The Legend of a No-Name Hero

Once upon a time, there lives one man in his 27s. Both his parent died, and he lives alone in a small apartment. He is working in a big office, doing boring office job every single day, staring at the office computer as the clock ticks down.

He has a crush toward an office lady in 25s that works in the same room, but he never shows it, and suppress his own feelings. He didn’t even think about confessing, he thought that he shouldn’t do that.

He thinks about it over and over in his head, that she wouldn’t be happy with a gloomy guy that never socialize anyway. Not to mention that she is diligent, smart, and are not too bad with the looks when she puts her glasses off.

Meanwhile, he is just gloomy guy with no interesting stuff about himself. He shakes his head, thinking that he shouldn’t drag other people with him, and only confess if he can do something. No, she wouldn’t like someone like him, no one would.

Not only with his gloomy personality, but he also seems can’t get along with people. Whenever he approaches someone, people will just talk normally, then walk away from him, like he didn’t belong to them, like they better not to interact with him.

With no visible friends, he thought that he could get some friends online. It would be better if someone talks and message him in online over the internet. At least, that’s what he thought...

Sadly, the reality is so different than what he expected. People only message him whenever they have business with him, or when they try to request his help. He was happy to talk to someone at first. But then, after a while, he realizes that he really has no friend.

Whenever he messages someone that asked his help few months ago, they are not there for him when he needs them. Some replies shortly, but then the conversation is cut short, it’s like they are avoiding him.

Whoever he helps before are not treating him as a friend, and some of them even forgetting about him. Oh, even a few straight up ignoring, or even block his chats.

His mood falls down to the point that he didn’t expect anything good to happen in this world. Right, life is not a fairy tale or movies. Not everything ends in happy ending, there’s no one, but yourself trying to make something happen.

Over time, he starts to sink into deep thoughts. He starts to question why he was born, what is his purpose, and what life truly means. He thought to himself: “Do I really have a friend? No, do I have anyone to chat with? Am I… Alone? Do I really belong in this world?”.

Day passes, time goes flying as he put his boring face every single day to the office. Not only he put a gloomy face on office, but also his personality is kind of gloomy.

He puts a fake smile front on people, while he is living his boring life. He just doesn’t want to disturb or trouble other people. “Don’t be a deadweight”, he says to himself.

A few weeks after, a handsome guy in the same office asked her for going out with him, and she tell him to walk with her outside.

He raises his hands, trying to tell her not to go, but suddenly he got to think that he is selfish. He shouldn’t interfere, he doesn’t have chance to snatch her away from a handsome guy like him anyway. He put his hands down as he just stays silent and watch them goes out to the street together. Yeah, there’s nothing he should do, he shouldn’t ruin her happiness after all.

Inferiority complex gets worse over time as he got scolded, got yelled at, and even bullied. He just took all the pain, day by day, without even complaining.

And that’s not the end of it. Whenever he feels things goes wrong, he just shoves it off because he has no power to oppose. He felt that he is too weak to change anything.

He contemplates about his life, thinking that he is only one small droplet in a big ocean. Insignificant and too small to notice.

He kept on living, but instead of thinking of better tomorrow, he thought to himself,

“Same shit, different day”

He lives his life just like that, over, over, and over. He never thought, that one day, his boring life would change.

Eventually, his nation gets on tension with other country over a dispute. Each country sends spies and soldiers to investigate and to put others in check, but an incident caused it to be a blown-up war.

It makes both sides suffers casualties, to the point that his country doesn’t have much more people to fight.

Eventually, his nation decided to conscript any man below 35 to military. He is not an exception and got enrolled in by force.

In the military, he talked to some people, but eventually almost everyone avoids him. With gloomy mood, he finally met someone who doesn’t shove him away, a young man in the 22s at that.

The other person is a prestigious university student. Not only that the young man is studying at good university, he also has decent look and good grades. The once dispirited office man thought… That his life would not be so boring after all.

But reality hurts. Over time, the mission is more and more dangerous. One day, he was in the mission with the young man as the mission goes south. They tried to do whatever they can, but a sniper managed to shot the young man and heavily wounded him.

