There's a limit to how much a person can lose before they stop being human.
At least, that's what I learned.
My story doesn't begin with a car crash or some sudden accident.
It begins with something much quieter. Much crueler.
It begins with sincerity.
Because I was the kind of fool who thought sincerity was enough.
It all started with her.
Her name was Aya, and she was the first one I thought I could trust. We met during university. She laughed at my dumb jokes, leaned on me when exams crushed her, and smiled in a way that made the world feel lighter.
I gave her everything I could. My time. My heart. My future plans, all shaped around the idea that she'd be there beside me.
And then one night, I found out.
Not because she confessed. Not because she felt guilty.
But because one of my so-called friends let it slip at a drinking party, his words slurring too much to keep the secret.
The truth? Aya had been cheating on me for months.
And not just with anyone. With someone I knew.
When I confronted her, I didn't shout. I didn't scream. I just asked why.
She didn't even have the decency to look ashamed.
"You're a nice guy," she said, as if that was an apology. "But nice isn't enough. I need someone more ambitious, more exciting. You… you play it too safe. You are pretty boring "
Her words cut deeper than if she'd just spat in my face. Because to her, my sincerity—my loyalty—wasn't a virtue. It was boring.
I walked away that night with a hollow in my chest I couldn't fill.
But at least I had my friends. Or so I thought.
"Hey, Yujiro, cheer up, man," one of them had said the week after. "You're a nice guy. Don't sweat over your girlfriend too much. She cheated because she was unfaithful and stupid. Stop beating yourself up over her. She isn't worth your time. How about we talk about that presentation that's coming along?"
They laughed, clapped me on the back, told me I'd bounce back. I believed them.
I stayed up nights working on that project—polishing the data, perfecting the visuals, crafting every argument until it gleamed. Because if nothing else, work was the one place where sincerity should count.
Except it didn't.
The day of the presentation, I walked into the conference room to see them—my "friends"—already standing at the front. My slides on the screen. My research in their mouths.
And when the applause came, it wasn't for me.
It was for them.
I stood in the crowd, hands trembling, unable to even raise my voice. Because who would believe me? Who would side with the quiet, dependable one over the charming liars who stole my work?
I told myself it was fine. That I'd move on. That next time, I'd keep my ideas to myself.
But the truth was simple: they had gutted me, and the company handed them the knife.
At least I still had my family.
My father, worn down by years of labor but still smiling across tired dinners. My mom always humming and being a support with her love. My younger sister, Mika, tugging at my sleeve with dumb jokes to pull me out of my gloom.
They believed in me. Even when the world spat in my face, they told me I wasn't worthless. That sincerity mattered. That good people weren't always forgotten.
But life didn't spare them either.
My father collapsed first, his heart finally giving out after decades of endless shifts. My mother followed months later, her body eaten away by illness. And Mika—sweet, bright Mika—one rainy night, the car that hit her didn't even stop.
One by one, the house that had been filled with warmth emptied, until silence was all that was left.
I should have stayed there, I know. It was the home we built together, the walls that had heard both our arguments and our laughter. But I couldn't.
I couldn't walk past Mika's room without expecting her to tumble out with a stupid joke. I couldn't sit at the dinner table without hearing my mother humming under her breath. I couldn't close my eyes in my father's chair without feeling his hand on my shoulder.
The truth was cruel: the house hadn't gone silent. It was filled with echoes.
Echoes that reminded me, every waking moment, of what I had lost.
So I sold it.
Not because I wanted to, but because staying in those walls was suffocating.
I moved into a rented flat. A small, gray box with no memories to haunt me. But the silence there was worse. Empty, hollow nights where the quiet didn't carry echoes—it carried nothing at all.
No warmth. No laughter. No family.
Just me.
And then there was work.
I should've had at least that, right? A career to fall back on. A future to build.
But my friends—no, my betrayers—were there too. Watching them rise on the back of my stolen work, seeing them praised in the same hallways where I was ignored… it made every shift unbearable.
So I quit.
I told myself I'd find something else, that I'd get by with the money from the house for a while. But the truth was simpler: working in the same company as them was suffocating. Every corridor, every desk, every project reminded me of how easily people could carve me open and take what was mine.
So I cut myself away from it all.
And that's how I ended up here.
A rented room with walls the color of ash, a single lightbulb flickering overhead, the nights so quiet I could hear my own breathing scrape against my ribs.
And in that room, my body finally gave out.
It wasn't an accident that took me. No speeding car, no mugger's knife.
It was exhaustion. Loneliness.
The slow grind of despair that hollowed me out until my body simply broke.
I lay in bed, staring at the cracked ceiling, chest seizing with every shallow breath. I couldn't even cry anymore.
And that's when the truth struck me: sincerity was a curse.
All my life, I'd given, and given, and given. And all the world had done was take.
Aya took my heart.
My friends took my work.
Fate took my family.
Even my home, my last sanctuary, was stripped from me by my own weakness.
Everything I loved, stolen.
So in those final moments, I made a promise—not to God, not to fate, but to myself.
If the world takes everything from me… then in the next life, I'll take everything from the world.
My vision blurred. The ceiling faded into black.
And in the silence, something answered.
Cold. Vast. Whispering.
Take. Consume. Own.
The darkness swallowed me whole.
I thought it was my end but, was it now?