A sharp sound cracked through the hallway.
Everything stopped.
A girl suddenly crashed on the floor, knees scraped, face flushed with shock. Her hand flew to her cheek, trembling, eyes wide and filling with tears.
The hallway fell into a suffocating silence — the kind that feels like the air itself is holding its breath.
David stood beside her.
Eyes red. Breathing hard. His arm still half‑raised, fingers curled as if they hadn't yet realized what they'd done.
Only when she began to cry did the hallway come back to life.
Her friends rushed to her first, kneeling beside her, whispering frantically. Others hovered nearby, unsure whether to help or to back away. A few students ran off to find a teacher, their footsteps echoing down the corridor.
Murmurs spread like ripples in water — confused, frightened, disbelieving.
"What happened?" "Did she faint?" "Did someone push her?" "Who was here?"
Someone finally whispered, voice trembling:
"Was it… you know… the ghost?"
A few students stiffened.
"Wait, seriously?" "I thought he was supposed to be a mischievous spirit or something…" "Why would he do that?"
The whispers grew louder, overlapping, feeding into each other — fear, superstition, confusion.
"He's never hurt anyone before." "Maybe he's angry?" "Maybe someone provoked him." "Maybe it's not him at all…"
David didn't hear them. He was staring at his hands, trembling, shocked and terrified by what he had just done. Did she provoke him? Not really. She just happened to be the one standing there when everything inside him snapped.
Teachers arrived quickly, faces heavy and solemn. One woman knelt beside the girl, checking her injuries and whispering reassurances. Another teacher turned to the girl's friends, voice low and serious:
"What happened exactly?"
The girls exchanged uneasy glances, still shaken by what they had witnessed.
"We were just talking and having fun together…" one of them finally said. "It was nothing serious. We were joking about how sometimes it would be nice to… I don't know… not exist for a minute. Just to breathe. And then she just… fell. Out of nowhere."
David's breath hitched.
His head snapped toward the girl as if yanked by an invisible thread. That sentence — those exact words — hit him like a punch to the chest.
The same sensation as earlier. The same cold, twisting pressure. The same boiling surge rising from somewhere he didn't understand.
He froze, trembling, unable to tell whether he was furious, terrified, or simply unraveling.
The teachers exchanged grim looks, whispering among themselves for a moment before an older man with a stern expression stepped forward.
"Students," he said, voice carrying through the hallway, "you may leave the school. The building will be closed until further notice."
A wave of murmurs rippled through the crowd.
"These are no longer pranks," the man continued, tone heavy. "They are malicious acts. An official announcement will follow shortly."
The words hung in the air like a verdict.
David felt them land on him — each one heavier than the last. Malicious acts.Closed school.Official announcement.
He stood there, invisible in the middle of the chaos, feeling the world shift around him — and realizing, with a sickening drop in his stomach, that he had crossed a line he couldn't step back from.
He didn't know how the rest of the day unfolded.
Everything blurred.
And then—
He was standing in front of the orphanage.
He absent‑mindedly walked inside. He had come right on time — people were already dining together, the young children and caretakers. They were laughing, having fun.
Looking at them, he felt a wall. A wall so solid he knew he'd never cross it, even while standing in the same room.
He headed for the stairs, not wanting to stay longer, just wanting to be alone, away from all of it.
He was about to leave when a voice stopped him.
"Do you know what David has been doing these days?" The director — the old man — asked the table, glancing at the other caretakers.
They exchanged a few uncertain looks before one of them answered, hesitant:
"David… you mean the European kid? I haven't seen him this past week…" He paused, noticing the director's somber expression, and his voice faltered.
"But… the leftovers keep disappearing. I figured he was just coming by late to grab food and going straight back to studying…"
The director's eyes pierced through them. He might have been old, but his mind was still sharp. He knew most of these caretakers barely paid attention to David — some of them probably forgot he even lived here.
The director sighed, his voice dropping to a murmur:
"I hope he's alright… He's a good kid. A bit shy, yes, but always gentle…"
David's heart jolted.
His breath hitched, uneven. Flashes hit him — the past few days, the last girl, her smiling face, her crying one. They collided in his mind like broken images.
Tears and makeup slipped down his cheeks. He grabbed the wooden railing to steady himself, feeling his legs weaken.
He covered his face with one hand, feeling the heat of his nose, the sting in his eyes.
What have I done…
He pulled off his wig with a trembling hand and let it fall to the floor.
He didn't understand himself anymore. He didn't know when he had changed — or into what.
He looked at his hand, and a wave of nausea surged up his throat. His stomach twisted. His vision blurred.
He gagged, choking on the taste of panic, and dropped to one knee as the world tilted around him.
For a moment, he felt how fragile he really was.
He had thought he'd changed — improved, even. But underneath, he was still that kid left behind by his parents, forgotten by everyone… the one people stepped over without noticing.
The illusion he had built over the past few days cracked all at once. And as it shattered, he felt the weight of his own body again — the exhaustion he had ignored, the strain he had pushed through, the way he had numbed himself just to keep going.
His body had never recovered. Not in a week. Not while he was forcing himself forward with those stupid "pranks."
He climbed the stairs with difficulty, one trembling step after another, and made his way toward the bathroom. Reaching it, he slipped inside and shut the door behind him, almost missing the handle.
The moment he was alone, his stomach lurched.