The shocked office man quickly takes cover and fire back at the sniper, but the young man is dying. As he is giving his dying wish of having the office man survives the war, he passed away. His only friend is gone, taken by the cruelness of war.

Still, he carries on. He kept on fighting. While losing his friend leaves a scar on his heart, he kept on going, trying to fulfil his only friend’s dying wish.

Eventually, he faces a dilemma. The war goes far as it hits metropolitan area, and it gets to the point where it happens near his workplace. The enemy forces are bombing and destroying buildings where he is just in.

Not only that, but the enemy forces also outnumbered them, and they are at disadvantage fighting in their own place to protect.

His unit squadron leader gives a command to retreat, and he was about to, before he saw a few civilians are in danger in front of him. He puts a glance, it’s his crush, that got out with a handsome man few months ago.

He has two options now: Either he retreats to follow his squadron leader’s command and save himself, or charges in and buy time for those civilians to evacuate. He thought to himself, even if he survives this, what reason to live anymore?

He has no reason to stay alive all except just to do his duty as a soldier. For her, she has someone waiting for her, and not to mention there are four other people as well. He finally decided, he should charge in and buy the civilians some time to run.

He charges in and tells civilians to evacuate. He fires his gun with small fire bursts the enemy soldiers as a few civilians is running away. He takes down a few soldiers as they caught by surprise. He thought to himself, he probably become a hero.

Sadly, the world isn’t that easy. This isn’t a fairy tale, this isn’t a movie, this is the reality where we live in a cruel world. When he is trying to take cover while reloading his rifle, he got a shot in his left shoulder.

As soon he takes cover, he turned around, watching the four civilians flees, while his crush looked at him in tears. He smiled at her as she goes out of his sight.

He put his right hand in his left shoulder, he holds the wound that pierced through his body. The bleeding is severe as he starts losing a lot of blood. He thought that he still can buy more time and take down more, so he quickly turns around and aimed at the enemy soldiers.

He delivers a few burst fires to a few enemy soldiers as they also take cover. One of the enemy soldiers drops in a grenade to him, he rolls to the left and sprays his rifle, taking another few soldiers in the process.

As he stands up, reload his gun and try to strafe to the side to evade bullets, he got a shot in his chest. This time, it wasn’t just a normal wound, it’s a fatal wound that would kill his life in few seconds.

He falls backward as the bullet force took him down. As he tries to stand up, his enemy points his rifle on him. “This is it”, he thought himself. This is where he would die.

He started to remember, that he couldn’t do anything for other people. But now, he finally able to save five people, one which he put interest in.

Her face with tears flashes in front of his eyes. He smiles briefly, before the enemy soldier shot him in the head. And that’s it, he died in the spot.

The enemy soldier left his corpse in the road and walks away. A few minutes later, there’s a radio intermission on his corpse. Apparently, it’s his squadron leader, asking where he is right now.

The squadron leader finally notices something off as he didn’t respond. He asks if the office guy still alive, but alas, a dead man can’t talk.

The following day, our unfortunate hero’s corpse is retrieved by the military. The lady that he saved looked at his corpse with teary eyes, as the corpse is moved away by medic unit. The squadron apparently there as he got evacuated.

The squadron leader is visited by a division commander in the open, asking him for the status report. After making a report, he is bringing up a topic of compensating the office guy as he died as a conscription. She gets close and eavesdrop on the conversation.

The commander points out that he doesn’t have parents, nor started a family. He also points out that the guy didn’t follow his orders to retreat, but instead facing the enemy off without any commands to, so they are not in the fault for his death, it’s his fault.

The squadron leader seemed reluctant, before writing a note. It says: “Reason of death: didn’t follow his superior’s commands”.

She gasped as she put her hands in her mouth in shock. It means that he saved her and other four people, where he should have retreat on his own and save his own life.

She remembers the last smile he gave her before, as now he is laying as a corpse. She remembers this person in the office, which now become corpse after saving her and four other people.

