The first time I realized something was wrong, I was thirteen years old.
Not the kind of wrong you can point to.
Not the kind people talk about later and say, "There were signs."
There weren't.
No thunderclouds rolling in.
No sirens.
No accidents down the street.
No shaky footage on the evening news—no ability users screaming, no authorities rushing in, no blurred faces censored with black bars.
Just a blackout.
The old house lost its light at dusk.
Not slowly.
Not the gentle dimming that gives you a second to register what's happening.
It was as if something had reached down and snapped the connection clean in half.
The light didn't flicker.
Didn't hesitate.
Didn't even leave a dying glow behind.
It vanished.
The kitchen dropped into darkness.
Not night-dark.
Night gives you warning.
Night gives your eyes time.
This darkness didn't.
It was abrupt, hollow—like a piece of the world had been erased mid-sentence.
As if reality had momentarily forgotten this room was supposed to exist.
I was standing by the sink.
A bowl in my hands.
Soap still clinging to my fingers.
The water was running.
In the absence of light, the sound became enormous.
Each splash against the metal sink echoed too clearly, too sharply—every drop isolating itself, hammering into my ears.
I turned off the tap.
The silence that followed was heavier than the noise.
It felt like the room collapsed inward.
All I could hear was my breathing.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
Something was building inside my chest.
I noticed it before I understood it.
It wasn't anger.
Not fear.
Those have shapes. Names.
This was different.
A restless pressure.
A vibration with no direction.
Like noise shoved into my chest cavity—compressed, trapped.
No dial to turn it down.
No outlet to let it escape.
It bounced around inside me, striking ribs, sinking into muscle.
I stood there, surrounded by darkness.
I wasn't thinking.
I didn't feel the urge to shout.
Didn't want to complain.
Didn't even know I was tensing up.
The words slipped out casually, almost lazily.
"The bulb blew."
The sound was louder than I expected.
But I didn't mean anything by it.
I certainly didn't expect the world to listen.
The next instant—
It wasn't a short circuit.
It wasn't a breaker tripping.
The light bulb exploded.
Not cracked.
Not shattered outward.
It ceased.
As if an invisible force had compressed it from the inside, squeezing past its limit—
and the glass simply gave up.
No shards flew.
No sharp fragments clattered to the floor.
The bulb turned into powder.
Fine, pale dust—faintly glowing—drifted down from the ceiling like snow that had forgotten how to be cold.
When it hit the floor, it barely made a sound.
Too light.
Too unreal.
Something flickered briefly in the darkness.
I froze.
A high-pitched ringing filled my ears, like my head had been plunged underwater.
My chest tightened.
My throat dried out.
I realized, distantly, that I wasn't breathing.
Footsteps.
Grandpa burst out of the back room.
His slippers slapped hard against the floor, each step uneven, rushed.
He stopped when he saw the kitchen.
I saw it in his eyes.
The fear.
But he smiled anyway.
Not a natural smile.
The kind that's stretched too far, too tight—like it's holding something back.
He came over and placed a hand on my head.
It trembled.
He tried to hide it.
"Old house," he said lightly.
"The wiring's gone bad."
He didn't let me look down.
Using his foot, he slowly nudged the white powder beneath the cabinet.
Careful.
Deliberate.
As if those remains were something dangerous.
Something that shouldn't be acknowledged.
I nodded.
I didn't argue.
Didn't ask questions.
That night, I didn't sleep.
The house was quiet.
No wind brushing the windows.
No cars passing outside.
But inside my head, everything was loud.
That sensation replayed again and again—the vibration rising from deep inside my chest.
Like something had been woken up.
And it didn't go back to sleep.
After that, it happened more often.
At first, it was just glass.
Windows would develop thin cracks when my emotions shifted.
Not dramatic breaks.
Hairline fractures that spread slowly—spiderwebs creeping outward from a point I couldn't see.
I pretended not to notice.
Learned to lower my gaze.
To step away before I had to look too closely.
Door frames started to warp.
The wood groaned quietly, not snapping—just bending, twisting under pressure.
Like it was enduring something it couldn't fight.
Cracks appeared in the walls.
Not the harmless wear of an aging building.
These were fresh.
Sharp.
Still dusted with debris, as if the wounds hadn't had time to heal.
So I learned to be quiet.
I stopped raising my voice.
Stopped arguing.
Stopped responding.
I crushed every sound in my throat.
Let them collide inside my chest.
Let them grind against each other until they dulled.
Until—
It wasn't objects anymore.
It was people.
The first time, I couldn't even accept it had been me.
He only shoved me.
Barely anything.
I stepped back.
And the familiar vibration escaped.
Uncontrolled.
He flew.
Not stumbled.
Not fell.
He was thrown—like something invisible had slammed into him head-on.
His body hit the wall two or three meters away.
The wall cracked.
He didn't stand up again.
I stayed where I was.
My hands were shaking.
A sharp echo screamed inside my ears.
That night, I vomited.
Until my stomach was empty.
"You need to register."
The officer from the Ability Bureau spoke calmly.
Too calmly.
He sat across from me in a brightly lit room, white light pouring in from every angle.
No shadows.
No place to hide.
"Your ability carries a high propagation risk," he said.
"It's unstable."
I didn't understand the terms.
I only understood the look in their eyes.
They had already decided what I was.
They tested me.
Locked me in a soundproof chamber.
Transparent walls separated me from them.
They told me to shout.
To scream.
To push myself closer and closer to losing control.
The sound bounced inside the room—amplified, compressed, thrown back at me again and again.
Each impact hurt.
My chest burned.
Like something inside was trying to tear its way out.
Outside, pens scratched across paper.
Soft sounds.
Clear sounds.
Clear enough to make me nauseous.
No one asked if I was in pain.
When it ended, I could barely stand.
The result came back.
C-Rank.
"Good," someone muttered.
"Not troublesome."
That was when I understood.
Abilities aren't gifts.
They're labels.
They decide how the world handles you.
Grandpa collapsed not long after.
He'd always been weak, but stubborn.
He said the money had to be saved.
For my future.
Then one day, I heard a sound from the kitchen.
I ran.
He was on the floor.
Blood spread from his forehead, bright against the tiles.
I shouted his name.
The sound broke loose.
The walls shuddered.
Cabinet doors burst open.
I dropped to my knees, biting down on my voice.
The doctor said it would take long-term treatment.
A lot of money.
I nodded.
Again.
And again.
I took every job they introduced.
Just errands, they said.
Just deliveries.
Just intimidation.
I told myself I could endure it.
But every time, I had to strangle my own throat.
The hospital glass cracked three times.
Walls split visibly.
Transfers followed.
Complaints piled up.
The last administrator wouldn't look at me.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
"We can't keep you."
And then—
Everything went quiet.
Not the world.
Just me.