Prologue

"I was born, I suppose, with too much clarity."

It sounds absurd, doesn't it? Clarity, they say, is a gift, or… a blessing. But the truth is, when you see everything clearly, the world loses its magic.

Life becomes little more than a dull collection of predictable patterns and a series of inevitable outcomes.

That was my curse.

I saw the world for what it was. In doing so, I found nothing to hold on to.

My name is Cyan, and I… I have always known too much.

From a young age, I outgrew everything around me. My toys. My lessons. My ambitions.

Everything.

They seemed to unravel themselves before me as though the world were a children's game that only I had already solved.

The other kids marveled at things like puzzle boxes and riddles, while I was left standing on the outside, looking in, wondering how they could find pleasure in something so trivial.

I would watch them, wide-eyed and innocent, grasping at things that seemed to elude them. I mean, those things came to me without any effort.

"…What do they see that I could not?"

School, as you might imagine, was a wasteland. The teachers' voices repeating the same lifeless facts, stating the rules over and over that bent themselves around my understanding.

"What's so mysterious about mathematics?"

Every answer was already clear even before the question landed. And yet, despite this, people kept going. They kept pushing forward, as if there was something to be discovered. As if… something was worth chasing.

"What's so captivating about history?"

I envied them in a way how they could be satisfied with so little, and how their faces lit up with joy over every small achievement.

I wanted to feel it too! To share in their excitement. But nothing ever touched me.

Except my friends. They're different.

Jake, Lia, and Haru—they're the only things in my life that felt real.

Not because they understood me, but because they didn't try to. They let me exist as I was without the constant pressure to explain myself.

They lived in a world I could never enter. A world filled with dreams, laughter, and heartbreak. But they always left the door open for me even though I never crossed the threshold.

I liked walking with them after school. I liked listening to their conversations, though their words often drift past me like the wind.

They didn't need me to understand. It was enough that I was there.

…And for that, I was grateful.

Ah! That day, too, was ordinary! So ordinary it makes my stomach turn now to think of it.

The air was crisp with autumn's bite, and the setting sun cast long shadows across the pavement as we walked home.

Jake, as always, was running ahead with his feet leaping over cracks in the sidewalk, as if the wrong step might send him plunging into some abyss only he could see.

Lia was a few paces behind. She always had that soft voice that was always telling us about some new art project she wanted to start.

Haru, as silent as usual, walked beside her. Occasionally, he offers his usual quiet nods and half-smiles.

They seemed so alive.

It felt like they were full of something I could never grasp. Like some invisible thread binds them to the world in a way I never was.

I was there, too, trailing behind. But as usual, my thoughts drifted elsewhere.

I've always lived more in my own mind than in the real world. I couldn't help it. The outside world seemed so boring.

There was nothing to engage with.

There was nothing to make me feel truly alive.

I was always trying to understand how people could be satisfied with so little—these small routines and these meaningless games.

I tried to join in. Really, I did.

But it was like standing at the edge of an ocean I could never swim in.

It's strange, isn't it?

How you can walk through life feeling like a ghost, while watching others live while you're stuck on the outside?

I often wondered if that's what it meant to be alive: to be constantly chasing after something you'll never catch. But for me, there was nothing to chase. I already knew where it would all lead.

"...So, what's the point of running?"

And then, in an instant, it happened.

I heard the tires screech before I saw the truck. The sound was so sharp that it seemed to rip through the quiet world we'd been walking through.

Time slowed, or maybe it stopped altogether.

I don't know.

I just remember the way everything changed in a heartbeat. The way the sunlight seemed to dim as if the world itself had recoiled.

I turned my head, and for a second, I saw Jake's face. The grin was gone, replaced by something I had never seen on him before.

Fear.

His eyes were wide and his body was caught between motion and stillness. He didn't even scream. He just stood there, staring at the oncoming truck, trying to comprehend the thing that was about to take him away.

Thud!

The truck hit him first.

The sound it made was sickening.

It was a dull, wet thud that seemed to echo in my skull as his body folded, crumpled like paper.

For a moment, I thought that maybe he was just playing, that any second now he'd pop back up, laughing, telling us it was just a joke.

But he didn't.

He didn't move at all.

Lia screamed. I think she was the only one who managed to react.

Me?

I didn't scream.

I didn't move.

I just stood there and watched the scene unfold as though it were happening on the other side of a glass wall.

The truck didn't stop.

It kept coming, barreling forward, as if it, too, were trapped in some terrible dream where everything followed its path, no matter what.

Thud!

It hit Lia next.

She didn't crumple like Jake. She flew. Her body was light, too light, like a leaf caught in the wind. I remember how her arms flailed for just a second, reaching out for something, for someone, as if she could still stop it.

Her scream was cut off the moment her body hit the ground.

She didn't make another sound.

Thud!

And then Haru.

Haru didn't scream, either. He didn't move to dodge or try to run. He just looked at me, as if in that last second, he was trying to understand. Trying to ask me a question without words.

And I couldn't answer.

The truck took him, too.

His body collapsed beneath the wheels, and then there was nothing.

Just the silence again.

Thud!

I was the last.

The truck was still moving toward me.

Unstoppable.

Inevitable.

I stood there, waiting. I could have run. I could have moved. But I didn't. I just watched it come. In that moment, I understood. I understood something I had never been able to grasp before.

This was the one thing I could not predict.

The one thing I could not solve.

The world had always felt so boring. And yet, in the end, it found a way to surprise me. As for the first time in my life, I didn't know what to do.

It found a way to remind me that there were still things beyond my control, and there were still forces I could never truly understand.

"What is genius in the face of this?"

I closed my eyes. Then, there was nothing.

Nothing at all.