ThE_SurVival

I am not an idol, a creator, or a writer. I am not a famous figure, except perhaps within the narrow boundaries of my school campus. I am not an Oscar winner. I am not a person burdened with decades of life experience. I am not a great student, a good daughter, a cooperative sibling, or a true friend to anyone at all.

But you know what?

I still have veins carrying blood cells across my body. I have a mass of neurons inside my skull called a brain. I even have a thing called a heart—though it doesn’t work particularly well. Because of all this, society labels me a Homo sapiens. A human being.

But unlike the rest of them, I don’t find myself alike. At all.

Ninety-nine percent of the world thinks I am crazy. Honestly, so do I. But that remaining one percent? They call me a sociopath. They say I have a different kind of disease.

Interesting, isn’t it? It means I don’t belong to the masses. I don’t. Because whenever I am around them, I don’t really live. I just survive.

I am surviving inside a dark cave they call life. According to their rules, you only feel safe inside the cave if you work yourself to the bone. Otherwise, the darkness swallows you whole. I refuse to obey that rule. Working hard just to secure a single, pathetic ray of light? I can’t do it. I wasn’t born for it.

Either give me the open sky, or take away the light completely.

For them, my mindset is weird. For us? It is a thrilling game of do or die.

I used to be terrified of the dark. Used to be. But when you grow tired of dying every single day, survival becomes your only instinct. What is the worst that can happen? Death? I am already used to that.

And the best? You dig your way out of the cave, you survive, and finally... you rule.

Humans adapt. You can either learn to rule your cave, or let it turn you into a sociopath. The choice is yours. For me, it is not life. It is The Survival. Either win the sky, or die in the dark.

The scratching of my pen finally fell silent. I closed my journal.

Around me, the walls of my bedroom felt less like a home and more like the concrete cage I had just described. Total, suffocating solitude. Just the way I liked it.

Stripping off the heavy, suffocating layers of my school uniform, I tossed them to the floor and collapsed onto my bed. It was the absolute best feeling in the world—shedding the skin of the person I had to pretend to be out there.

Then, the lights flickered and died.

Plunged into absolute blackness, a heavy, unnatural cold swept through the room, freezing the breath right inside my throat. This wasn’t a normal power outage. The air grew thick, smelling faintly of ozone and ancient dust.

From the shadows in the far corner of my ceiling, a pair of glowing, crimson eyes slowly opened. They stared directly down at me, pinning me to the mattress.

A voice, scraping like rusty iron against concrete, echoed directly inside my mind:

“Show me how you survive this.”she whispered from the dark.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t even flinch. I just stared back into my own monstrous reflection. “I’m already surviving. I went to class. I wore the uniform. I played their pathetic little games.”

The crimson eyes shifted, drifting closer down the wall like smoke. “That isn’t survival, you coward. That is hiding. You are rotting inside this concrete cave because you are terrified of the dark.”

“I’m not scared,” I snapped, sitting up on the mattress. “According to society’s rules, you only feel safe inside the cave if you work yourself to the bone. Otherwise, the darkness swallows you whole. I refuse to obey that rule. Working hard just to secure a single, pathetic ray of light? I can’t do it. I wasn’t born for it.”

The voice laughed, a cold, echoing sound that vibrated in my teeth. “Then stop begging for a ray of light. Either win the sky, or die in the dark. I am the one who wants the open sky. I want the world. But you? You just want to curl up on this bed and freeze.”

“You don’t understand,” I whispered, gripping the bedsheets. “Whenever I am around them, I don’t really live. They thinks I am crazy. Honestly, so do I. But that remaining one percent? They call me a sociopath. They say I have a different kind of disease.”

“Let them call it a disease,” the shadow hissed, the crimson eyes now hovering just inches from my face. “It means we don’t belong to the masses. When you step out of this room, you don’t have to be a good daughter, a cooperative sibling, or a true friend. Put on my skin. Act like the sociopath they fear. Use it.”

I closed my eyes, feeling the unnatural cold seep into my skin. “It’s exhausting dying every single day.”

“When you saw him crying you smiled secretly, didn't you?. stop acting like a secret mad girl that just a 1 percent notices! Stop dying and start ruling, You try but you stay in the middle of do or die, cause u havent even won the war with me , with your own mind STUPID!” she commanded, her presence wrapping around me like a heavy winter coat. “Humans adapt. You can either learn to rule your cave, or let it crush you. The choice is yours. Open your eyes.STOP being inside your uncertainty.”

A wave of pure, suffocating panic suddenly slammed into my chest. My heart hammered violently against my ribs, and the air left my lungs. The cold wasn’t just around me anymore—it felt like it was clawing its way inside me.

“I am already fighting with enough of them i can't anymore.. not with you ...please ........Get away from me!” I screamed, the sound tearing raw from my throat.

In a blind, frantic reflex, I threw my hands out, thrashing wildly against the empty air to push the presence back. My palms struck nothing but empty space.

Instantly, the heavy pressure vanished. The unnatural cold snapped back into a normal bedroom chill.

I sat there panting, trembling from head to toe, my hands still raised in front of my face. The room was completely empty. The crimson eyes were gone, swallowed up by the ordinary shadows of my bedroom.

Slowly, my racing pulse began to calm. I lowered my hands and caught my reflection in the window glass under the faint moonlight. For a split second, I could have sworn my own eyes flashed a dangerous, vibrant red before fading back to normal.

The crimson glow faded, leaving only the pale, cold moonlight filtering through the window. My heart slowly stopped hammering, leaving behind a hollow silence that felt heavier than the panic.

Moving like a ghost in my own room, I pulled a silk T-shirt on and stepped into my trousers. I looked up at the wall. It was suffocatingly full. Certificates of national and international writing competitions, basketball trophies, countless medals draped over paintings and blouses—a mountain of proof that I existed out there. On my desk, the PC screen glowed faintly, Levi Ackerman’s cold gaze staring from the wallpaper next to an unsolved Rubik’s cube and a messy, falling pile of textbooks.

I sighed, a heavy, hollow sound. A tear slipped from my eye, hitting the floor, followed quickly by another. One to another. It was the weight of it all. The mass of expectations I had already won, yet felt entirely disconnected from.

I wiped my face, my gaze locking onto the unsolved Rubik’s cube on my desk. My fingers twitched. The shadow was right about one thing: the uniform was just a skin I wore to hide.

Tomorrow, the sun would rise, and the concrete cave would demand its perfect student back. But as I stared at my reflection in the dark screen of my PC, I knew the girl who went to sleep tonight wasn’t the one who was going to wake up.

That’s why I admire the night—it asks nothing of me, not even the smile I wear beneath their lights.In the darkness, I don’t have to pretend to be alive; I can simply become someone else someone who I AM in love with.