"I have no name, nor do I have an age. I didn't know where I was born, I just... existed. Like I had a purpose no one told me about. Probably one would just come to me and say, "Son, your future will be very bright." But to me, I think to myself, "What kind of alien bullshit is he talking about?" My future? I don't even have a past to begin with. People ask me and I shrug like any regular human. And the painful part? No one seems to care. Sure, they're all smiles and hugs, but they feel forced. I see it in their eyes. Cold, hollow, empty shells of their former selves. I see it all. And I can't do anything about it. My parents? Hell if I knew. No one told me about my parents, it's either that they died giving birth to me, or they gave birth and took me away. Either way, I've never seen them, even at this age. It's like... they... we're erased. Never existed."
A therapist was seated across the room. Before her was the boy with no name, lying on the sofa, looking at the ceiling with cold, emotionless eyes, but his brows furrowed as the therapist's words offended him a little.
"Probably they're still alive, looking for you, aren't they?" she asked soothingly, feeling sympathetic for the boy, who still looked up, but heard everything she said.
"I doubt it. I checked everything. No records, no backstory, no relations I've ever known of. It's like-POOF!-gone. Erased from existence," he replied, making a gesture with his hands that looked like a cloud of smoke. "Why be so desperate searching for them when their stories are already over?"
The therapist flinched, the boy's words hitting close to home. She'd thought the boy was in a sort of delusion, childish and unsure of what he was saying, but one thing baffled her.
He was saying it as if he meant it.
"So...," she continued, "Let me get this straight. No parents, no idea of where you were born or raised, how you got yourself here-you don't know. Is that true?"
"That's true, but I know something else, very vivid, very true. And it still haunts me till today," the boy replied.
"And what is that?", she asked. The boy then slowly looked at her, eyes hollow but glistening with unshed tears.
"Can you hold me close? I shake when I tell the story," the boy demanded softly.
The therapist's heart lurched at the boy's demand. But she immediately grabbed his hand and pulled him to her, crushing him in a tight embrace. The boy buried his head in her chest as she carried him and lay down on the sofa.
"Is this better?", she asked him.
The boy nodded. "Yes," he replied. "This is better."
The therapist, Ms Williams, knew the boy through a wealthy man who found him tattered, bruised and traumatised, and he couldn't help but find sympathy for him. Due to his not being able to find out what was in his head, he brought him to her. She first saw the emotionless eyes of his, no spark of fire left, and she insisted on trying to see what was going on with him.
A month had passed, and they grew so close that he always stayed at the front door early in the morning, curled up on the ground, asleep. Ms Williams would see him, and carry him inside. They'd spend the whole day in there, just talking their hearts out.
"You wanna start it from the top—your sudden existence in this world—or, you wanna start from the vivid memories you had? And the monastery you went to afterwards?"
The boy was surprised. "How did you know?"
She chuckled. "You tend to mutter, "monastery", from time to time."
"That much?"
"All the time."
The boy said nothing—rather he pressed on her tight, hands crossing behind her back, making her know he was slightly embarrassed.
"Remind me not to do that again."
"Noted, although I find it cute," she said.
Silence.
The boy then sighed. "Okay... here goes nothing."