Chapter 1: Before the Curtain Rises

People often call me a stone of despair out of the mountain of hope and they couldn’t be that far from the truth. Why, you ask? It’s because I’m the darkest stone among the others lying at Mt. Hope. A black hole near the bright stars. But I wouldn’t let anyone address me with that sort of title.

It’s because I am what you’d call a damsel at the wrong address. Well, perhaps that’s not the most proverb-perfect use but in my case, however, it’s most definitely true. Plus, the phrase aptly represents me, so I’d prefer to be referred to with that title instead.

The reason I’d label myself like that is simple—I’m just the odd one out. I am the misfit between the fits. Never originally belonged to the inner circle. Even if I wanted—or didn’t.

No one truly looked at me, as if I didn’t exist, as if I weren’t there from the beginning.

However, there was a catch—entities. Entities or oddities that accompanied me from the beginning of myself. Although seeing them isn’t capable, and neither are they permitted to be seen unless it’s me who’s looking at them.

The reason was plain and clear—throughout heaven and hell I alone am certified of seeing these unseen existences and I’m damn sure that they’re not my delusions (jokes aside I really don’t know why). Although I can’t 100% prove it to you guys, the endless rambling of mysterious silhouettes with their limbs in distorted angles that my brain can’t even begin to comprehend, can’t be unreal.

I might be a contrarian, or should I say, contradictorian. The proof of the pudding is in the eating—I can’t prove what I’ve eaten until you try to rip open me and examine what I ate.

I can’t prove to you VISION exists unless you put yourself in my shoes, in my eyes.

Anyway, I call them VISION, short for Vile Indigenous and Seriously Ill Obstinate Neighbors. (By the way, I used the words ‘indigenous’ and ‘obstinate’ because they’re always stuck where they unfortunately die).

VISIONs are right there, but no one pretends to see them. No one wants to see them... and why the hell not? They aren’t beings anyone would like to indulge with, though the vice versa shouldn’t be untrue too. Who knows, they might hate us humans similarly. But at the very least they aren’t undesirable unlike me, especially from my classmates’ point of view.

VISIONs have pushed my life to the boundaries of weirdness and utter pitifulness, which didn’t only leak out from strangers but also from my parents. This also justifies why I remember being in the presence of a psychiatrist from the dawn of my memories.

Plus, thanks to them, my classmates distanced themselves from me, apparently as a mark of merit for a gloomy and delusional individual. This is exactly why I ended up becoming friendless despite receiving an education for fourteen-and-a-half years, or that’s what I’d have loved to say but unfortunately, I’ve got an unusual friend. A friend who accompanied me in my fight against loneliness and VISIONs(?). She was also one of the two persons who had kept me sane enough to be alive.

Her personality is even beyond my comprehension of the seven wonders of the world, which I don’t certainly understand. Even her name ‘Pilo’ doesn’t make any sense, or maybe it does! She’s the kind of person who always gets slept on (literally). Maybe the secret lies under her comfy appearance which would have manipulated her parents to name something like that, or they just had a bad naming sense.

Her face’s so fluffy that I unconsciously have my hands on her every now and then. Her skin feels softer than the surface of an ice glass but her personality emits thermal radiation more than the sun’s surface—she’s way too determined.

But in a sense, she’s anti-me, an anti-Rei i.e., a complete opposite of me.

An idealistic and optimistic character unlike me, yet something pulls us together. A magnetic force, as the saying goes ‘Opposites attract.’

The other person who’d helped me was not a human in proper terms but a game. Yes, basketball—a game, or rather a concept. Anyway, whatever he was, he was important.

A real friend, honest and true-hearted, never-betraying and never-changing. A friend who’s a bit difficult to communicate with, but he’s always there to help me through difficult times.

Though being friends with a concept might sound too romantic, if not delusional.

Anyway, communicating with basketball may sound difficult as I mentioned before but with sheer determination it’s possible, and to achieve it only eliminating every possible distraction would work which I’m very good at...

Who am I kidding? I’m faithfully the doll of distraction—it might not be an overstatement to say there isn’t a single thing I’ve ever accomplished without distractions playing a part in it. But those distractions are important for me to continue living or should I say ‘were’ important?

Although both of them—Basketball and Pilo, are and still will remain my besties, the absence of VISIONs in my life is oddly devastating. So much that it felt worse than a breakup, not that I ever went through one.

It happened a few months ago when I turned 16. Just when the happy birthday song playing on my laptop came to an end (it was Pilo who had set it up), I heard a small ‘goodbye’ in a chorus after which I never saw them ever again. I was completely torn off from my VISIONs. Their erasure of existence was so perfect, and so well done, that it left me with a sense of unprecedented and unbearable loneliness It was a matter of fact that I was scared of them but never in a thousand years had I predicted them to abandon me.

Their existence was crucial but not in the proper sense. They made me feel special, as I alone possessed the qualification to look at them. Their eerie eyes always felt invasive, as if seeing through me. I couldn’t deceive them and neither could they, which I believe, made us the closest beings in this universe.

