Why does life feel so hollow?
Maybe I'm too tired to answer my own question. Or maybe — and this is the part that stings — I already know the answer, but I'd rather keep asking just so I have something to think about.
Day after day, working without a soul. No work means no money. No money means living on the streets. So I show up. I clock in. Complaining doesn't pay the bills. Shift's over, and like always, these legs carry me back to the small apartment I've somehow convinced myself to call "home" — the one place in the world that asks absolutely nothing from me.
My name is Six. Male, black hair, the kind of face nobody bothers to look at twice. Why "Six"? I genuinely have no answer — and oddly enough, that question has never really bothered me.
Actually, hold on. Who am I even talking to right now? Have I finally lost it — narrating my own life like there's an audience somewhere?
...Ah, forget it. Maybe that's just a sign I need to sleep earlier.
I reached for my phone on the bed, its bright screen becoming the only light source in my half-dark room. Comics, novels, webtoons — all of it looked more alive than the reality I was sitting in. The characters in those stories had purpose. They had enemies to defeat, worlds full of colour, reasons to keep going.
Sometimes I wonder — if I could step into a world like that, would this hollow feeling disappear too?
But that's just the daydreaming of someone who reads too much. I set my phone on the charger, pulled the thin blanket up, and let my eyelids fall shut slowly. Tomorrow would come anyway. Same routine. Same faces. Same emptiness that never quite goes away.
Might as well sleep.
[#***##**#*]
A sound rang through my head — sharp and foreign, like a radio tuned to the wrong frequency.
Was I dreaming? Or was it just traffic noise bleeding through the walls? I let it go. Too lazy to open my eyes. I just wanted tomorrow to hurry up so I could get through it and end up back here, in this thin-mattressed bed, in this quiet that was starting to feel less like peace and more like company.
[ DETECTED: HOLLOW EMOTIONAL SIGNATURE ]
[ SUITABLE HOST LOCATED — BINDING INITIATED ]
[ . . . ]
[ . . . . . ]
[ SYSTEM BINDING COMPLETE ]
[ INITIATING TRANSMIGRATION TO ANOTHER WORLD ]
Zaaasshh—
A violent gust of wind exploded from nowhere, slamming into every corner of the room. The air itself seemed to crack — actually crack — like old glass finally giving way under too much pressure, fragments of reality crumbling apart in eerie silence. Through those fractures, white light poured in, blinding and searing, swallowing everything whole.
I felt my body lift.
And that hollow world of mine…
…finally disappeared.
Whooosssh—