He leaned over the sink as a violent wave of nausea tore through him. His throat tightened, his chest heaved, and he retched until his whole body shook.
Vomit, bile and even blood poured into the sink.
His eyes watered. His knees nearly buckled beneath him.
He clung to the edge of the sink, gasping, trying to steady his breath as the room swayed around him.
He rinsed his mouth, swallowing down the bitterness, and splashed water over his face. The makeup smeared under his fingers, coming off in uneven streaks, his red nose washing into the sink.
He tore at his clothes with shaking hands and stumbled into the shower. The cold water hit him like a slap.
He stood there, breathing hard, letting it run over him until the shaking slowed.
His thoughts settled — not into clarity exactly, but into something quieter. Something he could almost hold.
He didn't matter to them. He never had. And maybe that wasn't going to change.
But he was still here. Still himself. Even if "himself" meant someone easily ignored, easily forgotten, easily stepped over.
At least that was real. At least that was his.
If he kept going the way he had — the pranks, the pushing, the hitting — he'd lose even that. And then there would be nothing left worth finding.
He stepped out of the shower.
The silence in his head was different now. Quieter. Stiller. Like something had finally stopped fighting.
He glanced at the clown suit crumpled on the floor. The oversized tie. The ridiculous shoes.
He stepped over it without a second thought and walked out of the bathroom.
He paused for a moment in the hallway, staring at nothing.
Then he shook his head and kept walking.
Naked.
He stepped out into the cold air without looking back.
The temperature hit him immediately — a sharp bite against his bare skin — but he didn't turn around. He just walked. No direction, no destination. Just his feet on the pavement and the silence in his head.
He limped slightly, his leg flaring with each step — the bus door, never properly healed, making itself known again. His whole body ached with a low, persistent protest. He kept going anyway.
People passed him without seeing him. Some shivered as he brushed by, glanced around vaguely for the source of the cold, and moved on. Nobody stopped. Nobody looked.
He didn't even register it anymore.
When he recognized the park, he half-expected it — his feet had carried him back without being asked. He paused at the entrance, looking at the spot where he had screamed, where he had collapsed, where people had stumbled over him like he was part of the ground.
It didn't sting as much as he thought it would.
He crossed the grass and let himself fall onto his back, arms spread wide, eyes open to the sky.
The ground was cold. The air too.
He closed his eyes.
After that, he wandered. He went wherever his feet decided to take him, eating whatever he found when hunger nudged him — grabbing something from a shop shelf, walking out before anyone even noticed he'd been there.
He washed himself in park fountains. He climbed onto the roofs of parked cars just to see a little farther. He ran when he felt like running, stopped when he felt like stopping, drifting through the city like a kid who had slipped out of the world for a moment.
At the end of the week, while walking, he glanced at his reflection in a shop window and stopped.
There was nothing.
Not a distorted face. Not a stranger. Not even a blur.
Just the street behind him, the lights, the movement — as if the glass had decided he wasn't worth reflecting anymore.
He leaned closer, waiting for something to appear. A shadow. A shape. A hint of himself.
Nothing came.
It wasn't frightening. It wasn't shocking. It was simply… accurate.
He had slipped so far out of the world that even the world had stopped acknowledging him.
Looking down, only now did he notice he couldn't see his hands anymore.
He could feel them — the weight, the shape, the faint tremor still running through them — but his eyes slid right through the space where they should have been.
He didn't know when it had started. Maybe hours ago. Maybe days.
It barely created a ripple in his mind.
He flexed his fingers. Nothing. Just the movement of air.
He was okay with it. Or something close to okay.
Well… it wasn't like he could do anything about it.
He kept walking. Feeling himself get hungry, he headed toward a familiar shop he had eaten from. Entering inside, he saw the overly cautious cashier, eyes darting around, gripping a pan like a shield. A week of items vanishing off shelves had clearly taken its toll.
David shook his head and walked to the noodle aisle.
He reached toward the pack he wanted — spicy pork noodles — the one he always picked.
His fingers passed straight through it.
No resistance. No contact. Just air.
He froze, staring at the space where his hand should have met the plastic. A cold jolt ran through him.
He tried again — same hand, same movement, slower this time, as if precision might change something.
This time, he felt it.
The crinkle of the wrapper. The weight of the pack. The familiar texture under his fingertips.
Relief washed over him, shaky and thin. Maybe he'd imagined it. Maybe he was tired. Maybe it was nothing.
He grabbed the pack and walked out to eat it.
Meanwhile, in an agency on the fringes of Tokyo, a man with a very strange silhouette sat in front of a monitor, chin resting on his hand.
On the screen, a teenager walked naked through the streets of the city. Black hair. Black eyes. A skinny frame mapped with bruises and scratches, some old, some fresh. He moved without hurry, without direction — like someone who had forgotten what destinations were for.
"What is going on here?" the man murmured, more to himself than anyone else.
He glanced sideways at the government official standing beside him.
The official's face had gone pale. He pressed a hand over his mouth, swallowed hard, and shoved a folder of notes into the man's hands without a word. Then he turned and walked out of the room, not looking back.
The man watched him go — he was used to that reaction — then turned back to the screen.
The boy on the monitor kept walking, unbothered, moving among the crowd — nobody noticing him, nobody glancing his way, as if their eyes simply slid past him.
The man leaned forward slightly.
"Find me everything on him."