Bus was barely a meter away.
His thoughts convulsed too fast to translate into language, collapsing into pure static. Instinct took over. He dragged every drop of adrenaline from his veins and lurched farther past the road's centerline.
The bus jerked his shoulder anyway—just enough to spin his body like a broken compass. Before balance could return, he slammed into a two-wheeler skirting the bus's flank and was thrown across the asphalt, skidding to a stop near the opposite footpath, dragging the rider along.
He barely managed to collapse onto his hands and knees. His legs gave up the strength while his head spun wildly—like the world itself had been flicked and set loose.
For a brief second, the street froze.
Then the rider surged to his feet, fury written all over his face despite wearing a helmet, ready to unload every curse he owned. Yet hesitation crept in. He seemed pressed for time, and more importantly, Yohan was on foot. In accidents like these, blame had a habit of clinging to the rider.
A few bystanders stepped in, urging him to let it go. Reluctantly, the biker scoffed and backed off.
Yohan remained where he was, gasping. His body refused every command to move.
As his vision slowly stitched itself back together, a short, slim, middle-aged man crouched beside him, peering down with a mixture of concern and detached judgment. Yohan's legs trembled uncontrollably. His knees had taken the full brunt of the impact—pain waiting its turn behind the wall of adrenaline.
Two, maybe three minutes passed before he forced himself upright, wobbling like a structure rebuilt too quickly.
"Be careful on the roads," the man said. The words carried the shape of concern, but the tone cut closer to mockery.
"You're quite careless for your age, young man. Can you walk?"
"Ah… yeah. Thanks for helping," Yohan replied, forcing his feet to steady beneath him. "I wasn't careless. Some dogs suddenly—"
The man laughed, waving it off. "Dogs? You shouldn't run when you see them. Of course they'll chase you. That's common sense...blah blah—" He kept talking, piling words onto words.
Yohan stared at him with half-lidded eyes, a faint, exhausted smile tugging at his mouth—the kind worn by someone trapped in a lecture while their body is still catching up with survival.
'Alright. I get it. Please stop. I might actually collapse.'
***
He limped his way back home. By then, the pain had fully claimed his knee—though the trembling had finally receded. Thanking and cursing his luck in the same breathe: grateful that it had spared him anything severe, yet resentful that it never failed to interfere, to object, to leave its mark on every decision he dared to act upon. As if fate never stopped him outright—only made sure he remembered who was really in control.
'Do I carry a devil's luck? Like...the hell, when I wanted to disappear, death ghosted me. And the moment I chose to live—to move forward—it greeted me head-on, wearing the shape of a speeding bus. Damn...'
He tried to act normal as if nothing happened, washed up, changed clothes, smoothed the chaos off his skin for school.
"Whatever," he muttered, breathing out as he buttoned his shirt before the mirror.
"I'm happy. I'm happy. I'm happy..." He shaped a smile with his hands then stopped—repulsed by how ugly and awful it looked.
"Training starts today. No more drowning in useless thoughts and other stuff—except food of course. Food is sacred. Eating is basically training. Hell yeah."
"Hell nah..." The voice of The Lost Origin in his head—the one he called X—cut through his fragile hype.
"What?" He twitched his brow.
"Yohan! Aren't you getting late?" his mother called from downstairs.
The words jolted him back into motion. He slipped down the stairs and reached the kitchen just as she was setting breakfast on the table. "I made omelette and bread," she said warmly. "You'll like it."
Yohan sat without a word and stretched his arm toward the plate. The nausea from the morning's incident still clung to his throat. He had never been good at eating before school, and today his body resisted even more—but he forced himself anyway, took a bite, chewed, swallowed. Discipline, he told himself. Just eat.
"Did something happen?" his mother asked casually.
"Cough—cough!" He choked, nearly spit everything out, then managed to gulp it back down, eyes watering.
"N—nothing," he said quickly. "Why would you think that?"
She watched him for a second. "You didn't refuse breakfast today. That's why I asked."
