The supermarket was a 10-minute walk away. Ten minutes too long.
Inside, the fluorescent lights stabbed at his eyes—a cruel contrast to the gray quiet of the rainy street outside, where shadows had softened the world. Here, everything was exposed. Harsh. Unforgiving. He moved between aisles like a ghost, shoulders hunched, eyes down. At the noodle shelf, he stood for too long, trying to decide between shrimp flavor and spicy beef, as if it mattered.
"Excuse me," a woman said behind him.
He froze.
"Sorry," he mumbled, stepping aside too fast, nearly bumping into her. His ears burned. He didn't look back.
At the checkout, he dropped his change. His fingers scrambled along the dirty linoleum floor, heart pounding as he sensed the growing impatience of the line behind him. A quiet snicker came from someone two spots back, and his shoulders hunched instinctively. In his head, a cruel inner voice hissed: "They're all watching. They know you don't belong here." The cashier looked away, politely indifferent, but Alexander could feel the burn of imagined judgment all around him. Shame pooled in his chest like wet cement.
As he stood up, avoiding every gaze, his hands trembled—not from exertion, but from a cocktail of self-loathing and anxiety. He muttered, "Why do I always fuck this up?" under his breath, gripping the plastic bag as if it could anchor him to something solid, as if the thin crinkle of plastic might hold him together when nothing else could. Fumbled to pick it up. The cashier didn't laugh, but the guy behind him did.
Outside, it had stopped raining. The air smelled of wet pavement and fast food.
And then he heard it. A scuffle. A woman's voice, tight with discomfort. "Leave me alone."
A man: "C'mon, don't be like that."
Alexander saw them near the bus stop. A tall man cornering a smaller woman. She looked young. Frightened. Her hand clutched her bag tightly, eyes wide with panic. The man leaned in, his voice oily, his posture predatory. His frame loomed like a barrier—deliberate, inescapable.
Alexander walked faster.
He didn't look back. He didn't need to. The voices echoed enough. Pleading. Tense.
He told himself it wasn't his problem. That if he stepped in, he'd just get hurt. Or worse, mocked. Again.
He told himself he wasn't strong enough. That no one wanted help from someone like him—overweight, stuttering, awkward. He remembered the day in seventh grade when he dropped his tray in the cafeteria and laughter erupted like gunfire. The teacher didn't even look up. That moment had sunk into his bones, replaying every time he thought about stepping forward. His mind now tried to calculate a dozen outcomes. Every single one ended with him on the ground, humiliated, bleeding, or just... laughed at. That last one hurt most, because it felt the most real.
His grocery bag trembled in his hand. The thin plastic crinkled with each step, a dry, nervous rustle that matched the twitch of his fingers. He hated that sound—it reminded him of his hands in high school, clammy and slick, shaking uncontrollably in class when asked to read aloud. The paper would blur, his voice would crack, and heat would rise to his cheeks like a fever. He remembered the way laughter would ripple through the room, small at first, then louder, unstoppable. They'll laugh again, his mind whispered. They always do.
A part of him saw it—saw himself walking up, saying something sharp, clever. The guy backing off. The girl grateful. Maybe even looking at him with respect. But that image was paper-thin. Immediately, it ripped apart. In its place: him fumbling, stammering, the guy scoffing, the girl embarrassed, strangers watching. That same voice again: Freak.
So he kept walking. Each step a retreat. Each breath shallow with shame.
She'll be fine, he told himself. Just another bad moment in a city full of them. But part of him kept imagining the scene—what if he had stepped in? Said something? Pushed the man back? Maybe the guy would've backed off. Maybe the girl would've looked at him with wide, grateful eyes. Maybe, for once, he'd feel like someone who mattered.
But even that fantasy unraveled fast. He pictured his voice cracking, the guy laughing, the girl cringing in secondhand embarrassment. A stranger filming it. Comments flooding in: "What a joke." "Beta male cringe." "Stay behind your keyboard, nerd."
He hated that he could imagine it all—everything but the version where he was truly brave. And he hated himself more for believing that version wasn't possible.
And he hated himself more for believing it.
He stepped out. It was raining again. Cold droplets tapped against his hoodie. Every sound was too loud, every stranger's movement threatening. He just wanted to go back—back to the glow of his screen, the comfort of stories where he could be anything but himself.
He didn't see the bus coming.
The screech of tires reached his ears too late. A sharp impact. Brief pain.
Then darkness.
But it wasn't empty.
It pulsed with voices. Awareness. Presence.
Something was watching him.
Something smiling.
Something that moved like light through water—but wasn't light.
Then a voice. Female. Like silk rustling in an ancient temple, laced with a melody both alluring and mocking. Her words vibrated in the air like long-forgotten incantations. Playful, yet shrouded in a power beyond reason—a cosmic smirk behind every syllable.
"Do you want to start a new game?"
He tried to speak—but she continued, laughing softly, like someone who had just discovered a precious, misunderstood gem.
"Mhhh… That intellect… that lust for meaning, that hunger for something more."
She paused, tilting her head as fragments of his past swirled before her—his late-night forum debates about the morality of simulated worlds, the essay he'd posted dissecting the fall of empires through systems of emotional collapse, the way he once stayed up for three nights refining a game mechanic no one but him would notice.
"But this body? So fragile. So lacking in will. No, no—utterly unworthy."
He felt something stir within him, as though unseen hands were rifling through his thoughts. The presence intensified—examining every memory, every scar, every shameful secret.
"Too valuable to waste. Let's find you a better vessel."
Light.
Blinding. Burning.
And then—
Nothing.