The world outside his window had long forgotten him.
Rain tapped on the rusted frame of the glass. A storm churned in the distance, muffled by old concrete walls and layers of silence. Inside, Eric sat at a narrow desk, hunched over books piled like monuments to the life he never got to live.
Psychology.
History.
Philosophy.
Theoretical physics.
Old, cracked pages. Dim yellow light.
No one in the neighborhood really knew him. Maybe they'd seen him as a child, walking behind his mother at the market, but that version of him had long vanished. Now, to the world, he was just a ghost in a rented room.
Eric pressed a hand to his forehead, eyes burning. He hadn't eaten dinner. Again.
He had spent hours online earlier. Chatrooms, forums, debates. Anonymous people with faces he never saw. Some were kind, some cruel. Most just left. The cycle repeated: hope, connection, disappointment.
Still, he endured.
He wasn't broken—just shaped differently. His heart, fragile as paper, learned how to fold itself into armor.
He stood and walked to the stove. The room was cold. When the oil hissed in the pan and spit onto his skin, a sudden heat flashed across his hand. Instinctively, he pulled back.
And in that moment… he remembered her.
His mother would've screamed, rushed to him, snatched his hand and whispered with panic and love. She'd blow on it, wrap it in some useless kitchen cloth, then scold him softly for being careless. And then smile. That kind of smile that made the whole room feel smaller and warmer.
He blinked, shaking it off.
He didn't think about her every day—not because he didn't care, but because there was too much else. Too much to learn. Too much to escape.
But sometimes—like this—it all came rushing in.
He remembered late nights, when she'd quietly place food beside his books, telling him not to ruin his health. She never judged him for being obsessed with thoughts most adults didn't understand. To her, he wasn't strange. He was hers.
After she died, nothing felt personal anymore.
Now, people existed only behind screens. Life existed only in books. And he? He existed only in his thoughts.
He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. The storm outside rumbled louder, as if time itself was shifting.
A thought whispered in his mind. One he had written in a journal long ago:
"If the universe had a mind… would it dream of me?"
He smiled faintly. His only comfort was the dream he created for himself:
A world where he wasn't small.
A world where he wasn't forgotten.
A world he could control.
Then, silence.
No wind. No rain. No ticking clock.
Eric blinked.
The room was gone.
There were no walls, no floor, no air. Only darkness—vast and soft, like the inside of a thought.
And stars.
They were not above him. They were within him. He felt them. Entire galaxies pulsed beneath his skin, curled into the spiral of his thoughts. Black holes twisted in his breath. Light moved through him like blood.
He floated. He stood. He simply was.
No pain. No hunger. No emotions—nothing human remained. Just a silence so pure it hummed like a forgotten song.
He didn't panic.
He had dreamed of this.
And now, as he looked inward and saw the Earth—his Earth, the very one he once walked upon—spinning quietly in a small corner of his being, he understood.
He was no longer Eric.
He was something else.
Something vast.
Something…
Forbidden.
"I have nothing… yet I have everything."