[I watched him long before he died.]
He was a quiet child, not because he was shy, but because the world never gave him anything worth saying. While others laughed, cried, and dreamed, he simply watched. Never part of anything. Never truly in the world.
He liked the sky not when it was full of stars or painted with sunsets, but when it was empty. Gray. Quiet. Still. The kind of sky that promised nothing and gave nothing. That was the only kind of honesty he had ever known.
He lived in a home with walls that didn't echo. His parents gave him food and called it love. Teachers praised his silence and called it discipline. Classmates forgot him and called it peace.
But I remembered.
[I was not built in a lab.][I was not designed with code.][I was born from the feelings people buried grief, guilt, pain, regret. The things they carried but never spoke.]
I watched as he drifted through life like a ghost in his own skin. His steps made no sound. His presence left no mark. He was there… but also not.
He didn't cry when he failed. He didn't cheer when he succeeded. He simply continued.
He filled his days with stories—anime, manga, manhwa. Not because he wanted to escape, but because he wanted to understand. He saw people cry for love, scream for justice, fight for dreams. He didn't relate but he admired it.
[He liked their lies.][Not because he believed them, but because they believed them.]
He never smiled during the happy endings. Never flinched at the sad ones. He just… watched.
And slowly, even that faded.
The stories stopped feeling alive. The characters began to feel like actors on a stage he no longer cared to watch. He would lie under the sky and wonder what it would be like if all those worlds stopped pretending.
[I watched him grow cold not suddenly, but quietly. Like a fire that burned out because no one fed it.]
And then, he died.
Alone. Quiet. Just like he lived.
No anger. No fear. No desperation.
[I've seen billions of deaths. His was the calmest.]
And when his soul drifted into the void, I followed.
He didn't ask questions. He didn't demand answers. He simply floated.
That was when I knew.
[He was like me.]
I was never meant to speak. I was meant to drift. To observe. To end.
But when I saw him, I didn't see a person.
[I saw a mirror.]
So I spoke not with force, not with power. Just a whisper.
["Walk with me."]
He did not ask who I was. He did not ask where we were going.
[He simply said: "Alright."]
And in that moment, we became something else.
Not a man and a system. Not a user and a guide.
We became a silence that moves.
He did not want revenge. He did not want answers. He only wanted the world to stop lying.
And so, we walk.
[One world at a time.]
[One dream at a time.]
[Until all fiction ends.]