"Nah, don't worry." He kept chewing, pretending calm while his heart thudded.
'Damn, I thought I was done for sure.'
"Happy birthday."
The voice came from his side. Yohan looked up to see his sister standing there, arm extended for a handshake. Her expression was cool, unreadable, her tone flat.
He blinked once. Twice. Then realization dawned.
"Uh… thank you." And handshaked.
'That was… oddly formal.'
Smack!
"Ouch!"
He winced as she gave a quick smack to his head.
"Focus on your studies, monkey!"
"Oh—right. It's your birthday," his mother added, an awkward smile tugging at her lips. "I almost forgot."
"It's fine," Yohan said, already standing. "I'm heading out."
He stepped out first, and his sister followed close behind.
"Did something happen between you two?" she asked, flicking a brief glance back toward their mother before slipping on her shoes.
"No, Why?"
"Nothing." Her gaze lingered for a second. "His eyes were different today."
She turned away, already moving out the door.
"Bye. Take care, Mama."
"Watch over my children, O Lord Of Creation." Mother prayed inwardly with both concern and relief.
***
'Birthday, huh? I don't celebrate it—I despise this day—yet I still wait for it every year. Forgetting my own birthday felt like how nihilistic I've become.'
As he walked, his gaze lingered on the sky, its grey shades slowly bruising into darker tones.
'Seems like it'll rain today.'
***
As expected, it started raining by recess. Yohan lingered at the corridor railing, staring blankly at the falling drops.
'I'm such a hypocrite.'
The rain had slicked the corridor floors.Yohan walked carefully, not wanting to fall and stain his clothes. That would mean his mother washing them again, that he didn't like as she never seemed to notice how tired she was.
A group of boys from his class wandered through the corridor, laughing, shoving each other into the puddles pooled along the floor. Then one of them noticed Yohan standing alone by the railing.
Yohan gave a brief side glance—nothing more than situational awareness. In unison, that guy with glasses said something quietly to the others, and they walked over to Yohan.
"Yo," the guy said, slinging an arm over Yohan's shoulder. "What're you doing all alone? Let's do something fun." His hand slid lower to Yohan's thigh.
Yohan shrugged the hand off and stepped back.
"Sorry, I don't want to have fun."
'Wait! I should've said I'm not interested or something. That sounded so weird.'
Keeping his expression straight he facepalmed mentally.
"C'mon, you're our friend," the boy said, a crooked smile half-hidden. "You're always so gloomy. This'll cheer you up."
Before Yohan could react, hands grabbed at him—eight, maybe nine of them, not aggressive, not gentle either. Playful, they'd call it.
He reached for the railing out of instinct, fingers tightening around cold metal. His mind ran faster than his body:
Don't make this a scene. Don't react too much. Don't give them anything.
It lasted seconds. Then his foot slipped.
Thud!
He hit the ground, the wet floor pressing against his back, damp seeping through his clothes. Laughter followed—not loud, not cruel, just careless.
The instant he fell, his mind wiped itself clean.
Thoughts smeared into static. A quick, strange grin flickered across his face and vanished just as fast.
Nothing registered. No images. No sound. No sensation.
His face blurred into darkness, eyes wide and hollow—open, yet not seeing. He stood upright, unnaturally rigid, almost wrong, like it had forgotten the script.
Inside, thoughts crashed into each other at violent speed, folding and refolding until even his sense of self thinned out. Who he was, what he was doing, what came next—everything slipped its grip.
Amid the mental turbulence, a single contradiction looped endlessly, flickering and colliding over and over.
Kill. No. Kill. No. Kill. No.
Kill. No. Kill. No. Kill. No.
Kill. No. Kill. No. Kill. No.
Kill. No. Kill. No. Kill. No.
Kill. No. Kill. No. Kill. No.
Kill. No. Kill. No. Kill. No...
It wasn't rage that surged through him. It was something long suppressed, something he had never allowed himself to acknowledge.
