Satoshi had been standing outside the manga club classroom for nearly twenty minutes, his hands clammy with that particular species of anxiety that comes from rehearsing a conversation that will never unfold as planned. The hallway was empty now, most students having fled the building in their eagerness to escape another day of prescribed normalcy, but he remained, pressed against the wall like a conspirator waiting for his moment of treachery.
He had asked Yuka to meet him here after her art club meeting, claiming that he needed help with something academic. The lie had come so easily, so naturally, that he wondered if this was how all great betrayals began: with the simple human capacity for self-deception dressed up as necessity. It wasn’t even that good of a lie, but it had been enough of one to pass for the truth.
What he truly needed was infinitely more complex and dangerous: to tell someone, anyone, the truth about what he was capable of. To unburden himself of this terrible weight that had been pressing against him, this secret that made every ordinary interaction feel like an elaborate performance. But standing here now, watching his reflection in the classroom's darkened windows, he saw only what everyone else saw—a perfectly unremarkable boy, indistinguishable from any other student in this endless maze of conformity.
He could reshape mountains with a thought, destroy armies overnight, and yet he sat paralyzed, choking on a truth too dangerous to speak. All his godlike power meant nothing when weighed against the terror of watching recognition dawn in those familiar eyes. The irony cut deeper than any blade: he who could conquer worlds could not find the courage to risk losing a person who saw him as human. His mind lingered on the mental image of his grandmother, as he tried to bring himself back to the present moment
"Sorry I'm late," Yuka said, appearing at the end of the hallway with that particular breathless energy that suggested she had been running. "The club meeting went longer than expected."
"It's fine," Satoshi replied, though in truth he had spent those additional minutes constructing and demolishing various versions of his opening, each one more impossible than the last. "Thank you for coming."
But instead of settling into the rhythm of their usual easy conversation, Yuka remained standing next to the door, her fingers drumming against the strap of her art bag with an uncharacteristic nervousness that immediately set Satoshi on edge. There was something different about her today, something that made the air between them feel charged with unspoken possibility.
"Actually," she said, and her voice carried a weight that made Satoshi's carefully rehearsed words die in his throat, "before we discuss whatever you need help with, I have to tell you something. I've been carrying this secret for months, and I can't focus on anything else until I get it out."
It was a sick twist of fate that had Yuka claiming the stage for her own revelation. "What's wrong?" he asked, though he sensed that 'wrong' was perhaps not the correct word for whatever was about to unfold.
"Nothing's wrong, exactly. It's just..." She took a breath that seemed to come from somewhere deep within her chest, the kind of breath one takes before jumping from a great height. "I've been selling my artwork. For months. To a publishing company."
Satoshi stared at her, his mind struggling to process this information that was simultaneously shocking and yet somehow inevitable. "You have?"
"I use a pseudonym because of age restrictions, and I had to work through a third party to make it legal. But yes, my illustrations are going to be published in actual books." She laughed, but it was the kind of laughter that borders on hysteria, the sound of someone who has finally spoken an impossible truth. "I've been lying to everyone about it. My parents, my friends, you."
"That's incredible," Satoshi said, and meant it, though his own secret now felt like a stone in his chest, growing heavier with each word she spoke. "But why hide something so wonderful?"
"Because I was terrified," she said, and now the words came pouring out of her like water through a broken dam. "Terrified of failing, terrified of people's expectations, terrified of what it would mean if I actually succeeded. Plus, it’s a little illegal, but...the publishing company I’m working with doesn't know my real age, so…" She gave a couple of chuckles, trying her best to alleviate her own tension.
Satoshi watched her hands shake slightly as she spoke, recognizing in her trembling the same anxiety that plagued his own sleepless nights. This was not the composed, confident Yuka he knew from their daily interactions. This was someone who had been carrying an enormous weight in solitude, just as he had been.
"And because," she continued, her voice dropping to almost a whisper, "I felt like I was living a double life. Like I was pretending to be just another ordinary student when really I was something else entirely. Do you know what it's like, Satoshi? To have something inside you that feels too big for your everyday life? To feel like you're lying just by existing in the normal world?"
Her words struck him with the force of recognition so profound that for a moment he could not breathe. The feeling she described—that sense of living between two worlds, of being constantly engaged in the exhausting performance of normalcy—was precisely what he had been planning to confess to her. The universe had handed him the perfect opening, wrapped in her own vulnerable admission.
"Yes," he said quietly, and the word carried more weight than any single syllable should be able to bear. "I know exactly what that feels like."
Yuka's eyes widened, and in that moment something shifted between them, some invisible barrier dissolving. "You do?"
But even as she asked the question, even as the perfect moment for his own confession presented itself, Satoshi felt his carefully planned words crumble into dust. Here was Yuka, brave and vulnerable, offering him the gift of her trust, her fear, her beautiful human struggle. Her secret was magnificent in its ordinariness—talent wrestling with doubt, ambition fighting against the terror of failure, the universal ache of someone trying to carve out their place in an indifferent world.
