"My name is Akihiko Yamioka."

I don't expect people to understand me. In fact, I'm not sure I'd want them to. You see, I've learned the hard way that trust is nothing more than a lie we tell ourselves to make sense of a world that's already broken. Maybe it's my fault, or maybe it's just the way I've always been. But the truth is, I don't care anymore.

I used to be like everyone else. I had dreams. I had hopes. I wanted to believe that things could be different, that people could be different. But every time I reached out, every time I thought someone might finally understand me, they pulled away. Or worse, they betrayed me. I learned quickly that emotions were a weakness. They made me vulnerable. They made me human.

So, I buried them.

I'm used to the weight now—the hollow feeling that fills my chest whenever I see someone turn their back or hear the sharp sting of words I didn't expect. It doesn't surprise me. Nothing surprises me anymore. Not the lies, not the empty promises, not the constant disappointment.

The truth is, I don't even know what it feels like to trust anymore. It's not something I've experienced in a long time. There was a time I thought maybe I could, but... that was before. Before I knew better.

I don't expect things to change. I don't want them to.

*Akihiko* 

When I was 8, we were playing on the playground in elementary school. Haruka, my childhood friend, tripped and fell, hurting her legs. I never touched her, but no one believed that. Everybody started blaming me. I was fairly smart and had fair looks, but those who envied me put all the blame on my shoulders. I tried to tell the truth, but the teachers didn't believe me—like they were waiting for the chance to drag me through the mud.

My classmates turned on me quickly. They whispered behind my back, accusing me of something I didn't do. And when I tried to defend myself, no one listened. They all just looked at me with disappointment, with doubt. Haruka didn't stand up for me either. She said nothing. I thought at least my parents would believe me, but I was wrong. When I returned home, my stepmom was waiting for me at the door. My stepsister might have heard the exaggerated rumors and blabbed to my mother. My father was always traveling for work, so I rarely saw him, but even he didn't believe me.

The truth didn't matter. The damage was done. I became the target, the scapegoat for everyone's bitterness. The lies stuck, and I was left to carry them alone.

By middle school, I'd learned to keep my distance from people. But there was one person I still trusted—someone I considered a friend. We'd been close for years, ever since elementary school. I thought I could count on him, even when others started to pull away. But I was wrong.

One day, a rumor started to spread through the school—one that I'd been secretly stealing money from my classmates. The lie was so absurd, it was almost laughable. But it didn't matter. Once the rumor took hold, it didn't stop.

At first, I didn't know where it had come from. I tried to ignore it, but the whispers followed me everywhere I went. The teachers started looking at me differently, and my classmates began avoiding me. Then, later, I found out it was Tatsuya—the one person I thought I could trust. He'd spread the rumor. And when I confronted him, he shrugged it off like it was no big deal.

"It was just a joke," he said, like I was the one overreacting. But the truth was, the joke wasn't funny. It never was.

Tatsuya had always been jealous of me. He never said it, but I could see it in the way he looked at me. I was smarter, more popular—things he could never be. I thought we were friends, but I was just another target for his bitterness. The rumor was his way of getting back at me, of knocking me down a peg.

At home, things turned sour too. My stepmom, who barely ever looked at me, suddenly started eyeing me like I was a criminal. My father, when he was around, asked me in his cold, distant way if I'd really been stealing money. His lack of trust stung more than anything. The lie, the one Tatsuya had created, tore through everything—school, family, everything.

The truth didn't matter anymore. The damage was done. And I was the one left to carry the weight of the lies.

By the second year of middle school, I had grown even more guarded. I kept my distance from people, sure that no one could be trusted. But then, she came along—Yuki. At first, she seemed like just another classmate. She'd smile at me between classes, ask questions like she was genuinely curious. I didn't think much of it. Maybe she was just being friendly.

But then, one day, she approached me in the library. I was trying to study, trying to keep to myself as usual. She sat down beside me, and for a while, we didn't say anything. Then she finally spoke.

"I... I like you, Akihiko. A lot. I've wanted to tell you for a while now."

I didn't know how to respond at first. I wasn't interested in her, not in that way. I'd already learned not to expect anything good from people. I told her that, politely. I told her I wasn't ready for a relationship, that I just wanted to focus on my studies.

That's when I saw the shift. Her face, which had once been soft and warm, now twisted with something darker. Her smile faded, and she stood up abruptly.

"You're disgusting! I can't believe I ever thought you'd be different!" she yelled. "You don't deserve anyone!"

