.
The cat came back. It picked the rat up again and started chewing, right in front of me. Maybe it thought I was done with the rat. Maybe it thought I would not hurt it.
Watching the rat struggle made me happy. I wanted to do it again. I reached for it, but the cat hissed. I hissed back. It ran away with the rat. I chased it, but my legs were too short. I lost them.
I went back to where it had all started.
That is when I heard the squeaking.
Under the fridge were baby rats. Eight of them. Small. Warm. Alive.
I pulled one out by its tail. It cried immediately. That sound hooked into me. The pain in it, the helplessness, the way it begged without words. I squeezed harder. It cried louder.
I felt powerful.
Holding a life in your fingers, even one you think is worthless, you realize something. That life is still fighting every day to survive the next moment. Controlling that struggle felt intoxicating.
I did not notice when the tail tore off. The rat fell and stopped moving.
I was disappointed that it ended so fast.
So I took the next one.
Then another.
With the third, I tried something different. I swung it by the tail. When it did not die, I slammed it against the wall. It died instantly. That annoyed me.
The next two died from punches and squeezing.
Two more died under the weight of a heavy box I placed on their lower bodies, watching as they struggled and failed.
For the last one, I stacked the seven dead bodies on its back and waited.
I made sure none of them bled much. I hated the taste of blood. I also made sure none of them died quickly. That would have ruined it.
Every one of them died while struggling. While crying.
That was the second time I noticed myself laughing.
This time, I was not alone.
My father was standing there.
He saw a five year old boy with dried blood on his face, dead rats all around him, tails tangled in his clothes, hands slick with their insides.
Laughing.
After that day, my father never looked at me the same way.
He avoided me, like I carried a sickness that might spread if he stayed too close. For the next few days, I was dragged through hospitals and clinics, passed from one psychiatrist to another like an object that needed fixing.
The diagnosis was simple, according to them. I was emotionally numb. I did not react like other children. I did not smile or cry the way I was supposed to.
My mother said it was nonsense. Doctors talking in circles to justify their fees.
My father said it was proof.
He did not stop. Even when my mother argued, even when she begged, he kept taking me from hospital to hospital.
Until one day, I smiled without blood, pain, or screaming nearby.
That smile made my mother believe she had been right all along and made my father furious.
On the last day at the third hospital, I woke up, and my Maa was not there. She had stayed with me every night before that, sleeping on a chair, never leaving my side.
I sat up and stared at the door.
Every time a woman walked past, I hoped it was her. Every time, it was not her.
Then a little girl walked in.
She was about my age. I noticed her immediately. She looked around the room, curious, then our eyes met. She froze for a moment, then ran toward me with the biggest smile I had ever seen.
Before I could even understand what I was happening, she was beside my bed. And that was the first time I smiled without death or pain anywhere near me.
Then she ran past me and hugged her grandfather, the old man in the bed next to mine. Seeing me smile at her, he insisted she play with me.
She did not know who I was. But because he kept insisting, she stayed.
We spent the whole morning together. Running through the hospital halls. Playing catch. Hide and seek. Laughing.
Even the nurses laughed with us.
That moment sealed something for my mother. It made her believe in herself completely. The doctors stopped mattering. My father stopped taking me to hospitals after that.
But his relief did not last.
Once I was home, I never laughed again. And every time I did laugh after that, there was always blood, pain, or screaming nearby.
When I turned five, my father took me fishing in his village.
It was supposed to be a normal day.
Until he pushed me into the river.
Later, he told my mother he was teaching me to swim. I could have believed that lie, if he had not held me down. If he had not stamped on me, forcing my head under the water every time I tried to breathe.
But that is not the important part.
The important part is what I felt while drowning.
As the water filled my lungs and my body started to shut down, the last thing I remember doing was smiling.
I woke up the next day in a hospital.
A villager had seen my body floating near the riverbank and pulled me out. If he had arrived a few minutes later, I would not be alive.
My father lied again.
He told my mother I had fallen from the boat. That the current was too strong. That he searched for me all day, screaming my name, running along the riverbank, until he finally saw a villager pulling a child from the water and rushed toward them.
My mother believed him.
She believed him the same way she believed I was normal.
When I woke up, the first thing I felt was warmth. Arms wrapped tightly around me. A face pressed against my chest. Hot tears are soaking through my hospital gown.
Maa was crying.
Seeing the one person who trusted me without hesitation, who loved me without conditions, break like that hurt in a way I did not understand at first. It was not physical pain. It was heavier. Deeper.
For the first time in my life, I cried.
I cried with her, holding on as tightly as I could, until exhaustion dragged me back into sleep, my head resting in her trembling hands.