A thin veil of mist hangs in the air.
Nagano lay silently beneath it, the night unbroken, every crevice pressed under its weight. Drops of water gathered on the streets and rooftops, coating the city in a faint shimmer under the glow of streetlights. Even the houses seemed illusory, softened beneath the pale light.
The rain left its traces everywhere—beading on blades of grass, collecting on windshields, and clinging to telephone wires. No cars passed through the quiet neighborhoods. No birds fluttered on poles, and no mice skittered across the sidewalks.
Only one soul embraced this tranquil atmosphere. A young man, his black hair saturated with rain and sweat, unbothered by droplets of water gliding down the ridges of his soft ears. His hands were relaxed at his sides. His veins pulsed faintly under his skin.
His soft, vacant eyes gathered the suspended mist, droplets beading on his eyelashes. The gentle gradient in his iris, resembling the heartwood of a dark oak, was drawn to the ball's gentle tapping at his feet.
His bare feet, with blades of grass sticking to his soles, rose and dropped rhythmically, keeping a football afloat. Unfazed by the passing night, the man continued juggling at a steady rate, enveloped by the silence all around him.
Aoyama Ryo only cared for football. He couldn't enjoy movies, he couldn't play video games, and he couldn't silently read books. There were many things he could never do in his life. Most importantly, he could never play football in a grand, national stadium.
All of this, just because Ryo had lost his sight at a young age. He could barely remember the last time he saw clearly. When he was five, the images that made up the world became harder to see. He would bump into furniture and have trouble locating objects in front of him.
Noticing something was wrong, his parents took him to see a doctor, who confirmed their biggest fears. Ryo was losing his sight, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.
His parents, determined to do anything to make their son better, went to dozens of doctors throughout Japan. They all said the same thing—that they didn't know what it was.
After breaking down and begging the twentieth doctor to make her son better, Ryo's mom finally succeeded. The doctor accepted Ryo as a patient and started looking at his condition. Over the course of many visits, the doctor listened, studied, and at last explained the cruel truth.
"It isn't the eyes," he said. "Think of sight like an old camera. The shutter opens, light passes through, and the film captures the image. For Ryo, the shutter works, but there's no film. The light reaches him, but nothing develops into a picture."
The problem wasn't in Ryo's eyes at all. It was his brain—the part that turned light into the world before him was failing. Even if he were given new eyes, it would change nothing.
Since there was no way for him to replace his brain, and no drugs could cure him, there was nothing that could stop the encroachment of darkness. So all his family could do was slowly watch him turn blind.
It was painful for his parents to watch. Every time Ryo would bump into furniture or trip over stairs, they were heartbroken. They knew he would never live the life he could have lived. There would always need to be someone there for him, whether his family or a future wife, to help him navigate the world where being blind is an exception, not the norm.
He might one day be happy; he might find someone to love, or he might find his purpose in life. His life was by no means over, but no parent would wish for their child to experience such setbacks. All they could do was support him the best they could to make his life better.
Thus, not long before he turned six, Ryo lost his sight completely. His vision had been slowly fading away until he couldn't make out his surroundings anymore. It was an expected development, but tragic nonetheless.
During the final visit, the doctor mentioned that he had studied Ryo's condition extensively. He said that nobody in the world became blind in the same way as Ryo. It wasn't known whether his condition was a genetic defect or a virulent disease, but the development of this type of blindness was only known as an urban legend—patients suddenly losing their sight until it disappears completely.
He dubbed it "Neuro-Ocular Severance Disorder," or NOSD for short. Ryo was the most well-documented patient of NOSD, with no one else studied so extensively since its onset. Most cases known were dismissed, having been experienced in places with minimal healthcare infrastructure, where their conditions weren't well studied. So, in a way, Ryo was a pioneer who gave insight into the disease, as morbid as that might sound.
The doctor's theories on NOSD, largely derived from his observations of Ryo, centered on its defining characteristic: "True Void Vision." Unlike other forms of complete visual impairment, where individuals may still perceive light, Ryo remained completely shrouded in darkness. Typically, complete blindness only results in a loss of images, allowing patients to see either "white nothingness" or "black nothingness" depending on light exposure.
However, the doctor hypothesized that, suffering from NOSD, Ryo's brain was unable to process light, leading him to "see" an empty, abyssal darkness. Most peculiarly, though, Ryo's eyes themselves still functioned properly; he could blink normally, his pupils dilated and constricted, and he could "look around." He showed no signs of cataracts or lazy eye as a consequence of NOSD. This peculiar preservation of ocular function, coupled with the profound absence of sight, led the doctor to name this phenomenon "True Void Vision," vividly conveying the victim's experience of gazing into an abyss.
Most bizarrely, though, Ryo's blindness was medically unexplainable. While some evaluations solidified the fact that Ryo was functionally blind, Imaging of his head revealed healthy ocular organs, optic tracts, and visual cortex, offering no basis for his lack of sight.
Ryo had patiently listened to the information presented, but it wasn't until much later in his life that he was truly able to understand the weight behind his doctor's diagnosis. Essentially, he was perfectly healthy, yet for some reason, his sight had failed.
Barely a week after his final visit with the doctor, one that had sealed his fate, Ryo had gotten up in the middle of the night. He slowly shuffled his feet as he was feeling his way around the walls to find the bathroom. Before he turned the doorknob, Ryo stopped as he heard his mother's mournful voice coming from her bedroom,
"Ryo has such beautiful eyes," she paused as the words were caught in her throat, "I am sure the world would have been beautiful through his eyes."
With his mom's muffled cries echoing through the hall, Ryo silently opened the bathroom door. From that point on, Ryo vowed to do his best to adapt to his life without sight. No matter what stood in his way, he would always try to make himself happy; he didn't want to give a reason for his mom to cry.