The village was quiet that evening, the sun dipping low behind jagged mountains, painting the sky in muted reds and golds. Goro sat alone atop the roof of a crumbling house, the wind tugging at his hair, carrying with it faint echoes of laughter he had never been part of. From below, children played in the streets, shouting and chasing one another, while the smell of dinner drifted from the few homes still standing. He watched them, silent, unmoving, as though he himself had become part of the shadows.
From the beginning, the world had ignored him. His parents, lost in their own struggles, barely noticed when he fell or scraped his knees. Neighbors whispered when he walked past, eyes sharp with judgment or disdain. Relatives, the ones who were supposed to guide him, treated him as invisible, a child whose presence was more of a burden than a blessing. Goro had learned early to be quiet, to clean without thanks, to eat alone, to sleep in rooms empty of warmth. He learned survival, not companionship, and yet somewhere deep inside a tiny spark of hope refused to die. The hope that maybe one day, someone would see him.
Years passed, and that spark became a whisper of longing. Every act of kindness he attempted was met with indifference. Every smile he offered bounced off the walls of apathy, returning to him hollow and cold. He watched friends form bonds he could never touch. He tried to reach, to join, to matter and always, always, he was left behind. The pain of being forgotten became a rhythm in his chest, a pulse he could never silence. It was neither anger nor sorrow it was a strange, enduring emptiness.
Goro rose from the roof, footsteps careful, echoing softly on the tiles. In his hands, energy flickered like fragile fireflies, shapes copied from the world he had observed but never been allowed to join. He had mastered the arts of imitation, of reflection but mastery brought no solace. Powers could make him feared, respected even but no force could grant him the warmth of a glance, the simple acknowledgment that he existed. Not really. He had become a mirror of others' strengths, a vessel of everyone else's life, and yet, he remained hollow.
He reached the edge of the village, the last rays of sunlight illuminating his face. The wind tugged at his sleeves, whispering questions he had long stopped asking aloud. *What happens when no one ever chooses you?* He spoke it softly, letting the words drift into the emptiness around him. He clenched his fists, feeling the pulse of his own energy thrumming in response to his despair.
"What if your absence doesn't leave a hole," he murmured, voice almost swallowed by the wind, "because no one ever cared enough to notice it?"
He knelt, tracing circles in the dust with the tips of his fingers, leaving patterns that the world would never see.
"It's a strange kind of pain," he said, looking up at the fading sun, "when the world forgets you exist."
The spark in his eyes was not hope. It was a quiet, relentless ache, a patience forged in years of solitude. He reached upward, his hand trembling slightly as if trying to grasp the very light that had never cared for him.
"You keep holding on to hope," he said, voice tighter now, "but maybe hope was never holding you back."
He paused. His gaze hardened, and a bitter laugh escaped his lips, dry as the dust beneath him. "If you turn a blind eye to the world now, history will turn a blind eye to you later," he whispered. "Ignoring an issue makes you a tacit supporter of it."
Goro brought both hands to his face, pointing two fingers at his eyes as if signaling the world to see what it had ignored for decades. The energy around him swirled, violent and raw, a storm born of abandonment and bitter precision. And then without sound he collapsed forward, laying flat on the hard earth. Blood stained his clothes, running into the cracks of the ground, marking his existence in a way no one had ever bothered to.
The village continued in quiet indifference, shadows lengthening, as if the world itself refused to notice. And for Goro, that silence painful, lonely, unyielding was the only truth he had ever known.