*Keiko’s POV*
I was seven years old the first time I realized how cruel other people could be.
“Oi, glasses! Move!”
A sharp voice cut through the air. A boy, older than me, surrounded by his snickering friends. I was just sitting quietly at the edge of the park, reading one of my books about constellations. I wasn’t in anyone’s way. I wasn’t even near the playground.
I ignored them. I thought if I stayed quiet, if I just kept reading, they’d leave me alone.
But then — thud.
Something hit the side of my head. My glasses slipped from my face and landed in the grass. I blinked in confusion as the blurry figure of that boy picked up his volleyball, grinning like it was a joke.
“Oops, my hand slipped. Sorry,” he said with a mocking tone, then turned to laugh with his friends as they ran off.
I sat there, stunned, one hand pressed against the spot where the ball had hit, the other fumbling for my glasses.
That was… bullying, wasn’t it? I hadn’t understood what that meant before. It was the first time anyone had treated me like that. Or really, treated me like anything at all.
Even now, I can still remember how the grass smelled that day. How bright the sky was. How my heart quietly ached, but I didn’t cry.
I never really knew how to cry.
People always said I was a strange kid. An awkward one. Not good at talking to others, not good at making friends. And they weren’t wrong. I was stiff. Awkward. A little too quiet, too plain, too bookish.
I didn’t know how to join conversations, how to play pretend, how to laugh on cue. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to — I just didn’t know how.
My parents… well, they worried about me. They told me once, when I was still a toddler, I didn’t cry like normal babies. I didn’t laugh easily either.
Most pf the time I just watched the world with a blank stare, wide eyes following every movement but never quite reacting. And as I grew older, it only made them more anxious.
My father, a hot-blooded man with a voice that could shake the walls, didn’t understand a daughter like me. His way of loving was loud, tough, and relentless.
He believed in discipline, pride, and expectations. He believed mistakes were weakness, and weakness was unacceptable.
My mother was softer, but no less strict. Her worry translated into control. Into telling me what to eat, what to wear, what to study.
She meant well, I think. But she was scared I wouldn’t survive the world if I stayed the strange, quiet girl everyone overlooked.
So I lived my life inside invisible walls.
School. Home. Study. Practice. Repeat.
I wasn’t allowed to hang out with friends after class, not that anyone asked me to. I wasn’t allowed to go to amusement parks, sleepovers, or festivals. Weekends were for review work and piano lessons I never enjoyed. Summer was for extra classes and textbook drills.
Even now, part of me wonders… was it my nature, or did they make me this way? Was I always destined to be the quiet one in the corner, or did I become that because I was never allowed to be anything else?
I told myself I was fine. That I liked being alone. That books were better than people. That silence was easier than speaking.
But I think… I lied.
Because even though I pretended not to care, deep down, I wished someone would notice me.
I wanted to laugh like the other girls. To be called out to play after school. To run without worrying about the mud on my clothes. I wanted someone to look at me and think, she’s fun to be around. I wanted to have friends.
I was lonely.
And then… one day, someone did notice me.
I remember it so clearly. I was sitting at my usual spot in the cafeteria, tucked away in the farthest corner where no one ever bothered to sit. The noise of lunchtime chatter and clattering trays barely reached me there, and that was exactly how I liked it.
I was buried in an old encyclopedia about birds — some random volume I grabbed from the library because I didn’t feel like dealing with people.
I was tracing my finger over a page about red-crowned cranes when a voice suddenly cut through the noise.
“Hey, Keiko.”
I barely looked up. I figured it was someone asking if the seat was taken, or maybe a teacher’s assistant reminding me not to eat alone in corners like some awkward ghost.
But it wasn’t.
It was him.
Ryusei.
One of the most popular boys in our entire school — the kind of guy everyone either admired or complained about behind his back. Reckless, loud, always getting into trouble, the type people said would either burn out young or disappear chasing some ridiculous dream.
I never paid him much attention. People like him existed in a completely different world from mine. And for some reason… he was talking to me.
“Yes?” I muttered, hiding half my face behind my book.
And then, with that infuriating grin, he said it.
“Go out with me.”
I blinked. No one ever asked out Keiko Takayama. The weird girl. The study freak. The nobody.
But for reasons I still don’t fully understand, I said, “Okay.”
Maybe it was desperation. Maybe it was curiosity. Or maybe it was because, for once, someone was offering me a little piece of the world I was never allowed to have.
And I wanted it.
I wanted to know what it felt like to hold someone’s hand. To sneak out after curfew. To love and to be loved...
It was the start of everything good and everything bad in my life.
He broke my heart a thousand times. I swore I hated him more days than I loved him. But he gave me something no one else ever had.
Freedom.
A little, messy, reckless piece of freedom.