A Tragic Tale
I’ve never understood what people meant when they said “Childhood is the happiest time of your life.” If that’s true, then what does that make the rest of mine? A postscript? A punishment?
I was always the quiet one. Not because I was shy, I just never saw the point of talking. Other kids chattered like birds, screaming nonsense just to hear themselves echo. I watched them from the edge of the playground, the classroom, the field, puzzled. Why did they laugh so loudly at things that weren’t funny? Why did they chase each other in circles like dogs chasing tails?
They never knew what to do with me. I read at a tenth-grade level when I was eight. Numbers made sense to me. When everyone was struggling with fractions, I was having a blast with equations. Patterns are what make what we call “Education” all make sense. However, people do not. People do not make sense, they’re random, they’re messy, they strive to not follow orders. My teachers used to call me “gifted,” like it was a diagnosis. Maybe it was.
I’d finish assignments before the others finished reading the instructions. Then I’d sit there. Bored. Restless. Waiting for the clock to let me leave. I learned to fake struggling just to make time pass. Pretending to be like the rest took a toll on me, but not pretending always led to questions. I hated questions.
No one ever called me a weirdo to my face, but they didn’t need to. They avoided me like the plague, as if I was gonna bite them. No one sat beside me unless they really had to. No one ever invited me to their birthday party. I don’t remember ever being hugged by someone who wasn't obligated to.
And somewhere in all that silence, I realized something else.
I was different in other ways, too. When the other boys talked about girls, I mimicked them. Said names I didn’t care about. I laughed when they did, but inside. It felt like couching up ash.
But what would’ve been the point of saying I liked boys? Back then, it just seemed like another burden I didn’t want to carry. Another variable I’d have to account for.
So I didn’t say anything or asked for anything. I just existed around others. I was quiet I was efficient I was a machine.
Machines don’t need friends. Machines don’t get lonely.
Right?
Middle school, high school, they all blurred together.
Different buildings with the same routines. The same paper-thin smiles from the teachers and my classmates. Not even the bright fluorescent lights that buzzed above me changed.
I learned early on how to perform. People like it when you pretend to care about them so I became the best version of a person I could simulate. I answered questions when asked, I nodded at the right times. Turned in perfect assignments and faded into the background. Teachers liked me, I was the student they didn’t have to worry about at all and people love being lazy.
My classmates never acknowledged my existence, my last name is the only thing about me they knew. But it was fine, it was easier to manage, socializing takes times and brain power.
Everything became mechanical and predictable. Just a sequence of inputs and outputs, the machine that composed me was now the world that surrounded me. People were nothing but equations waiting to be solved. If you smile too long you’re insecure if you laugh too loud you’re just trying too hard. If you complain constantly you probably had nothing else to talk about.
I could predict conversations before they even happened, responses before they were given. It was like reading a script I didn’t audition for.
And I hated it.
Not them, not exactly. I hated how hollow it all felt, how every “how are you?” sounded like a rhetorical question. How every friendship seemed like a mere performance, like everyone was waiting for the other to drop the act first.
Sometimes I wondered if I was the broken one, a machine that just needed some troubleshooting. If everyone else really did feel some great joy in their stupid little rituals. Laughing at memes and nonsensical jokes. Crying over people they’d forget in a year. Was that what connection looked like? Because to me it looked like noise.
I never tried to make friends; I never saw the point in it. There was no spark, no pull, no ever made me want to know more about them. I watched people pair off, group up, orbit around each other like planets, while I stayed drifting in the cold void of space.
Romantic feelings? Please. I always knew I was gay, had known since I was thirteen, and caught myself staring too long at a boy in my class. But even then, it was distant.
I could recognize someone was attractive without feeling anything. I never burned for anyone. I was never obsessed about a person, never even dreamed of holding someone’s hand.
There was no one I wanted. No one who mattered.
Until him.
University was supposed to be different.
Most people talked about it like a fresh start. Full of new people, ideas. A place where even “people like me” could finally find their kind. Or whatever that meant.
But it wasn’t different. It was the same old machine, just with fancier labels and bigger egos. Same predictable dynamics, same performative friendships, and the exact same plastic smiles that stretched too tight. I recognized the patterns the moment I stepped on campus. It was like watching reruns of a show I never liked to begin with.
So I did what I always did. I stayed quiet, did my work on time and let the days pass like scenery from a train window. I was in that numb fog, drifting. Untouched. Unreachable. Unbothered.
And then… I saw him.
He wasn’t doing anything special. Just sitting on a bench in the Silberplatt park, sketching something on his lap, headphones on, eyes down. But I stopped
I actually stopped. My mind, which never shuts up. It paused.