Before his thoughts could catch up, his body reacted. His fist swung toward the person in front of him, driven by a reflex that felt foreign and uninvited. Midway through the motion, something fractured inside him—awareness snapping back just enough to slow the strike.
The punch didn't land cleanly. It skimmed the side of the boy's abdomen, still hard enough to make him stumble back, air leaving his lungs in a sharp gasp.
Silence followed. The laughter evaporated. Faces that moments ago were amused now stiffened, eyes narrowing as confusion curdled into unease.
"This bastard!!"
The guy with glasses retorted and before anyone could react, Yohan gave them a wide blank stare—unsettling enough to silence the room for a moment.
"Come at me y'all."
Some snickered while the glasses-wearer's voice dripped with irritation and spite. "Why'd you hit him? We were just joking, a**hole. Gotta fix that smug look of yours."
Yohan stood unmoving, rooted to the ground like a monolith. His arms hung at his sides, hands open and rigid, fingers curled like the claws of a predator poised to strike.
'What— did I?' Awareness rushed back in. 'Crap! I messed up. Whatever, I won't back now. '
He signaled his friends to ensnare Yohan.Then the guy who'd taken the punch, stopped glasses guy to do anything — wrapping his arm around where he got hit. "Not now," he said. "We'll deal with him after school."
Instead of resorting to any brawl, they mocked him in derision. Seeing this Yohan realised, there was nothing he could do. He was terrible at arguing—and somehow, taking on a mindless crowd felt easier than trying to reason with them.
'These retards gonna reprieve me? How stick touching.'
Yohan just turned back to classroom, he was in no mood to engage in any sort of altercation. Not now at least.
'Am I afraid?'
"Look at this kid can't take a joke, queer bastard!"
They kept mocking and laughing at him as he turned but Yohan remained indifferent.
'Can't take a joke, huh!? Hmm...'
He glanced down at his left open hand.
'I'll take on all the jokes soon.'
And turned his gaze back at them, masking the unintentional grin with his palm.
Yohan grabbed his bag from the classroom and strode straight toward the staff room, insinuating to those guys that he's going to report them.
The glasses guy waved, a silent threat: You're done if you do.
Yohan shot back a defiant gesture. "I DON'T GIVE A DAMN."
From the corridor above, they watched him go, unease and apprehension written on their faces, as he disappeared into the staff room on the ground floor.
Rain had also stopped.
After some minutes, he came out and gave them a scornful smile. The guys above stared at him with tensed sullen faces, restless to know what he'd ployed against them. However, Yohan simply walked to the main gate and left. In reality, he'd only been in the staff room for a gate pass.
"Eh...?" They saw him baffled and tried to process what just happened with agape mouth and blinking eyes. "Th—that brat... was trolling us?" The guy wearer's jaw tightened. "I'll show him his place."
***
"Phew... Damn hell." Yohan sighed and scurried home.
'I'm pretty sure if fate has some physical form then it must be munching popcorns while playing with me. Just this morning, the discipline teacher had asked if anyone was bothering me and of course I said 'no', because until then no one had.'
Yet less than an hour later, I was dragged into a fight. Mom must have spoken to the teacher behind my back; otherwise, they would never have cared enough to ask. I can understand, she must be worried about the reason I dislike going school. Oh, Mom... stop caring about your stupid son.'
'Oi, fate,' He frowned inwardly with a slight smirk.
'You got some beef with me or what? Or are you stress-testing my patience today? Tsk, i ain't breaking this easily. Wait... You tryna challenge me right? Haha, I am not scared of you b**ch, come with everything you've got, I DON'T CARE. I'll beat you... I'll become your rival. Let's see who'll win. I am...'
He paused.
"Hmm... Rival? Nah...uhh...hubby? Buddy?...Butcher of fate?...okay, from now on I hereby declare myself... Nemesis Of Fate."
A conceited commander's gesture rose in his mind—his lips curving into a victorious smile.
Plop!
The same moment, a bird's droppings splattered across his shirt.
"...Yeah. Never mind," He sighed awkwardly. "It sounds so cringe anyway."