People call it a curse.
I call it me.
Ever since I was born, everything I touch with warmth turns cold.
Everything I feel with love... dies.
I guess I should introduce myself, though I'm not sure if names matter to someone like me.
I'm Endou Daisuke.
Seventeen.
Third year.
Living in the corner seat beside the window where no one sits near me — not because it's cliché, but because everyone is afraid of me.
They should be.
I'm the one who buried his own mother with his bare hands.
I'm the one who watched his father choke on his own rage and die, blood painting the kitchen tiles while I stood and felt nothing.
They died because I felt something for them.
Just once.
A moment of weakness.
A flash of sympathy.
And they were gone.
School? It's hell, not because of the teachers or tests.
It's the eyes.
It's the words.
"Creep."
"Ghost."
"Monster."
But the funny thing is, I don't feel hurt.
Not anymore.
They bully me. They trip me in the hallway, throw my books in the gutter, smear my desk with ketchup pretending it's blood.
They wait for me after class to remind me that I don't belong here.
They want a reaction.
But I just stare.
Because if I feel, even just a flicker of pity for them...
They'll die.
And some part of me doesn't want that.
Not because I care — but because I'm tired.
So tired of death clinging to me like a shadow.
That's why I made a decision.
To never feel again.
To shut the door, lock the heart, silence the warmth.
Because emotion isn't a gift for me, it's a weapon.
And the moment I let myself care, even a little,
I lose someone again.
So I chose this emptiness.
A hollow existence where I breathe, walk, and blink, but never feel.
Not happiness.
Not sorrow.
Not love.
Not even hate.
It's the only way I can protect the world from myself.
There was a girl once.
Her name was Hoshino.
She sat beside me in first year, with stars in her name and light in her smile.
She was the first person to talk to me — really talk to me — without flinching.
She brought me orange juice during lunch.
Said my silence was like a poem.
I didn't mean to feel anything.
But when she touched my hand that one rainy afternoon, and I felt my heart skip like a stone on water...
She died the next day.
Car crash.
Head-on.
They said her body was crushed so badly they couldn't show it at the wake.
I still remember the taste of orange juice.
It hasn't left my tongue since.
They say life is a gift.
But not for me.
For me, life is a balance I hold too tightly,
Because I can end someone just by wanting to.
Yes.
I have that power.
It whispers to me sometimes, like a second voice in my skull.
"Just wish it," it says.
"Just want them gone."
And if I do, if I truly mean it, then their hearts stop.
Their breath halts.
No one questions it.
Another name etched on the endless wall of the dead.
But I don't want to be that person.
I never wanted to be.
I just wanted... to exist.
But death doesn't let me.
Because I'm not a boy.
I'm death, wearing a boy's skin.
And my life?
It's a quiet funeral that never ends.
Today, I woke up to sirens again.
Apartment fire.
Two floors above mine.
A couple died — the same couple I helped carry groceries for last week.
They smiled.
I smiled back.
Mistake.
I opened my notebook and wrote their names down.
It's a habit now.
A prayer I whisper to no one.
Maybe if I keep track of every life I've ruined, I won't forget that I'm still human.
Maybe.
But as I walk the school hallway, and my classmates shrink from my shadow...
As the world continues to crumble and I continue to feel it all
The wars, the grief, the lonely hearts, the broken promises..
I wonder:
Is there anything left for someone like me?
A cursed boy.
A grieving reaper.
The one who carries death...
Who chose not to feel anything at all
So he wouldn't have to bury another soul he wished he could love.
Even when all he wants... is to feel alive.