Prologue

I could barely hear the sound of rain hitting my umbrella. It was like the world outside this protective bubble didn’t exist. However, I was barely able to hold onto the umbrella, so my shoulders were getting soaked by the drizzle. But I didn’t care. All I could think about was getting home as soon as possible.

My hearing was fine, however. As was my vision. It was my brain that decided to have a hissy fit that day. I was right in the middle of a migraine.

I knew from the weather reports that it was going to be an overcast, rainy day— the worst days for me. Inevitably, the muted grays the sky turned into were kryptonite to me, and even wearing sunglasses didn’t help. By the late morning, my head started feeling heavy, then the pain hit me like I’d been hit by a hammer. Any amount of light made my eyes hurt, and even the lightest of conversations were uncomfortable to hear. This was one of the bad ones.

You’d think I should have excused myself right there to go to the nurse’s office to be treated—but I really didn’t want to make a big deal out of it if at all possible. Some teachers and classmates were already accusing me of exaggerating or even making it up. I knew if I suddenly disappeared, some of my classmates would take the next chance to make sure I knew exactly where I stood in the class rankings.

So I did the only thing I could and subtly reached into my bag to grab my medicine box to take the incredibly bitter SOS pill I always carried with me—but that day, of all days, I had forgotten to restock it.

Darn it… what am I going to do now?

In the end, I kept hesitating, my head feeling like it would explode from the pain. Thankfully, the teachers knew to not bother me, even if I had my eyes closed and was paying exactly zero attention to classes. I suffered through another hour of classes until the bell rang, and somehow I managed to drag my ass to the nurse’s office, but obviously she didn’t have the very specific medicine I needed. All she could give me was over-the-counter painkillers—basically homeopathic by this point—and let me skip classes. What, you think she would send me home? Nah, unless you’re literally coughing up blood and your leg is twisted in a strange way, you were required to stay in school until classes were over.

For better or worse, no one in class bothered to pay me a visit; as if I had any friends who cared about me in the first place. Not that I really wanted to see anyone—the dark, quiet room was the best thing I wanted then. The final bell woke me up from a light sleep, and since I had everything packed already, I stumbled out of the room to make the torturous walk home.

When I left school, it had started to rain. I shuffled through my usual path, my steps hasty in anticipation of returning home.

Suddenly, however, three figures appeared from an alleyway or another.

“Yo, it’s the Cry-Baby Fatso!” Said the ringleader. “Ueee, my head huts so muushhh!” He said in a high-pitched voice.

The other two snickered, like this was the funniest joke in the history of time.

This was Kinuhata, my classmate, and his band of crooks, two other equally dodgy guys from other classes and whose names I didn’t know. I guess you could call them my bullies.

“Hey, tell me, Fatso. Did it feel good to skip on classes at the nurses' office?”

“…I’m sick,” I responded.

“Oh, you are, are you? You’re always sick. I bet you spent that time jacking off while thinking of the nurse, right?”

The chorus laughed.

Don’t these guys have tongues they can use to speak?

“Maybe I should start pretending to have these ‘migraines’ too so I can skip classes like you do. What do you think?”

I didn’t respond. What was the point? They didn’t care and weren’t listening.

“Hey, cat got your tongue too? Maybe this will wake you up!”

And then he punched me, right in the gut. Hard. I felt a bit of bile from my empty stomach make its way to my mouth.

“Ugh, this feels as terrible as usual. It’s like punching a tube of lard,” Kinuhata said as he rubbed his knuckles.

I stumbled a bit from the impact, but managed to stay upright. But just as I began recovering—

“This is better!”

I only saw the afterimage of his foot hitting me before I completely collapsed to the soaking wet ground.

“There. That’s where piggies like you ought to be,” he said as he shoved his foot into my gut. “Crawling on the floor, begging for mercy.”

But I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. He kept kicking me, repeating insults and demanding I submit to him.

The head pain is worse than anything you can inflict, you bastards.

“Bah. He’s too out of today. This isn’t fun, and I’m getting soaked. Let’s get out of here, boys.”

They started leaving as I managed to get up—but not before they ruined my umbrella with a well-placed stomp. When I looked around, I could see other students from my school had stopped to see the spectacle, but not a single one of them even bothered to reach out and help me, during or before the attack.

They are all complicit. All cut from the same cloth.

I couldn’t do anything else but grab my soaked bag and stumble home, my head pain even worse.

⬡⬢⬡⬢⬡

At this point, I knew from experience that my attack was so advanced that the usual SOS medicine would have no effect. All I could do was take a stronger anti-inflammatory, go to a quiet, dark room, grind my teeth, and try to sleep it off.

That would be easier said than done.

“I’m hom—”

I didn’t finish my reflexive greeting.

“There you are again, wasting all our money on booze! At least learn to put the bottles on the trash!” My mom shouted from the kitchen, making me recoil in pain.

“Shut up! Leave me alone. I’m not bothering anyone, so let me finish watching the race in peace!”

“You’re bothering me! And while you’re at it, stop eating ramen on the couch and leaving oil stains!”

“Ohh, my horse is going strong! Go, Marigold!! You can do it!”

“For god’s sake…”

Ah. They are having a fight again.

I didn’t even bother greeting them. I just took my shoes as fast as I could and quietly shuffled upstairs to my room, dripping water throughout the hallway.

This had been our routine since dad was laid-off a few months ago. Apparently, he was having an affair with one of his co-workers. When other people found out about it, she accused him of inappropriate behavior, and to save face, they laid him off, while she escaped scot-free. Whatever actually happened, he had devolved into using what little money he had into horse race betting—with predictable results. Meanwhile, my mom had been a stay-at-home wife for a long time, but she was forced into finding a part-time job to keep the food on the table.

And in the middle of all this, was me, with chronic migraines. Obviously, with money this tight, they couldn’t afford more specific—and expensive—drugs and treatments. “It’s just a bad headache,” they said. Fuck them.

Obviously, none of this passed through my mind at the time. I knew my parents were going to continue fighting until the evening; they probably wouldn’t even notice I had come home until they saw my shoes on the cubby. After hanging a “Do Not Disturb” sign on my door, I put on my earplugs and headphones, blasting the sound of calming rain, took the only pill that was mildly effective at this point, and laid on my bed. My wet uniform was left discarded on the side; I didn’t even bother putting on a pajama or anything.

As the pain worsened my wild, feverish thoughts, I started feeling my eyes getting moist. My life was fairly miserable. It felt like a literal application of Murphy’s law—everything that could go wrong was going wrong. My family didn’t care for me, I had no friends to support me, I was in near-constant pain, I had those bullies constantly after me, and I couldn’t do most things I wanted to.

At this rate, I had nothing left to live for. I was that rock-bottom.

As my consciousness began fading, the only thing left in my thoughts was a simple wish.

I just wish I could escape it all.