Chapter 2. A Vulnerable Leap

You know how people talk about the "good years," the golden haze of childhood?
Yeah… I never really got that.
It's funny — I'm still young, not even twenty-one at the time —
but I already felt like I'd missed something irreversible.

When you never truly live a real childhood…
The world becomes a hallway of dread.
You look ahead and think:
If life already felt like hell without my consent…
What will adulthood do to me?

Even if it turns out okay…
That missing time never comes back.
I never got to know what it felt like to be cherished.
To be safe.
To be seen.
To be loved.

Maybe you're wondering why it sounds so dark.
Well, that was literally my daily life.
Home and school both — just different kinds of hell.

That morning, though…
I was electric with anticipation.
Because I had decided — for once — to take a vulnerable leap.

Home was the usual void:
Mom barely acknowledged I existed.
Dad was gone before sunrise.
And I walked out the door breathing like I’d escaped a collapsing mine shaft.

School wasn't any better —
but at least there I could pretend to exist.

So I’ll just say it:
yes — school was that bad.
I was hollow before I even had a chance to become someone.

Misaki and I —
we were the two losers the bullies practiced on.
Too conflict-avoidant to fight back.
Too used to being stepped on to even flinch.
We were powerless long before powers existed.

But that day?
I was determined.
Because there was this girl — Ayumi.
Silent, withdrawn, but not empty.
She had depth.
The kind you feel in your bones.

She had the same kind of quiet bruises —
the ones you don’t see on skin,
but in posture.
In the way someone looks at a hallway.
In how they exist around others.

So yes.
I was going to ask her out.
Not as a savior.
But as someone who recognized her pain as familiar.

After being slammed around by the bullies (as usual),
I finally spotted her across the classroom.

Something in me cracked.
Not dramatically.
Just… finally.

I walked over,
moved the desk aside with more flair than necessary —
because apparently I’m dramatic as hell —
and I didn’t care anymore.

I said her name:
“Ayumi.”

She looked at me — wary, confused, curious.

“Would you go out with me after cla—”

FLASH

A light tore through reality.
Five minutes of blinding white.
People screamed.
People vomited.
People collapsed.
It felt like our minds cracked open —
splitting…
falling…
reformatting.

Voices echoed inside all of us — not spoken aloud but psychologically invasive:

Who am I?
Who are we?
One being.
One mind.
One consciousness.

It wasn’t divine.
It was terrifying.

When it finally stopped —
we stumbled outside like refugees of a psychic storm.

Everyone was sent home.
And my Vulnerable Leap
had been obliterated by a cosmic joke.

You might think going home would be comforting.
But the hair on my neck stood up.

Because everyone was affected by the Flash.
Including my parents.

At first, nothing changed.
We all thought maybe it was over…
maybe it was just some freak anomaly.

But then the powers started surfacing.

And here’s the twisted part:
My parents gained abilities that aligned perfectly with the tools they used to emotionally abuse me.

My mother could feel the exact emotions of everyone around her —
like she could smell weakness.
My father could push thoughts and emotional states onto others —
just like he always forced narratives and guilt onto me.

And me?
Nothing.
No power.
No flare of essence.
No identity bursting forth.

Just… silence.

They couldn’t stand it.
Their egos wouldn’t allow it.
Their son — powerless?
Their legacy — weak?
Impossible.

So they tested me.
Pushed me.
Pressed emotional manipulation onto me.
Tried to force my identity out of hiding.
Beat me when I didn’t transform fast enough.

And you might think —
that sounds like pure trauma.

And yeah.
It was.

But weirdly?
That leap I made —
and the beating that followed —
were the first moments in my life
where something inside me stirred.

Because for the first time…
I started to feel the faintest spark of defiance.
The first fracture in the shell.
The beginning of a question:

What if there's more to me
than what they see?