She walks away from that spot, slowly but sure. She remembers a person that is so gloomy, so unpopular, gets bullied over time, gets no attention from higher ups or friends.

She thinks that, even if he is like that, he deserved more than this. He doesn’t even get praised even once, and not many people will mourn his death.

As she thinks about him, she got on flashback, where she was with the handsome guy. The handsome guy has bad personality, he looks down on others, and talk behind someone’s back.

She remembers the time she fought with the handsome guy and ended up in breaking up. She thought to herself, what if she went out with this gloomy guy instead…

As she realizes it, she finally realizes that he was looking at her all this time. She clenches her fists and starts crying. She doesn’t even interact with him, but he saves her, nonetheless. He seemed reliable and kind, even smiled as he saves her.

But alas, he’s already dead, he can’t go back to live. No matter what, he won’t come back. She put herself crying in the corner, as rain start pouring out.

In few months, the country eventually pushed back and drove the enemy soldiers out of the country. And with the other country intervention, they settled up in peace.

However, the price of war is not cheap: both of the country suffers structural and economical damage, especially in the metropolitan areas.

The following morning after the peace’s declaration, a minister started his speech about protecting the country. However, she didn’t even hear that someone even mention his name. All she heard is name of general as he is praised for the country’s defense, and few of other people. No one really mentions him, as he wasn’t there to begin with.

As she goes into the office, no one seems care about him or ask about him. And as she hears about someone talk about him for the first time, the conversation was about that they love the atmosphere without him.

She thought to herself, how he actually went all through this. Even if he did something, no one mentions about his good side, even as he saves a few lives. Eventually, people will forget about him, that what she thought.

After the rain ends up in the evening, she went to her house. After taking bath and doing her chores, she cooks and eat her dinner. She thought to herself as she takes her dinner, she should write about the story of him, so people don’t forget about him.

As she finishes, she took the dishes and wash them in the sink. She sits in her desk, open her shelves and take an empty book out from it. She closes her shelves and starts writing a title.

“The Legend of a No-Name Hero”

She starting to write the journey of a man who saves her life but doesn’t get recognition that he deserves. She keeps writing the book as the moonlight shines through the window.

The following morning, she tries to submit her book for a submission. Mistaking it as a made-up story, many publishers reject her because the story is so sad, without a good ending on it.

As she walked in sadness, she bumped to a young man and drops her book. As she picked up the book and face up to apologize, she got shocked. It was someone she was running with from the other country soldiers.

The young man also surprised they meet in the open and ask if this is really a destiny and jokes at her. She asks if he remember the soldier that was helping them escape, and he says he remembers his face.

She told him that he died on the spot, said that he was “against” the order to retreat by saving them, and died without any recognition. The man surprised, and she explains everything to him, including she wrote a book of him.

The man ended up looking at the book and say that he would help her get it published. She is happy to hear that, and they ended up editing the book further.

As no publisher want to accept the script, they were looked sad. As they walk, a person is screaming that he would just end up his career as a web novelist if he doesn’t get a good material. They were walking past it and were discussing about the story, before they piqued the interest of the web novelist.

The web novelist asked them about the story, and she says that they have a true story of a man where he become a no-name hero. The web novelist becomes interested and eventually they talked over in a café.

He offered to write a web novel and publish it as his work to the internet if they agreed to it. And as they were looking for the tale to go alive, they agreed to it. Not only getting a copy of the book, but the web novelist also asked her perspective of the story and do some research on the person.

As the web novelist finished, he emailed both of them to get a greenlight to post. It doesn’t take a few minutes before replies of saying “yes” from both of them arrived. The web novelist sends his script as he read it.

He overjoyed from having a script on the internet, as he was stuck on making one, not to mention this was based on true story. The woman closes her laptop, looking at the sky full of stars while holding the book on her hands.

She paints the face of the hero who saved her at the sky. “Thank you for saving me. Maybe you will be forgotten, but your tale will live on, as long internet exists. Even if it goes buried somewhere, someone will still read your tale. I will remember you forever. May you rest in peace up there. Thank you… My hero…”

The End