She ran out of the library, leaving me sitting there, stunned and confused.

The next day, the rumors started. Yuki spread it to anyone who would listen—I had tried to assault her. It wasn't just a lie; it was a twisted version of everything that had happened. She told everyone I had made advances toward her and that she had rejected me, but I couldn't handle it. I'd forced myself on her, she said.

I tried to deny it, of course. But who would believe me? The whole school had already picked a side, and it wasn't mine. The teachers, the principal—they didn't know what to do. There was no evidence, no proof, just her word against mine. So, nothing happened legally. I wasn't sent to jail, but the damage was already done.

When I got home, I tried to go to my room and shut the world out. But my stepmom was waiting for me, her face cold and hard.

"So, this is how it is now?" she said, crossing her arms. "I never thought you were capable of something like this, Akihiko. You're not a little kid anymore. People don't just make up stories like this. How do you think this is going to reflect on our family?"

Her words stung more than anything the school had said. She didn't even try to listen to my side. She just believed Yuki's lies, like it was the simplest thing in the world.

My stepsister, who never really paid attention to me before, chimed in from the hallway, her voice filled with disgust. "You never told us what kind of person you were. If I had known, I would've stayed away from you."

And then my father came home, his face already a mask of disappointment. His eyes locked onto me, cold and distant as always. He didn't ask for the full story. He didn't care about the truth. He just stared at me, and then, in one sharp motion, he slapped me across the face.

It happened so fast I couldn't even react. The sting on my cheek burned, but it wasn't just the physical pain that hurt—it was the look in his eyes. That was the moment I realized he didn't believe me. Not a single ounce of trust or concern. He didn't ask for my side; he didn't care.

"Is what they're saying true?" he demanded in a low voice, his anger barely contained. "Did you do it?"

I was paralyzed, not knowing what to say, or if I should say anything at all. The truth didn't matter anymore. The damage had already been done. Yuki's lie had reached everyone—my classmates, my teachers, and now even my family.

I wasn't sent to jail, no. There was no evidence, nothing concrete to back up the accusations. But it didn't matter. The whispers were everywhere. At school, at home—it was the same. Everyone had made their judgment. Yuki's lie had done its job.

And I was left to carry the weight of it all, with no one to turn to, no one who believed me.

The weight of the rumors and betrayal had crushed everything inside me. My focus, once sharp, now wavered. My grades, which used to be something I could always rely on, began to slip. It wasn't that I didn't try—I did. But how could I concentrate when every whisper in the hallway was about me? When every classmate looked at me with suspicion or disgust? Even the teachers seemed to avoid me, treating me like I was invisible, as if I wasn't worth the effort to engage with.

There were no smiles, no support. The class that had once felt like a place to escape had become my prison. I started to fade into the background, my name barely spoken in the halls. At lunch, I ate alone. The group of friends I once had turned their backs on me. Tatsuya's rumor had infected everyone, even those who had once stood by me. I wasn't Akihiko Yamioka anymore—I was the boy who tried to assault Yuki.

After months of pretending everything was fine, I couldn't take it anymore. I left home.

It wasn't easy, but at least I had control over that. My father had never been around enough to care, and my stepmom's coldness had made the decision clear. The house had never felt like home, so I moved out when I turned 16. I rented a small apartment near the city, far from the people who had turned against me.

I worked part-time at a local convenience store to pay for rent and food. It wasn't much, but it was enough to survive. It gave me something to do, something to focus on, away from the whispers, away from my past. My father continued to pay my tuition, though I wasn't sure if it was out of obligation or guilt. He never asked if I was okay, never checked on me. He just sent the money, and that was enough for him.

The truth was, I had lost everything. My past was nothing but a chain of betrayals, and I had no future to look forward to. I kept going because I didn't know how to stop. I just existed.

Then came the yearbook photo. It was tradition in our school to take a class picture at the end of every year, but by the time it came around, I had become a ghost in my own class. When they called my name, I walked to the front, and the camera snapped a picture of me standing there, alone. The others... they all stared at me with hollow eyes. No one spoke to me, no one acknowledged my existence.

It wasn't just the classmates. The teachers, too, ignored me. They never helped, never stepped in. Even though they knew the rumors were false, they still distanced themselves from me, avoiding making a scene. It was easier for them to pretend I didn't exist.

And in the yearbook, my photo was like a blank space. My classmates all smiled or posed, their eyes reflecting the pressure of years of social expectations. But my picture was different. It was a void, a cold reminder of everything I had lost.