The autumn air bit at Darius Dakota's exposed neck, a feeble counterpoint to the warmth blooming in his groin as he hunched over his phone.
Seventeen years. Seventeen years of this – the scuffed sneakers, the hand-me-down jacket that always smelled faintly of mothballs, the crushing weight of invisibility.
The world outside his dim bedroom buzzed with lives he only witnessed through pixels: the jocks laughing too loud in the hallway, the couples whispering behind the bleachers, the endless, grating parade of people doing things.
People living.
His life? A pathetic loop of school lunches spent hunched over his phone, escaping into worlds where guys like him weren't just tolerated, they were adored. Worlds where a lucky bastard, confident and smooth, could land a job under a gorgeous, powerful boss lady and systematically, brilliantly, build a harem.
He'd found it.
The One.
An anime so perfect, a protagonist so achingly cool, a fantasy so tailored to his deepest, most perverted yearnings that it felt like a sign. He'd spent every spare second of his lunch break devouring the first episode.
The boss lady, Ms. Alistair – sharp suits, sharper wit, eyes that promised both ruin and reward – had just hired the protagonist. He'd smirked, a plan already forming behind his charming eyes.
"The conquest is beginning," Darius thought, a shiver of pure, geeky anticipation racing through him. He's going to do it. He's actually going to seduce her. Darius could already picture the binge, the dark room, the stolen hours of vicarious triumph.
The bell signaling the end of lunch shrieked, wrenching him from the glowing screen. He shoved the phone into his pocket, the vivid images of Ms. Alistair's confident stride and the protagonist's knowing smile still burned onto his retinas.
His body felt heavy, disconnected, the usual post-fantasy slump settling in.
He joined the river of students flowing towards the crosswalk, head still down, thoughts consumed by the intricate seduction plot he'd never see unfold. Would he use humor? Feigned incompetence? A carefully engineered moment of vulnerability?
The crosswalk signal beeped its permission. Darius shuffled forward, eyes still glued to the cracked pavement, lost in the fantasy of a life he'd never have. He never heard the initial rumble of the engine, too focused on the imagined dialogue in his head.
He never saw the massive, grime-smeared grill of the delivery truck bearing down, the driver's face a mask of horrified realization.
The horn blared – one short, deafening blast that tore through the mundane afternoon noise. It was the only warning.
Impact was not an event; it was an erasure. Two tons of steel met a scrawny, unprepared teenage frame. There was no time to process, only a violent, sickening CRUNCH that vibrated through his bones. Darius's body became a projectile, flung with brutal casualness into the air.
He saw the sky, impossibly blue, spinning wildly above the startled faces turned upwards. His phone flew from his grasp, skittering across the asphalt like a doomed insect.
He landed. Or rather, crumpled. The sound was wet, final. Pain didn't just explode; it infused every cell, a screaming, white-hot agony that obliterated thought. He lay broken on the cold, dirty ground, the taste of blood and ozone thick in his mouth.
Warm pool of liquid spread beneath his head, sticky and terrifying.
Around him, reality shattered. High-pitched screams ripped through the air, raw and primal. "OH MY GOD!" "
SOMEONE CALL 911! NOW!"
"IS HE BREATHING?"
Footsteps scrambled towards him, a cacophony of panic forming a horrifying chorus. He saw faces, warped with shock and disgust, looming over him. Faces that used to look right through him were now fixed upon his shattered form. He'd finally gotten their attention.
Through the blinding pain, through the roaring in his ears that was half the crowd, half his own body failing, only one coherent thought surfaced, bitter and hollow: Regrets. Regrets stacked like unpaid bills. Never kissed a girl. Never felt like he mattered. Never stood up to his dad's disappointed silences.
And the newest, most cutting regret of all: He'll never know if the plan worked. That lucky bastard protagonist had just gotten started! Ms. Alistair hasn't even begun to fall for his carefully crafted trap! The ultimate harem, the perfect conquest… it was all slipping away, unresolved, like a show canceled mid-season.
Tears mingled with the real blood on his cheeks – tears for a fictional paradise lost.
"At least I found the perfect porn genre before dying a virgin," the thought surfaced, pathetically small against the tsunami of his destruction.
Small fucking comfort.
Darkness didn't creep; it devoured. It swallowed the edges of his vision, erasing the horrified faces, the screaming sky, the pooling blood. Agony receded into a chilling numbness. His soul, the pathetic, horny, invisible loser that was Darius Dakota, felt stretched thin, then lighter, then… detached. slipping silently, irretrievably, away from the ruined meat that had been his life.