"The Boy Nobody Sees"

My name? Kyomon Kugo. And it’s been 247 days since anyone has said it out loud.

It’s not like I keep an exact count. It’s just that when you’re invisible, the days start counting themselves. Like the cracks in the ceiling of my room. Like the times I raise my hand in class and the teacher looks the other way. Like the “hello” that gets stuck in my throat because, before it can come out, the person has already walked past.

8:17 in the morning. Hallway of Seijō High School. Forty-two students moving from their lockers to their classrooms. I walk pressed against the right wall, as if my body wants to merge with the dark wooden panels. My uniform is spotless, the white shirt neatly pressed, my black hair slightly long and falling over my right eye. My gaze fixed on the tiles that shift from gray to white every two meters.

“Hey, Watanabe! What did you do after practice yesterday?”

“Sleep, idiot. What do you think?”

Shouts, laughter, and the echo of hurried footsteps flood the hallway as someone bumps into my shoulder and keeps running without apologizing. As if they had just passed through a ghost. No one looks at me. No one greets me. No one says, “Good morning, Kugo.”

To be honest, I don’t even expect it anymore. After 247 days, hope turns into something closer to relief. If they don’t look at you, they can’t judge you. If they don’t talk to you, they can’t hurt you. If they don’t say your name…

“Kugo! Are you deaf?”

I lift my head abruptly. My heart jolts so violently that I can feel the pulse pounding in my temples, in my neck, at the base of my throat. My whole body trembles, but what I feel isn’t happiness. It’s something closer to fear.

It’s Ms. Tanaka, wearing her eternal beige knit sweater and glasses hanging from a silver chain. She looks at me impatiently from the door of classroom 2-B. She has a folder in her hand and uses it to fan herself, a sign that she’s been waiting for a while.

“Get in already,” she says mockingly. “We don’t have all day.”

“Ah… yes. Sorry.”

I step inside quickly. Half the class’s eyes land on me for the first time in months. But they aren’t kind looks. They’re the kind that say, “Oh, so this guy existed,” or “I thought that seat was empty,” or “Weird that Tanaka even noticed him.”

I slide into my seat in the last row, next to the window. The only spot in the entire school where nobody sits, because everyone prefers to be closer to the board or farther from the draft that slips through the poorly sealed window frame. This is my throne of invisibility.

The morning passes as it always does. Math. Language. History. The teachers talk, the students take notes, someone yawns, someone whispers, someone throws a paper ball. I exist in the margins, in the silences between one word and the next. When lunchtime arrives, the classroom empties in seconds. Everyone is in a hurry to reach the courtyard, the cafeteria, anywhere there are people to talk to.

I stay. I always wait five minutes before moving. That way I make sure the hallways are less crowded and no one has to step aside to avoid bumping into me.

Today, however, something is different. I can’t explain it. It’s as if the air weighs more. As if someone is watching me from somewhere. I look around, but the classroom is empty. Desks are messy. Chairs are out of place. The afternoon light pours in through the window and draws golden rectangles across the floor.

Nothing out of the ordinary. And yet…

Four hours passed before the bell rang and Ms. Tanaka finally ended the class. She’s one of those teachers who stretches her explanations until the very last second, as if the world might end if she doesn’t finish the lesson. Everyone in the classroom is used to it, but that doesn’t stop the tension from piling up.

I wait calmly at my desk until there isn’t a single soul left in the room. I take two deep breaths of that peaceful air drifting among the dust particles floating in the light and sink into my thoughts.

“What’s wrong with me?”

“Why is my life like this?”

“Is this really what I chose?”

Hundreds of questions arrive like gusts of wind and lodge themselves into my gray matter. The desire to be seen, to be noticed, to be important, to not be invisible in the eyes of everyone around me. It’s an incomprehensible desire, almost physical. Like a hunger that food can’t satisfy.

I get up abruptly when I hear footsteps approaching. It must be the janitor coming to lock up. I have to leave. I step into the hallway and run right into him.He’s an old man in his sixties. Gray, frizzy hair sticking out from beneath a black cap with a logo I’ve honestly never seen before. He wears a slightly faded denim overall, worn down by the work he does. He holds a broom in one hand, but he isn’t sweeping. He’s just looking at me.

I try to avoid him with my head lowered, as always. I pass beside him…

“Son.” I stop dead in my tracks.

“Son,” he repeats. “Stop trying to be seen.”

His voice is rough, like gravel. But what he says… what he says pierces straight through me.

“Instead,” he continues, “become someone who can’t be ignored.”

The words hit my brain like knives thrown by a blade master, each one striking the target perfectly. A powerful, overwhelming chill runs down my spine. I’m literally frozen, unsure how to react.

How does he know that? How does he know what I’m thinking? I want to ask him. I want to shout at him. I want to—I slowly turn around, but the hallway is empty. No one is there. The broom is still leaning against the wall. But the old man has disappeared. I look to one side. I look to the other. The exit door is closed. The classrooms are dark. There’s nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run.

How? A different chill runs through me now. It isn’t fear of the unknown. It’s something more personal. Something that has to do with me. How could he know what I’m thinking?

And then I see it. On the floor, where the old man had been standing, a folded piece of paper. It wasn’t there before. I’m sure it wasn’t there. I crouch down, pick it up, and with trembling fingers unfold it.

It’s a simple flyer, printed in black and white. In the center, a QR code. And above it, a word in kanji: 真里 (Shinri). Beneath it, a line of text: “You’ve gone 247 days without being seen. 247 days wondering if you truly exist when no one is looking at you. How many more days are you going to endure? Scan. Know yourself. Exist.”

The paper trembles in my hands. I look to both sides, but the hallway remains empty. Yet in my mind there is only one thing I long for: for the first time in 247 days, I feel like someone has seen me. And I don’t know if that terrifies me or if it’s exactly what I’ve been waiting for.