Memoirs of Johan — Chapter 1:The First Whisper
I was twelve when I first realised something inside me was different. Until then I had chalked it up to being too observant, too sensitive, a boy who noticed things others missed. But that day with Rosa at the Collège Sainte-Claire marked the beginning of everything that followed.
The playground smelled of chalk and warm baguettes from the canteen. Rosa, a year older than me, laughed as she tried to snatch my exercise book. We were always teasing each other; she had a quick smile, hair like spilled ink, and eyes that dared you to look away. I lunged to grab my notebook back and, in the scuffle, my hand brushed her waist. It should have been nothing. But the moment my fingers grazed her shirt, a rush of sensation and knowing poured into me—like opening a door into a room I wasn't meant to see.
In a flash, I felt her desire—bright, startling, secret. She wanted me to hold her there, to pull her closer, though she'd never have said it aloud. I jerked my hand away as though burned. The knowledge wasn't a thought in words but a pulse, a whisper inside my own chest.
Rosa kept laughing, unaware of what I had just experienced. I stood there stunned, cheeks burning. For a boy as fair and fragile as I was then—skin pale, limbs thin, a head full of ideas—the moment felt impossibly adult. At twelve, my IQ had already tested off the charts, 180 they said, and my emotional awareness was sharper still. But no test had prepared me for that.
That evening, alone in my small room, I stared at my hands. My body had always been a puzzle. Born small, often sickly, my growth had been stunted for years. Yet in the mirror my face was already changing—high cheekbones, clear grey-green eyes, a beauty people remarked on but I didn't know how to carry. By eighteen, I would stand six foot two. At twelve, I still looked like a fragile porcelain version of the man I would become. And now, with Rosa's secret echoing inside me, I felt as though I'd crossed a line no child should cross.
It was the first whisper of the gift—curse—that would shape my life. I didn't know its name then. I only knew that I could sense the forbidden thoughts of a girl who hadn't even spoken them, and that nothing would ever be simple again.
It wasn't the first time I'd sensed something unspoken. Looking back, the whispers had been there all along, flickering at the edge of perception like the flick of a match before the flame. When I was six, I remember my parents arguing in the kitchen, voices rising like a storm through the apartment. My father's words were hard and clipped; my mother's, Élise, brittle as glass. And then, in a heartbeat, something shifted inside me. For a split second I felt her longing—sharp, aching—not for revenge or rebuttal but simply for his arms around her. She wanted him to stop fighting, to pull her close. The feeling was so clear it made me dizzy. I ran to my room and hid under the covers, convinced the walls had spoken to me. Later that night I crept back to the kitchen and found them embracing silently, my father's hand smoothing her hair exactly the way I had felt she wanted.
Another time, at my seventh birthday party, Anna and I sat before our cake, two identical plates in front of us. The frosting was our favourite: chocolate and orange peel. Everyone sang, the candles flickered. I closed my eyes to make a wish and in that instant felt a jolt—Anna's tiny, guilty desire for a bigger slice. It wasn't jealousy exactly, more a child's sudden hunger sharpened by the smell of sugar. When the cake was cut I slid the larger piece onto her plate without thinking. She looked at me with wide eyes and whispered "thank you" as though I'd read her mind. I laughed it off, but a tremor passed through me; I had known before she'd said a word.
These moments were fleeting, gone in microseconds, but they accumulated like pebbles in a jar. By the time of the incident with Rosa, the jar was full enough to rattle. My ability—or whatever it was—felt both intimate and invasive, like standing too close to someone's diary while the pages flutter open of their own accord.
I learned quickly to hide it. At school I kept my head down, pretending my perfect answers were guesswork, my empathy coincidence. Teachers praised my brilliance; classmates whispered about my strangeness. Anna was my anchor. She was the only person I could talk to without fear of stumbling into forbidden territory. Even with her, I didn't confess what I could do. Instead I turned it into games—predicting which teacher would scold us next, finishing her sentences. She thought it was a twin thing, and maybe on some level it was. But deep down I knew it went far beyond sibling intuition.
Sometimes the ability felt like a blessing. I could sense when Élise was sad and bring her tea before she asked. I could feel the tremor of Davies's pride before he voiced it. But more often it felt like a trap. The more I tuned in, the more I heard what was never meant for me: the flicker of desire in a teacher's glance, the secret grudges between friends, the hidden shame behind a neighbour's smile. It was like living in a room where everyone was whispering and only I could hear.
After Rosa, I started building walls inside myself. I told myself it had been a misunderstanding, that all boys at twelve had wild imaginings. Yet the memory persisted: the warmth of her waist, the shock of her unspoken wish rushing into me. And beneath it all, a flicker of exhilaration, because part of me had liked knowing. Part of me had felt powerful.
Years later, when my height shot up and my features sharpened, that power would draw people to me like moths to a lamp. But at twelve, it only made me feel old and lonely. I still see myself standing in that schoolyard—pale, brilliant, fragile—watching Rosa walk away, already knowing more about desire than I had any right to know.
I didn't have a name for it then. Gift. Curse. Burden. I only knew that the whispers were growing louder, and that nothing in my life would ever be normal again.
I used to think the little jolts I felt were harmless—children's hunches dressed up as insight. But as I grew, the whispers sharpened, became more complicated. By the time Rosa's secret wish burned through me in the schoolyard, I already had a catalogue of moments like flickering film stills.
One of the most vivid was Mrs. Sam.
She and her husband lived across the hall from us, a tall woman with pressed skirts and a soft, tired smile. Mr. Sam was boisterous, always whistling on the stairwell, always greeting my father in the evenings with a clap on the back. As a boy, I liked the smell of their apartment when the door opened—fried plantain, lavender soap.
One winter afternoon when I was about nine, I heard the click of Mrs. Sam's heels before I even saw her. She had come home early from work, shopping bag in hand, perfume too sweet. She smiled at me as she passed in the corridor, but in the instant her eyes met mine I felt it—guilt, hot and metallic, like biting a coin. It poured into me before I could stop it: a rush of shame, of wanting to hide, of rehearsed excuses. It wasn't the vague sadness I'd felt from my mother in the kitchen years before; this was heavier, secretive, grown-up.
I remember freezing there with my schoolbag, the way a child does when he sees something forbidden. She swept past me into the apartment, shutting the door quickly. A moment later Mr. Sam's laughter boomed from inside, and then silence.
I didn't understand everything at the time. All I knew was that she was carrying something she didn't want him to know. My stomach knotted. That night, I couldn't sleep. Her guilt had seeped into me like ink in water.
Weeks later, the building buzzed with gossip: Mr. and Mrs. Sam fighting, doors slamming, visits from relatives. Then Mr. Sam left, suitcase banging down the stairs. It emerged slowly, in hushed adult conversations, that Mrs. Sam had been seeing someone from her office. "Unsatisfied," my mother whispered to my father one night when they thought I was asleep. "She felt unseen." The divorce papers came soon after.
I lay in my bed listening, the memory of that metallic guilt still fresh. For the first time I realised my strange flickers weren't just about small hungers—a bigger slice of cake, a hug after an argument. They could reach into darker corners, into betrayals and longings I wasn't supposed to witness. The knowledge frightened me.
After that, I began to avoid Mrs. Sam in the corridor. She moved out a few months later. I never told anyone what I had felt that day, but it lodged itself in me like a splinter. If I had known how to speak about it, maybe I would have asked for help. Instead I learned to mask my reactions, to build a polite smile over the things I felt from others.