.

Sometimes I wonder if I even exist anymore.

Not in the poetic sense. Not in the way broken people romanticize their silence.

But truly — beneath the skin, behind the eyes — does anything of me remain?

I don’t flinch anymore. Not when I starve. Not when I bleed. Not even when Akiro points a gun at my face and says, “Again.”

This was training.

No — this was demolition.

He said he was teaching me survival. But it felt more like he was helping me bury the last version of myself.

“Don’t move until I say.”

“Hold your breath and run.”

“Use the wind to drown your sound.”

“Kill when it’s needed, and only when it’s needed.”

Every morning we ran through abandoned fields, every night we slept in buildings that stank of piss and stray cats. I slept with a knife under my shirt. I slept without sleep. I slept without dreams.

··

Akiro was always watching. Not in the way Yaitamba used to — cruel and calculating — but like a hunter sizing up a wolf that had just remembered its teeth.

He didn’t trust me. I didn’t care.

Sometimes he said things like,

“You’re tougher than I thought.”

Or

“You’re getting faster.”

But his words didn’t stick. Praise meant nothing when your soul is already chewing gravel.

We trained together, but we didn’t talk about the past.

He didn’t mention the kiss.

I didn’t mention the hostel.

He didn’t ask why I never looked in mirrors.

And I never told him I could hear the screams from back then even in the silence now.

··

Something was changing in me — visibly, visibly.

My shoulders hardened.

My footsteps turned silent.

My body — starved and stretched — looked like a feral animal sculpted by survival itself.

When I looked at my own reflection, it scared me. Not because I looked bad.

But because I looked like someone who could kill without blinking.

Someone not made of flesh anymore — but of wire, bone, and old fire.

Akiro noticed. Of course, he did.

There was a shift in his gaze — less mockery, more calculation.

One evening, after a sparring session, he sat beside me on the rooftop of a ruined hostel. We both stared into the orange sinking sky. The kind of sky you’d imagine over a battlefield.

He offered me an energy bar.

I didn’t take it.

My hunger wasn’t for food anymore.

He didn’t push it.

He leaned back, arms behind his head, and said,

“You ever miss it?”

“Miss what?”

“Being normal. Soft. Wanted.”

I didn’t answer.

Not because I was rude.

But because I genuinely didn’t remember what those words meant.

··

The next day, he made me crawl through a trench of thorns.

I didn’t scream.

The day after that, he made me fight two strangers with bare fists.

I lost — but I got back up.

With a bleeding nose and cracked lip, I stood and spat out a tooth.

He gave a short laugh.

“You’re a fucking problem now,” he muttered.

I didn’t know if it was admiration or a warning.

Maybe both.

··

At night, when I was alone, I practiced disarming techniques over and over.

How to snatch a knife mid-lunge.

How to break a bone in silence.

How to move through shadows like I wasn’t made of matter.

I didn’t sleep with fear anymore.

I slept with intention.

The only nightmare now was waking up soft again.

··

Then came the day everything cracked.

It began like any other — sweat, dirt, orders barked in Akiro’s hoarse voice.

We trained in an abandoned slaughterhouse, the stench of old meat still rotting in the walls. Fitting.

“You’ve improved,” he said, circling me.

“But let’s see if you can defend something real.”

He lunged.

I parried.

He twisted.

I blocked.

He smirked.

I bled.

Then, without warning, he grabbed my wrist — twisted me toward the wall — and pinned me.

My back hit the concrete.

Breath knocked out.

And before I could process it, his hand slid under my jaw.

He was close — so close — I could smell the sweat on his neck.

That same leather-wolf scent he always carried.

But this time, it wasn’t a threat.

It was something else.

Something hotter.

Hungrier.

Wronger.

His lips didn’t touch me — not yet — but his breath did. It ghosted over my skin like a match waiting to ignite.

And my body…

…did nothing.

It didn’t fight.

It didn’t kick.

It didn’t scream.

It just froze.

Like it always had.

It was during a dusk-colored training day. The light was red, as if the sun bled slowly over the edge of the city. Akiro had pushed me harder than usual. We were drenched in our silence, soaked in unsaid things and raw tension.

And then, it happened.

No command. No word. No reason.

He pulled me by the wrist into the side alley of the abandoned building we trained near—concrete cracked with weed roots, the walls a canvas of graffiti and mold. The place stank of old piss and burnt wires. A rat ran across a broken window frame, disappearing into the void.

I should have yanked my arm back. Kicked. Screamed. But I didn’t.

He cornered me like an animal he could no longer resist tasting. His hand wasn’t rough, but there was fire in his grip, the kind that makes shadows flicker. He didn’t kiss me, not yet—but his breath hovered over mine, like a storm that forgot its own restraint.

I froze.

Not in fear, but in that terrible numbness that victims learn to perfect. The mind ran fast. The body didn’t move.

This wasn’t love. This wasn’t even desire.

This was curiosity mixed with old hunger. He wanted to know what I once was—what made bees revolve around me in that cursed school. I could feel the question in his gaze: “Were you really that sweet?”

But sweetness dies when it's burned long enough.

I didn’t flinch. I didn’t even blink.

I just let him come close… and then, without resistance, I surrendered. Like a paper doll in water.

Not out of affection.

Not out of want.

But because I didn’t know how else to exist in that moment.

There was a second—a sliver of time—where our eyes met. He saw it. The ghost in my stare. The absolute absence. And something inside him cracked.

He stepped back. Two, three steps. Like someone who almost ran over a sleeping dog and realised too late it was a child.

He didn't say anything.

Didn’t touch me again.

He left the alley with hands trembling in his pockets. And I… I stayed, leaning back against the cold wall, wondering if it would be better to bleed or burn.

That night, we didn't talk.

The next morning, we trained as if nothing happened. But something had. And both of us knew it.

From that day, the distance became holy. He wouldn’t touch me even by mistake. If my hand brushed his, he’d move like he touched fire. I didn’t care. I liked the distance. It felt like armor.

But I wasn't angry at him. Not really. I understood the hunger. Monsters recognise each other in the dark.

Still, I buried myself deeper.

Running five miles barefoot. Lifting makeshift weights until my wrists went blue. Memorizing escape routes in the Bangkok alleys, learning how to pick locks, hotwire motorbikes, how to suffocate someone with a pillow in under 60 seconds.

I wasn’t a boy anymore.

I wasn’t even a person.

I was becoming a weapon with skin.

And Akiro? He wasn’t teaching me anymore. He was releasing me.

At nights, when I’d lie on the rooftop, watching the stars blink like dying machines, I’d wonder what I could’ve been.

A poet? A lover? A boy who smiled without flinching?

But fate laughed. And I laughed with it, bitterly.

Akiro sometimes came to the rooftop too—but he sat on the other side. We shared silence like prisoners in separate cells. No words. Just the air between us.

One night, as I looked over the city, I whispered, “I should have died on that hostel roof.”

I don’t think he heard it. Or maybe he did and pretended not to.

But that moment… felt peaceful. Like I had finally said something true.

We stayed there for hours.

And somewhere, in the shadows of a distant building, someone was watching.

Eyes colder than Akiro’s. Older. Hungrier.

Yaitamba had sent Akiro to break me or keep me close. But he didn’t trust Akiro fully anymore. There was another—a man who didn't ask questions. Only followed orders.

We didn’t know yet.

But the storm was coming again.

And this time, even my jagged edges might not be enough.

I AM WAITING FOR THE LIGHT AND THE DARKNESS TO ATTACK ME TOGETHER...

~shivirstoriesep7

(THE DISCOVERY OF THE LIGHT)