Orlet

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Sometimes, the hardest part about waking up isn’t the physical pain.

It’s the silence that comes after.

The type of silence where no one calls your name anymore. Not for breakfast. Not for school. Not even to shout, “Turn that damn music off!”

Ryuu had gotten used to that silence.

It had been four days since he stepped out of his room.

His mother stopped knocking a long time ago. His father used to knock louder. Now he didn’t knock at all.

They weren’t bad people.

Just tired.

Tired of watching their son rot like an open wound they didn’t know how to close. They never said it, but he could feel it in how their footsteps skipped past his door.

Like he was a room they didn’t rent anymore.

It started slow.

At first, they tried doctors.

A dermatologist. A psychologist. Another dermatologist. A shaman his grandmother trusted.

Each visit cost money.

Each time, his father’s sigh got longer.

“You’re not even trying,” he said once, after Ryuu came back scratching his face through a fresh cream that stung like acid.

Ryuu didn’t respond.

What was he supposed to say? That his skin felt like it was at war with itself?

His mother once cried outside the door.

He heard her.

“I miss the way he used to laugh,” she whispered, like she was mourning a ghost.

He wanted to cry too.

But even his tears had dried up these days.

One night, during a power cut, he overheard a conversation he was never meant to hear.

His father: “I didn’t raise a boy to hide like this. He’s useless now. Just breathing. That’s it.”

His aunt, visiting that night: “You’re too soft. You let him stay locked in that room? He needs to get slapped back to reality.”

Slapped.

Reality.

The words echoed like nails on a chalkboard.

His mom tried defending him. “He’s still our son. He’s sick.”

“Sick?” his aunt scoffed. “There are people with cancer still smiling. He just has a skin problem. And he’s acting like the world owes him something.”

Ryuu bit his pillow that night to keep from screaming.

It wasn’t just the skin.

It was the smell.
It was the way people looked away when he walked past.
It was the way their eyes didn’t meet his anymore.

Not even his reflection did.

At a cousin’s wedding, months before he stopped going out completely, he made the mistake of showing up.

He wore a black mask, hair brushed down, oversized clothes.

As he stepped into the hall, the music kept playing, but the smiles changed. Not dramatically. Just… subtly.

He caught whispers.

“Who’s that?”
“Is that the same kid? He looks… rough.”
“Why would they even bring him here?”

A woman asked his mother, right in front of him, “What happened to his face? Looks like something out of a horror film.”

His mother smiled tightly. “It’s just a skin allergy.”

“Allergy?” the woman laughed.

He walked out before dessert. Spent the rest of the evening in the bathroom staring at the toilet, deciding whether to throw up or disappear.

You still reading this?

Why?

You’re not going to save him.

No one does.

This isn’t one of those stories.

The thing people never tell you about isolation is that it’s not dramatic.

It’s quiet.

It doesn’t announce itself.

It shows up slowly—when you cancel one meetup, then two. When people stop texting. When your name fades from group chats. When birthdays go unmentioned.

Soon, people stop asking where you are.

Eventually, they stop noticing you were ever there.

Ryuu stopped showering.

Why bother?

His skin peeled more after showers anyway.

And he didn’t go out.

The smell of sweat and medicated creams stuck to his sheets.

Sometimes, he sniffed his own armpits just to remember he was still human. Still alive. Still disgusting.

He scratched himself until he bled.

Sometimes it scabbed. Sometimes it got worse.

He stopped caring.

One afternoon, his dad barged in.

“Aren’t you ashamed?” he snapped.

Ryuu didn’t answer.

His father’s eyes burned.

“You’re 17. Seventeen! I used to work when I was 14. And you? You sit here like a corpse.”

“I didn’t ask to be this way,” Ryuu muttered.

“You’re making excuses.”

“I didn’t ask to be born with this face.”

Silence.

His father looked at him for a long time.

Then shook his head and left.

The door closed like a final verdict.

That was the last conversation they had.

Now food just appeared outside his room.

Sometimes cold.

Sometimes not at all.

Ryuu stopped looking at his old photos.

He deleted his social media accounts.

His inbox had unread messages from school counselors, spam bots, and a few “Hey, are you okay?” texts from people who didn’t mean it.

He never replied.

What’s pride?

Pride is brushing your hair even when no one’s watching.
Pride is brushing your teeth even when your mouth tastes like metal.
Pride is walking into a store and looking people in the eye.

Ryuu had lost all of it.

Gone.

Replaced by shame, rot, and silence.

He slept 13 hours a day now.

Not because he was lazy.

Because it was the only time he felt peace.

In dreams, he didn’t have a face.