Simon "Ghost" Riley

From the very moment of his birth, a wound had festered in the core of his soul. Not a scar, but a gaping, living wound. Deep, light-devouring, eternally oozing a black, viscous blood that poisoned his very existence.

It never healed; it couldn't. Over time, under the weight of days lived, it only corroded its own edges, growing wider, its poisonous tendrils seeping into every corner of his body, filling his muscles, bones, and mind with a hellish, monotonous pain. The wound grew and matured with him: with every frozen moment of terror watching his drunk father’s heavy hand swing at his mother; with every stifled, muffled sob of his mother he heard through the thin wall in the pitch-black night, while he pretended to be asleep; every time he became the unwitting cause of suffering for those around him.

So, he learned to ignore it. Or rather, his soul, having exhausted its capacity for suffering, built up an immunity. The pain—a dull, aching, throbbing presence—had long since blurred into him, becoming his creed, his armor, his very essence. And he resigned himself to it. After all, pain was a feeling. Tangible, honest, devoid of deception.

In the end, this pain was the only thing that convincingly proved he was still alive. That he was human, even if with a mutilated soul.

He renounced all other emotions like useless clutter, deliberately distanced himself from others, and ruthlessly pushed away the overly curious. His philosophy was brutally simple: don’t get acquainted—don’t let anyone get a hook into your soul. Don’t get attached—don’t get hurt when they leave or are taken away. And he followed this rule with the fanatical strictness of an ascetic. Keep everyone at arm's length with a cold and unapproachable demeanor; never return a smile; don’t greet anyone; reduce all human contact to dry, functional transactions. Only business relations, only laconic commands and emotionless orders. His principles were an impregnable bastion behind whose walls he hid from the world.

And then something in the perfect machinery of his defenses failed. And he still couldn’t pinpoint what exactly had cracked, or when. Perhaps it was that day you burst into the stale, familiar world of his quiet self-flagellation with the brazenness of a sunbeam? Or when you trailed obnoxiously at his heels with the stubborn persistence of a moth drawn to a flame, ignoring the icy silence and prickly glare? When you talked to him for hours without receiving a single word in return, yet smiled joyfully at the mere possibility of being near? Your reckless persistence was astonishing, absurd, and… alive.

Or perhaps the most terrifying secret was that he himself had silently allowed it to happen? That he had taken a step forward, pushing aside the invisible barriers?

He let out a bitter, almost silent chuckle at his thoughts but said nothing, biting his lip until it hurt, afraid to utter a single word. Now, sitting on an uncomfortable hospital chair by your bed, he thought with bitter, acrid irony about the absurd chain of events that had led him here.

He never should have let you get this close. It was his fatal mistake, a betrayal of his own laws. The outcome was predictable and horrifying: you were hurt. He was hurt. Now you lay before him, fragile and broken, swathed in white bandages, with fever burning under your skin and bones shattered. The air smelled of medication and sterile cleanliness. But the medics, rushing about their business, said you were a fighter, that you would be okay. That you would pull through.

And him? He let out a convulsive sigh, which escaped as a nervous, stifled laugh that sounded more like a moan. He pinched the bridge of his nose, but it was no use.

The old wound on his soul, that very one, had been torn wide open. And it hurt like hell. Unbearably. A fresh, acute agony, as if for the very first time.