He had white fur with silver end to it, soft and immaculate like freshly fallen snow. His ears flicked in little stutters, like he was tuned to a frequency no one else could hear. His eyes, when I eventually saw them, were this washed-out blue, like winter light filtered through a windowpane. They seemed tired and wary, like he didn’t quite belong in this world either.
A quiet sun. That’s what it felt like. Warm, yet distant. Glowing, but not blinding. He didn’t demand attention but repelled it. Like he’d built walls of silence, so think, even noise gave up. And yet I just couldn’t look away.
He was a soft-spoken contradiction. He looked shy but not fragile, like he was alone but not lost. Maybe sad, but not broken. There was something in the way he held his pencil, the way his shoulders curled inward, like he was trying to make himself smaller than the space he was allowed.
I couldn’t explain it, and I still can’t. But in that moment, something just. Clicked. Maybe even snapped in my brain.
He was the anomaly. The one variable I hadn’t accounted for. The single imperfection in a world I thought I’d solved.
I didn’t even know his name yet. But I knew this.
I need to know more. No. I had to know more about him.
I’ve never spoken to him, not even once. He probably has no idea at all about my existence, and yet I know him.
I know the way his tail curls slightly when he’s nervous. I know how he picks at his sketchbook corners when he’s deep in thought.
I know he listens to music in the hallways and sometimes mouths the lyrics when he thinks no one’s watching. But I always am.
I am always watching. Not in a malicious way, not at all. It’s just that when everything else feels like static, he’s the only signal.
I started tracking his routines, his rhythms. Not deliberately at first, I just needed to understand.
But now it’s instinct I know where he likes to sit in the library. I know exactly which vending machine he prefers. I know which hoodie he wears on rainy days.
It’s harmless, I tell myself. It’s just curiosity and fascination for the only shine of light in the dark cave of your life.
But sometimes the thought spirals. If I could just talk to him, just once, what would happen? Would he look at me like I’m not a shadow?
If I could just touch him, feel the reality of him under my fingertips. If I could make him see me.
If I could make him mine.
He doesn’t realize it, but he holds the only thread that’s kept me tethered to this bleak, meaningless cycle.
I don’t eat because I’m hungry. I eat to have energy to pass him in the hall. I don’t sleep because I need rest. I sleep so I can wake up and maybe catch a glimpse of him again.
He is my reason. The single devotion in a world I’ve mathematically deconstructed to its bones.
Everything else is cold logic, predictable, and solvable. But him?
He’s the one question I can’t seem to find the answer to.
And God, I want that answer. Solve him. Own him.
It’s not love, not really. Love is soft, mutual, and kind.
This is something sharper, hungrier, a beautiful sickness. He’s art. He’s untouched. Pure and fragile in a way that makes you want to wrap your hands around it, not to break it. But to keep it from the world, to press it into your chest and never let go.
It’s not fair. He’s mine, and he doesn’t even know it yet.
If he’s the only one that makes me feel, then I must make him mine. No matter what, no matter the cost.
But then him. The red panda. Tilic? Something like that.
I didn’t even know his name at first. He was just a blur in the background of my world, of Tao’s world, a distraction, just a statistical anomaly. I thought he’d fade like the rest.
But he didn’t, he stayed. Like an equation that can’t be simplified or solved, the one problem in my system.
I watch them now, closer than I’ve watched anything in my life. The way Tao laughs around him, unguarded and unafraid. The way Ilhan stands too close, talks too loudly, and touches too easily.
Oh, it makes my skin crawl.
He doesn’t deserve it; he doesn’t see what I see.
He couldn’t possibly understand Tao, his silences, his subtleties, his fragile rhythm.
He treats Tao like a friend, a buddy, a joke to share.
Tao isn’t a joke you homewrecker. He’s mine, he’s meant to be mine, my thing to protect from everyone else. From people like you who’ve never experienced a single hard time in your lifes.
And Tao… Tao lets him. He smiles, he listens, he leans in.
It’s a betrayal I can’t name. Ilhan is everything I hate. He’s loud, unthinking, and impulsive. He thrives in chaos, in crowds, in noise. And yet Tao drifts toward him like gravity itself made a mistake.
How dare he? How dare he take up space that was meant for me?
He’s stealing something that was never his to begin with.
And he doesn’t even know it.
He doesn’t see Tao the way I do. He couldn’t he’s too shallow and crude. It’ll only lead to my Tao getting hurt by him. I am sure he will hurt him. i know it in my bones.
But I won’t let him, I’ll cradle Tao in my arms and protect him from Ilhan. I will never allow this red panda to steal the only light I’ve ever seen in this gray, choking world.
So I wait, I watch, and I plan. Because Ilhan doesn’t know it yet, but he’s standing in the way of something inevitable.
And I always. Always. Solve the equation.