Nevertheless, I’ve already abandoned such feelings of abandonment, leaving them like a child in an amusement park (well, I still had to live my life so I couldn’t be sulking all the time). And now I’m ready to participate in the interschool basketball finals which is right in front of me.

The match awaited me eagerly, like a maiden longing for her lover, and I’d to answer those feelings quickly, but cautiously.

So, I tried to trust what I believed and held dear, at least for today.

Therefore, I took a deep breath and strode onto the center of the colosseum of athletes—the basketball court where both the teams were already done warming up (including me).

I was coerced to take tiny steps, a result of my clumsy nervousness triggered by the millions if not hundreds of gazes.

I walk and walk swiftly but grandly, raising the dust like an arrogant nouveau riche—

“...”

And guess what happened next? I fall! I crashed the ground with a dynamite sound which made the people fall as silent as the silence before a storm and then burst out with catastrophic laughter.

“Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha,” the laughter echoed not just from my opponents but also from my teammates and the entire audience. How amusing.

“This couldn’t be worse, hopefully,” I mumbled to myself.

I couldn’t let that get me, even an inch. So, I stood up straight away and brushed myself as if nothing wrong had happened. Nothing embarrassing enough to run away from my responsibilities.

Anyway, in this school, competitions didn't start with the referee's whistle; instead, we had a tradition of commencing them with the bell ringing. Which in my opinion, was very obnoxious.

Seriously, this is a competition, not a school period, you know?

Next, at exactly 13:06, moments after the 'tomorrow's news headline' accident had ended, a loud noise marked the beginning of this highly enthusiastic competition!

An unfitting time to start, but nothing to fuss about.

The match began without any other hitches. My clumsiness was as clear as glass, no, actually light, but my capabilities weren’t clear, no, they actually were. As if it were routine, I was positioned at the center, utilizing both my skills and my towering height of 190cm, which were too precious to be kept in a corner or as a defense.

My teamwork is, yes, horrendous but I make it up with my skills. Nevertheless, in a game of basketball, there was no place for an uncoordinated and prideful girl. I had to work hard and harder with my teammates. As it’d be impossible for me alone to stitch the cloth named ‘victory’.

I managed to score two baskets. Yet, despite my naive attempts to entertain the spectators and secure victory, our team found ourselves in a stalemate with the other—a draw-like situation. The score remained 3-3 even after two quarters, making it an evenly matched game.

It was really tough holding our ground on the court. Honestly, both teams didn't shine when it came to defense. Our team, especially, was pretty bad—we couldn't even manage basic catches without fumbling. The problem was evident: we had only one star player, and that happened to be yours truly. Putting modesty aside, without my efforts, we wouldn't have clinched victory.

Unfortunately, my remarks had to turn out like that despite having worked with them for a year, right after that accident. How saddening and how depressing.

Anyway, it was only a three-quarter match, so we had just one more quarter to secure the win and erase the memory of my embarrassing fall from the audience.

The third quarter started right away with the referee's whistle, leaving me almost no time to take a break. Well, when I looked at my teammates, I only found myself exhausted—that really says about their contribution to this match.

It’s not like I could complain right now, though.

I can certainly do my best (which I'm exceptionally good at), and expect us to promptly win, even if they don't match up to my skills.

The undeniable reality was that my once-formidable stamina was dwindling. I found myself gradually depleting the energy I had once taken immense pride in, even though I continued to outperform my fellow players. So, amidst the unbalanced match, I seized a few seconds for a break, timing it meticulously when the ball was in capable hands, or maybe not. Nonetheless, there was no room for concern, not even the tiniest bit of worry!

Somehow, in this short break, my eyes averted from the ball as if a magnet pulled them, making me witness something ridiculous and impossible.

A boy stood outside the court. Of course, my eyes weren’t deceiving me. I was really seeing a boy outside of an all-girls high school. This was like a once-in-a-decade, no, once-in-a-century happening, super unbelievable. But what made it even more distinct was him. He was a VISION, something which I thought had vanished for bad.

He looked at me as though he had seen a ghost, which is quite contrary to his existence. His eyes looked colder than the ranging Antarctic storms and his pale skin was as white as a silver plate with no dining. Without a doubt, he belonged to the death culture despite not possessing a shred of blood-freezing horror. He was a VISION.

Despite that, there was a sense of odd curiosity in his eyes.

Deeply drowned in my self-explanation of him, I was forcefully awakened by the ball that hit me and was followed by a dialogue that went like “Rei, catch!” from one of my teammates who thought it was the best to throw the ball at me when I looked away.

Light sure does travel faster than sound.

A cracking noise was emitted from my face as a radio signal.

A noise, so loud, so horrendous that it could’ve horrified any potential athlete, or should I say, any model who’d become famous for her face. And to be honest I didn’t like the sound of it.

A disturbing and over-the-top noise that made me regain my senses for the final time in a while.

That’s when I finally realized the game was over for me...

The ball had collided with my nose, leaving me dazed and hapless amidst an event that could have been one of the greatest days of my life.

Blackening out on the court, I saw that no one rushed to aid me. What an unfunny charade.

It felt like the world had won, and I lost. I’d been defeated in my fight to remain in the “inner circle.”