Prologue.

*

I begged for love with trembling hands, While cruel gods laughed from distant lands. No soul would stay, no heart was mine, So I drank sorrow like bitter wine.

The boy they broke is long since dead, His tears now crown the horns upon my head. And though the darkness claimed my soul, It gave me more love than I could ever hold.

*

I don’t remember the last time someone said my name with affection. Not because they wanted something from me. Not because they were being polite. Just because they were happy I existed.

Maybe it happened when I was a child. Maybe it never happened at all. At twenty-two years old, I honestly couldn’t tell anymore.

The city moved around me as I made my way home from work. Evening lights reflected across rain-soaked pavement while crowds drifted past in every direction—people laughing with friends, talking with family, holding hands with lovers. I watched them for a moment, the way you might watch something through glass, and then I kept walking.

None of it had anything to do with me.

The sight should have hurt more than it did. Instead, there was only that familiar emptiness, worn so deeply into me that I barely noticed it anymore. Loneliness had stopped feeling like something wrong with my life. It was simply part of it, as ordinary as hunger or the exhaustion that settled into my bones after another meaningless shift. A bitter laugh escaped me as I shoved my hands deeper into my pockets.

There was nothing waiting for me at home except a small apartment, instant noodles, and whatever novel or anime I could disappear into before morning came. Then I would wake up, go back to work, come home, and do it all again. And the day after that. And the day after that.

My parents died when I was eight. Most people would probably expect me to say I missed them.

I didn’t.

My father used his fists whenever life frustrated him, and life frustrated him often. My mother spent most of her time pretending I didn’t exist. Food was never guaranteed. Kindness even less so. When they died, relief came far more easily than grief.

After that came the orphanage, then school, then work. The places changed and so did the faces, but very little else did. Sometimes I wondered whether nobody noticed how miserable I was, or whether they noticed and simply didn’t care. Eventually, I stopped wondering which answer was worse.

My thoughts eventually wandered toward the stories waiting for me at home. Fantasy worlds filled with magic, adventure, and people who somehow managed to find a place where they belonged. I used to imagine being reborn into one of them sometimes. Not because I wanted incredible power or some grand destiny.

I think I simply wanted another chance at life.

A horn blared.

Then another.

Shouts erupted around me, and for a moment I didn’t understand why.

I glanced up and found myself standing in the middle of the crosswalk.

The light was red. Headlights flooded my vision, a truck was racing toward me.

People were screaming, telling me to move, telling me to run, but I just stood there watching it come. My reflection stared back at me from the windshield for the briefest moment. Tired eyes. Vacant eyes. The face of a man who had spent his entire life waiting for something that never came.

Fear never arrived. Neither did regret. Only a quiet sadness.

So this is how it ends.

The thought passed through me as the truck filled my vision and the world began to disappear.

Strangely, I felt at peace.

Because for the first time in a very long while, tomorrow wasn’t waiting for me.

Darkness swallowed everything.

And somewhere inside that darkness, one final wish surfaced from deep within my chest. The only wish I had ever truly carried.

In my next life…

I want to be loved.

To love, and be loved in return.