No Longer Human | Arlecchino

Chapter 14: A dream.. I saw a dream

When I was six years old, I already knew I was different from the others, but it wasn't the way I thought or noticed things that was different, it was all of them. The others were fumbling with their ABCs, whereas I was trying to patch together how people acted and what they did and did not say.

It seemed like I was smarter than the rest, including the teacher. She was the first adult who treated me like a problem, not a child. Her smiles were always tight, her voice trembling whenever she addressed me directly. Once, in geography, I corrected her on the capital of some country; she turned pale, as if I'd done something wrong.

I think she was afraid of me.

Not that I could blame her.

When the other kids played games like tag or hide-and-seek, I just watched. They didn't know it, but I was learning-studying how they moved, how they laughed, how they fought over the rules. I knew things they didn't. Like how the class clown wasn't really funny, just scared of being ignored. Or how the quiet kid sitting in the corner wasn't shy, but angry-angry at the world for being louder than he could ever shout.

I could perceive their insecurities, their terrors, their lies.

And for some reason, I felt nothing.

No sympathy, no joy, no sorrow. Just. a cold fascination.

It wasn't as if my parents didn't notice, either. My mom did, particularly. She'd look at me sometimes, like she was trying to puzzle out what was the matter. She didn't say so, but it was there, in the tilt of her head. The way her hands would shake when she thought I wasn't looking.

Once I awoke to her speaking with my father in hushed tones, late at night.

"He's not normal," she whispered tight with worry. "He. scares me sometimes."

Scared of me. They were scared of their own son.

At the time, I had little idea why. I'd done nothing wrong. Not yet, anyway.

But as the years went on, I came to see.

People are scared of what they cannot anticipate. And I was unpredictable.

And deep down, I think they knew I could be worse. Much worse.

They weren't wrong.

My father was a politician, charming and sharp and calculating. My mother, by contrast, was a nurse. She spent her days tending to the broken, to the sick, to the dying. On its surface, they were that picture-perfect couple: the powerful public figure, the compassionate healer. But beneath the façade lay a family tiptoeing around its youngest member-me.

By the time I was eight, I realized that the only way to keep them from looking at me like I was a ticking time bomb was to give them a mask they could believe in.

I created a well-thought-out character-a shield. I started to be the funny guy, the sarcastic one. The one who always had a quick joke or a comeback. The kind of guy that people laughed with and never at. It worked, for the most part. My dad stopped looking at me as if I was some sort of liability, while my mother's anxious looks softened into something like relief.

But while I was playing jester, I learned, watched, and soaked up.

My father was merciless behind the well-articulated speeches and hand-tailored suits. To him, politics was not about ideals or justice but about power and survival. I'd watch him navigate deals with the kind of precision that bordered on artistry. Behind closed doors, he spoke in terms of leverage, influence, and control.

I wanted to understand it all.

And then I started studying law.

First, it was mere curiosity, reading through my father's legal documents and also following his cases. The more I read, the more fascinating this world of dos and don'ts became: it was like some sort of game, and I wanted to memorize every cheat code, every loophole. By age ten, I was memorizing and could quote statutes that even Dad's aides had difficulty recalling.