After that day, my father never looked at me the same way.
He avoided me, like I carried a sickness that might spread if he stayed too close. For the next few days, I was dragged through hospitals and clinics, passed from one psychiatrist to another like an object that needed fixing.
The diagnosis was simple, according to them. I was emotionally numb. I did not react like other children. I did not smile or cry the way I was supposed to.
My mother said it was nonsense. Doctors talking in circles to justify their fees.
My father said it was proof.
He did not stop. Even when my mother argued, even when she begged, he kept taking me from hospital to hospital.
Until one day, I smiled without blood, pain, or screaming nearby.
That smile made my mother believe she had been right all along and made my father furious.
On the last day at the third hospital, I woke up, and my Maa was not there. She had stayed with me every night before that, sleeping on a chair, never leaving my side.
I sat up and stared at the door.
Every time a woman walked past, I hoped it was her. Every time, it was not her.
Then a little girl walked in.
She was about my age. I noticed her immediately. She looked around the room, curious, then our eyes met. She froze for a moment, then ran toward me with the biggest smile I had ever seen.
Before I could even understand what I was happening, she was beside my bed. And that was the first time I smiled without death or pain anywhere near me.
Then she ran past me and hugged her grandfather, the old man in the bed next to mine. Seeing me smile at her, he insisted she play with me.
She did not know who I was. But because he kept insisting, she stayed.
We spent the whole morning together. Running through the hospital halls. Playing catch. Hide and seek. Laughing.
Even the nurses laughed with us.
That moment sealed something for my mother. It made her believe in herself completely. The doctors stopped mattering. My father stopped taking me to hospitals after that.
But his relief did not last.
Once I was home, I never laughed again. And every time I did laugh after that, there was always blood, pain, or screaming nearby.
When I turned five, my father took me fishing in his village.
It was supposed to be a normal day.
Until he pushed me into the river.
Later, he told my mother he was teaching me to swim. I could have believed that lie, if he had not held me down. If he had not stamped on me, forcing my head under the water every time I tried to breathe.
But that is not the important part.
The important part is what I felt while drowning.
As the water filled my lungs and my body started to shut down, the last thing I remember doing was smiling.
I woke up the next day in a hospital.
A villager had seen my body floating near the riverbank and pulled me out. If he had arrived a few minutes later, I would not be alive.
My father lied again.
He told my mother I had fallen from the boat. That the current was too strong. That he searched for me all day, screaming my name, running along the riverbank, until he finally saw a villager pulling a child from the water and rushed toward them.
My mother believed him.
She believed him the same way she believed I was normal.
When I woke up, the first thing I felt was warmth. Arms wrapped tightly around me. A face pressed against my chest. Hot tears are soaking through my hospital gown.
Maa was crying.
Seeing the one person who trusted me without hesitation, who loved me without conditions, break like that hurt in a way I did not understand at first. It was not physical pain. It was heavier. Deeper.
For the first time in my life, I cried.
I cried with her, holding on as tightly as I could, until exhaustion dragged me back into sleep, my head resting in her trembling hands.
—
When I was ten, I joined a new class.
I sat alone, like I always did. From my seat, I noticed another boy eating by himself. He did not talk to anyone. No one sat near him.
At some point, I realized I was staring.
I did not notice it myself until he stood up and started walking toward me.
Before I could understand what was happening, his hands were around my throat.
He choked me hard.
The pain was sharp and familiar, deep enough to make me feel death nearby again. My vision blurred. My lungs burned.
And I laughed.
I laughed while he was choking me.
He froze.
Then he let go and walked away without saying a word.
That was how I met Goku.
He came from a distant rural village, deep in the forests. He lived by hunting. His family survived on what they killed. He was the first child from his tribe to leave the forest under government support and study in a regular school.
He was also my first friend.
He was a hunter from birth. His instincts were sharp, sharper than anyone I had ever met.
All it took was one look into my eyes for him to see what I was.
He tried to kill me the first time he saw me.
And yet, he stayed.
Somehow, both of us understood it without saying it out loud. We were the same. Misfits in the world we were forced to live in.
Talking to him was easy. I did not react when he told me he ate raw snake meat. I did not flinch when he said he had killed rabbits with his bare hands. Other kids looked at him with fear or disgust. I did not feel either.
So he talked. And I listened.
We started sitting together. We ate lunch on the rooftop, away from everyone else. During vacations, I went with him to his village.
That was the first time I understood what it meant to have a friend.
While I stayed there, he and the others taught me how to hunt. How to track. How to wait. How to kill.
They called me an Asura.
In their words, an Asura was a genius born hunter.
But our friendship did not last.
Goku was called back to the village by the new chief. He stopped coming to school. Just like that, my first friendship ended.
I went back to sitting alone.
Even though I had been sitting alone my entire life, it was only after Goku left that I truly felt alone.
I wanted to feel like a human again, I wanted to feel belonged again.
I did not know how.
When people joked, I responded too flat, too late, or not at all. When someone got hurt, I tried to react the way I thought I should, but laughter slipped out instead of comfort. Every word I spoke seemed to land wrong.
I didn't know what I was doing wrong, only that whatever it was made them uneasy. Afraid.
So I tried another way.
I noticed that the class topper was never alone. There was always someone talking to them, laughing with them. Being the best seemed to come with belonging.
So I became the topper.
Still, no one came to me.
They said I must have cheated. That I had lied. That someone like me couldn't have earned it honestly.
That was the end of that idea.
A year passed like that, with me doing nothing but thinking about how people make friends, and failing to understand it.
When I moved to a new class, the pattern repeated.
I was alone again.
This time, something changed.
I gained one person. Maybe not a friend. More like an apprentice.
His name was Bryce, the mayor's son. A delinquent.
For reasons I never understood, I caught his interest. He started sitting beside me. He dragged me everywhere, made me run errands, write his notes, do whatever he felt like ordering.
I did not hate it.
Someone was talking to me. That was enough.
So I stayed. I followed him. I obeyed.
A few months later, everything shifted.
I saw her again.
Siri. The girl who made me smile for the first time without pain or struggle nearby.
She was participating in a school competition. More than a thousand people were listening to her speak. As soon as I saw her, the memory came back clearly, like no time had passed at all. Her running toward me in that hospital room. Her smile.
This time, I did not want to lose her.
I wanted to run to her. Talk to her like before. Hear her voice again. Smile with her again.
But for the first time I was scared and the fear stopped me.
The thought of her avoiding me like everyone else. The thought of her being disgusted by me scared me.
So I stayed away.
Still, I wanted her to know I existed. I wanted her to know that she mattered to me, even if she never remembered me.
When the day ended, I went back to the hall. She was there too.
I had so many things I wanted to say. None of them came out.
So I said the only thing that mattered to me.
I told her my name.
"I'm Ajin."
Once I was sure she heard me, I left the hall.