He learned early that love was something other people received.
Not because anyone sat him down and told him so, but because life had a way of repeating the same lesson until it settled deep into his bones.
Love was in the way teachers smiled longer at other students.
Love was in the way parents waited at school gates for children who weren't him.
Love was in the warmth of laughter he overheard but was never invited into.
By the time he was sixteen, he had already mastered the art of invisibility.
His name was Elior Hale, but very few people ever said it like it mattered. Most spoke it casually, carelessly, as though it were just another sound passing through the air. Elior didn't mind. Being unnoticed hurt less than being seen and then rejected.
That morning, the alarm on his cracked phone buzzed at 5:30 a.m.
He turned it off immediately.
There was no reason to let it ring. No one else depended on him. No one would ask why he was late. No one would notice if he didn't show up at all.
Still, he sat up.
The small room smelled faintly of damp walls and old books. Sunlight slipped in through a narrow window, touching the edge of his bed but never quite reaching him. Elior watched the dust dance in the air and wondered, not for the first time, how something so small could float so freely.
He swung his legs down and reached for his shoes—worn, faded, and held together by habit more than strength. As he tied the laces, his reflection stared back at him from the mirror across the room.
Messy dark hair. Tired eyes. A face that never seemed to belong anywhere.
He looked… ordinary. And yet, somehow, still wrong.
"You're not broken," he whispered to his reflection, repeating a lie he had practiced for years.
But the mirror never believed him.
---
School was loud.
It always was.
The halls buzzed with conversations, laughter, footsteps, and the easy confidence of people who belonged. Elior moved through it all like a ghost, slipping past clusters of friends and couples holding hands, careful not to brush against anyone.
Attention was dangerous.
Attention invited questions.
Questions led to expectations.
And expectations always ended in disappointment.
He took his usual seat at the back of the classroom, pulling his hood slightly forward. From there, he could observe without participating. He watched people fall in love without realizing it—shared smiles, secret notes, stolen glances.
Love looked effortless on everyone else.
For Elior, it felt fictional.
During lunch, he sat alone beneath the old oak tree behind the school. It was his place—quiet, shaded, forgotten. He ate slowly, not because he enjoyed the food, but because finishing too quickly meant sitting with nothing but his thoughts.
That was when the thoughts always came.
You're not interesting enough.
You don't deserve someone choosing you.
If they really knew you, they'd leave.
He swallowed hard and stared at the ground.
It wasn't that he hated himself.
He just didn't believe anyone else could love him.
---
He first noticed her that afternoon.
She was new.
Elior wouldn't have noticed most people, but something about her presence disrupted the careful order of his world. She walked into the classroom with quiet confidence—not loud, not attention-seeking, just… real.
Her name, he later learned, was Mira Vale.
She took the empty seat two rows ahead of him.
Elior told himself not to look.
So naturally, he did.
She wasn't impossibly beautiful in the way movies described. There was no dramatic perfection, no flawless symmetry. What she had was warmth. The kind that made you feel like you were standing near sunlight.
She smiled at the teacher. Listened intently. Laughed softly at a joke no one else seemed to notice.
And then—without warning—she turned around.
Her eyes met Elior's.
His breath caught.
For a brief moment, the noise of the classroom faded. She didn't look away immediately. She didn't frown or judge or pretend not to see him.
She smiled.
It was small. Gentle. Unassuming.
But it hit Elior harder than anything ever had.
He looked down instantly, heart racing.
Don't misunderstand, he warned himself. People smile all the time. It doesn't mean anything.
Still, his chest felt tight for the rest of the day.
---
That night, he lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling.
He told himself she would forget him by morning.
People always did.
And yet, for reasons he couldn't explain, a quiet fear settled in his chest—not of rejection, but of hope.
Hope was dangerous.
Hope made you imagine a life you were never meant to have.
As sleep finally claimed him, one thought echoed louder than the rest:
If someone like her ever loved someone like me… it would only be because she didn't know better.
And Elior fell asleep believing, with absolute certainty, that love was something he would only ever watch from afar.
---