His secret would obliterate that ordinary world entirely.
Tell her, his conscience whispered. She has shared something real. She deserves the same honesty from you.
But watching her anxious expression, seeing how much courage it had taken for her to admit something as fundamentally human as selling her artwork, he began to understand the cruelty of what he had almost done. She was worried about living up to people's expectations if they discovered her talent. What would she think if she learned he could manipulate matter itself? Would she ever look at him the same way? Would she ever feel normal in his presence again?
You came here to tell someone, his mind argued. You're exhausted from carrying this alone.
Yes, he was exhausted. Bone-deep tired from the constant vigilance required to appear ordinary when he felt anything but. But looking at Yuka's face, seeing the relief that came from sharing something difficult but ultimately comprehensible, he realized that his loneliness did not give him the right to burden her with a truth that would shatter her understanding of reality itself.
"I think," he said carefully, each word chosen to bridge the impossible gap between his supernatural reality and her beautifully human struggles, "we all carry parts of ourselves that feel too large for our ordinary lives. Perhaps what distinguishes us is simply this: we want more than we are permitted to want."
It was not the truth he had come here to tell, but it was true enough. And more importantly, it was what she needed to hear.
Yuka's shoulders relaxed slightly, the tension bleeding out of her posture. "So I'm not insane for feeling like I'm living two separate existences?"
"You are many things, but insane is not one of them," Satoshi said, surprised by the conviction in his own voice. "I'm proud of you for taking such a risk. For being brave enough to create something real and put it into the world."
"Thank you," she said, and for the first time since arriving, she smiled with genuine relief. "I was terrified to tell anyone. But I couldn't continue pretending it wasn't happening."
They stood in comfortable silence for a moment, her words settling between them like a bridge newly built. Satoshi watched her face, observed how sharing had lifted some invisible burden from her shoulders, and felt his own secret pressing against his chest with renewed weight. The irony was exquisite in its cruelty—in helping her feel less alone, he had made himself feel more isolated than ever.
"You know what the most difficult part was?" Yuka said suddenly, her voice thoughtful. "Sitting in class every day, listening to everyone discuss their uncertain futures, when I already had this entirely separate life unfolding. I felt like I was lying simply by not mentioning it."
"That must have been exhausting,"
"It was. And so terribly lonely." She looked up at him with an expression of such naked honesty that he felt something crack inside his chest. "Even though the work itself was exhilarating, keeping it secret made me feel disconnected from everyone. Like I was watching my real life happen from behind glass."
The metaphor pierced him with its accuracy. Satoshi had spent years watching his own existence from behind the impenetrable glass of his secret, pretending to belong in a world that had no place for people like him.
"So what do we do about it?" he asked, surprising himself with the question. "About this feeling of living double lives? About the sense of being fundamentally disconnected from the world around us?"
Yuka considered this, her expression growing contemplative. "I'm not certain. Sharing it with you helps enormously. But I cannot exactly announce the publishing arrangement to everyone—not yet, anyway."
"And not everyone would understand," Satoshi added.
"Precisely. But perhaps..." She paused, working through the thought like an artist sketching the outline of an idea. "Perhaps the problem isn't merely the secrets themselves. Perhaps it's the feeling that we must navigate everything in isolation. That we're the only ones who don't quite fit into the prescribed version of normalcy."
"You think others feel the same way?"
"Don't you?" She leaned against the wall, her expression growing animated. "Think about how we all do it—how every friendship is built on these careful omissions. One person chases mysteries and legends, hungry for something beyond the mundane, while another dreams of vanishing entirely, escaping the weight of who everyone expects them to be. We all harbor these secret longings, these hidden parts of ourselves we think our closest friends couldn't possibly understand."
Satoshi felt the weight of truth in her words. How many of his classmates carried their own impossible burdens? How many felt equally displaced from the prescribed version of teenage life?
"Maybe that's enough for now," Yuka said softly, reading something in his expression. "Just knowing we're not the only ones who feel this way."
"Yes," he agreed, though his own secret pressed against his chest with renewed urgency. "Maybe it is."
As they walked down the empty hallway together, their footsteps echoing in the institutional silence, Satoshi felt the weight of his unspoken truth pressing against his chest like a physical thing. He had come here to confess everything, and instead he was carrying an even heavier secret. But perhaps this was enough for now—this shared understanding that they were both living carefully constructed lies, even if the scale of his deception dwarfed hers completely.
Walking beside Yuka through the fluorescent-lit corridor, both of them carrying secrets—one shared, one still locked away in the prison of his solitude—neither realized that this conversation had planted something that would inevitably grow. Sometimes the most profound changes begin not with grand gestures or dramatic revelations, but with the simple recognition that the weight we carry might not have to be borne entirely alone.