The Story of Him and Me

The contours of the world are always ambiguous.
At least, to me.
Parts that are clearly colored and parts that are blurred like smeared paint coexist, and the boundary between them is terribly unreliable.
Right next to the reality that everyone takes for granted, my own truth lies in wait.
He was there.
Just, quietly.
Without anyone other than me noticing his existence.
This is the story of me, and of him, who was only ever by my side.

✅He is there

He was always sitting in the seat by the window.
The soft sunlight of spring would pass through his light-colored hair, scattering glittering particles of light.
He didn't talk much.
He tended to look down, and the shadows cast by his long eyelashes always looked a little lonely.
Everyone else failed to notice his existence.
As if he were part of the scenery of that place, people would pass by him, and words would fly over him.

But I could see him.
I saw him drawing small pictures in the corner of his notebook that he showed to no one, and I saw him occasionally staring off into the distance while his eyes followed the words in his textbook.
Sometimes, our gazes would meet.
At those times, he would lower his eyebrows as if slightly troubled and whisper in a small voice.

“Are you... okay?”

He never said what was okay.
Whether I was okay, or whether he himself was okay.
That question would melt into the buzz of the classroom without an answer.
At other times, he would ask in a voice that seemed about to fade away.

“Am I... hated?”

His voice was so thin and lacked confidence that it always made my heart ache.
So, I would gently nod to him, so that no one else could hear, so that it would reach only him.
“That’s not true,” I would say.
When he heard that, he would let his mouth curl just a little, and looking relieved, he would return his gaze to the window.
That exchange was a secret between just him and me.
It was the most certain reality that he was “there.”

✅Invisible to those around

“Hey, who have you been talking to?”

My best friend’s words always pierced my world sharply.
Every time I exchanged glances with him, she would look at me with a puzzled expression.
When I got home, my mother would say worriedly,
“You’ve been spacing out a lot lately.”
My father was more direct.
“Daydreaming is fine, but face reality.”

Everyone says I’m strange.
They all agree that no such person exists.
They flatly deny the existence of him, who was right next to me, waiting for my words.
Every time they did, my heart would close up tighter.
Why can’t they see him?
Why won’t they believe me?

“He’s a very quiet person. I’m sure they just can’t see him.”

I tried desperately to explain.
That he was timid, weak-willed, and not good at appearing in front of many people.
My words seemed to sound like strange nonsense to the people around me.
Gazes filled with pity, or perhaps a little contempt, would envelop me.
Gradually, I stopped talking about him.
To protect the world that belonged only to him and me, I blocked out all words from the outside.
It’s okay.
As long as I, and only I, knew of his existence, that was enough.
That’s what I kept telling myself.

✅He was me

One morning, when I went to the classroom, his seat was empty.
The morning sun was just shining into the vacant space.
From that day on, he stopped appearing altogether.
Strangely, feelings of loneliness or sadness did not well up.
As if it had been decided from the beginning, I accepted the fact naturally.
It wasn’t that he had disappeared somewhere.
For some reason, I was convinced that he had come inside me.

A little while after that, the way people around me evaluated me changed just a little.

“You’ve started speaking more clearly lately.”
“Haven’t you started expressing your own opinions more than before?”

At my friend’s words, I nodded inwardly.
Yes, because he had entered me.
My gaze, which had tended to look down, lifted a little, and I became able to look people in the eye when I spoke.
When I was at a loss for an answer, I felt like I could hear a thin voice from the depths of my heart.
“Are you... okay?” it would say.
That was the phrase he had once given me.
But now, it was a question I was asking myself.

Who on earth was he?
Was he just an illusion I was seeing, as everyone said?
Or was he the image of another version of myself—timid, lacking confidence, and afraid of the world?
Now, I feel like it doesn’t really matter.
The only thing that is certain is that I am now looking at the world through the eyes of the him who once sat by the window.
Deep in the eyes of the me reflected in the mirror, the shadow of that lonely him sometimes crosses.
Was he me, or did I become him?
That boundary remains ambiguous today, melting into the world.

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