He followed his friend up the narrow staircase to the first floor, each step creaking beneath their weight. The bedroom was dim, curtains half drawn, letting in only a thin slice of light that cut across the dust-filled air. It felt closed off from the rest of the house, quiet in a way that pressed against the ears.
He dropped his bag beside the bed and sank onto the edge of the mattress. For a moment, he said nothing, staring at the floor as if the words themselves were reluctant to surface. Then, slowly, he began to explain everything. The sleepless nights. The missed exam. The broken cycle chain. The sudden decision to abandon the familiar road.
His friend showed no reaction to what he had done. No shock. No scolding. Not even surprise. To him, skipping an exam was nothing unusual.
After all, his friend had not attended school properly for nearly two years. He never came to regular classes. He skipped practical sessions, ignored half-yearly examinations, and was absent even during the annual practicals. While others struggled through attendance and assessments, he appeared only once a year, calm and unbothered, solely to give the final annual examination.
Because of that, the boy's situation did not seem reckless or alarming to him. It was simply another choice. Another deviation from the path society expected them to follow. And in the dim quiet of the bedroom, it felt as though both of them were standing at the edge of something far larger than exams or school, even if neither of them said it aloud.
Two hours slipped away without either of them noticing.
They lay sprawled across the bed and floor, endlessly scrolling through reels and YouTube shorts, laughing at nonsense that would be forgotten seconds later. Their conversations drifted aimlessly, circling back again and again to the same frustrations—the recklessness of the government, its indifference toward ordinary people, officials who never did their jobs yet never faced consequences. Complaints piled upon complaints, empty words filling the room like stale air.
Eventually, the topic shifted, as it always did.
Girls.
They began ranking the most beautiful girls from their school, arguing over faces, smiles, rumors, and fleeting glances. Names were thrown around carelessly, followed by talk of online celebrities and adult stars, spoken with the casual detachment of boys killing time, unaware of how hollow the conversation sounded.
Then, just as abruptly, the mood changed.
Their attention drifted toward anime—worlds far removed from their own. They talked about power systems, impossible abilities, intricate storylines, characters who bent reality with sheer will. Compared to those worlds, their own lives felt small, tightly boxed, painfully ordinary.
His friend suddenly spoke, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
"Imagine," he said quietly, "what if we had powers like that?"
The room fell silent for a brief moment.
He let out a short breath, half a laugh, half a sigh.
"Then," his friend replied, staring into the dim light cutting through the curtains, "that would've been crazy."
Neither of them said it aloud, but the thought lingered—because somewhere beneath the jokes and meaningless talk, both of them felt it.
That reality was suffocating.
And that a different world, no matter how dark or dangerous, might still be better than this one.
After a brief silence, he turned toward his friend, eyes faintly lit with a restless spark.
"What if we started writing a story?" he said. Then, as if the thought excited him the moment it left his mouth, he added, "An imaginary one. Something unbelievable. A story where we have full control… where we can do whatever we want."
His friend did not answer immediately.
Instead, he stared at the ceiling, watching the slow rotation of the fan as if measuring his thoughts against it. When he finally spoke, his voice was calm, almost detached.
"But for a good story," he said, "it needs more than imagination. It needs a solid storyline. Plot twists. Arcs. An antagonist and a protagonist. A main character, side characters, a proper world, and readers who can believe in it."
He paused, then continued, more bluntly,
"The characters and the world have to feel real. And right now, we can't do that."
The room grew quiet again.
His friend kept staring upward, eyes unfocused, as though looking at something far beyond the ceiling.
"We don't have that kind of creative thinking," he said at last. "Not that kind of imagination. So it's better if we don't even try."
The words settled heavily in the air.
Yet somewhere beneath the resignation, beneath the acceptance of limits, something stirred. Not spoken. Not acknowledged. A faint, dangerous thought that perhaps imagination was not something one was born with—but something awakened.
And if awakened, it might demand a price.
After that, they did not speak about writing again. The thought faded into the background, buried beneath silence and idle time. Eventually, he rose from the bed, slung his bag over his shoulder, and left his friend's house without ceremony.
The journey home felt longer than usual.
When he reached his house, the familiar walls greeted him with a dull sense of normalcy. He changed his clothes, folding the old ones without care, then walked to the sink and washed his hands. The water ran cold over his fingers, grounding him in reality as the smell of lunch drifted through the house.
He sat down to eat.
Midway through the meal, his mother looked at him and asked casually,
"How was the exam today?"
The spoon paused in his hand.
For a moment, he said nothing. Silence stretched between them, thin and uncomfortable. His mind searched for an answer, but there was none. He had not written a single word. He had not even entered the examination hall.
Still, he spoke.
"Yes," he said quietly, forcing the words out, "the exam was good."
His mother nodded, satisfied, and continued eating.
But the lie lingered.
It sat heavy in his chest, darker than expected, as if something unseen had taken note of it. And though nothing changed on the surface, something inside him shifted, subtle and irreversible, like the first crack in a wall that had stood for years.
That evening, as dusk bled slowly into night, he sat at his desk with his books spread open before him, pretending to study. The room was quiet, heavy with stillness, the kind that made every small sound feel louder than it should have been.
Then the wind came.
It rushed in suddenly through the open window, cold and sharp, scattering the silence. The curtains fluttered violently, and the pages of an old diary lying nearby began to flip on their own, rustling as if stirred by unseen hands.
He froze.
For a moment, he only watched.
Then something stirred inside his mind. Not a voice. Not a command. Just a pull. A thought that did not feel entirely his own.
He reached for the diary.
His fingers trembled slightly as he opened it, the blank page staring back at him like an invitation. Without thinking further, he picked up the pen and began to write.
Existence Destined
The words came easily, almost too easily.
After a brief pause, he added another line beneath it.
This is for those who do not believe in God, or in His presence.
As he wrote, his thoughts began to fracture. His mind refused to stay still. Images surfaced uninvited, vivid and disturbing. A boy lying motionless on the floor, his body soaked in blood. Another image followed, darker still. A boy hanging from a ceiling fan, eyes vacant, the room silent around him.
He squeezed his eyes shut, breath uneven, but the images lingered, etched into his thoughts like scars.
When he opened his eyes again, the pen was still moving.
At the bottom of the page, he wrote one final line.
Volume One: Cruel
The wind outside faded. The diary lay still.
The room returned to silence.
But something had already begun.