Prologue

There are people you notice immediately.

They walk into a room and everyone turns their heads. Their voice carries. Their laughter fills the space. Their presence seems to shift the air itself.

And then there are the others.

The ones who learn very early how to walk without making noise. How to sit at the edge of the tables. How to speak just enough not to bother anyone.

For a long time, I thought the world worked like that.

As if there were two categories of people:

those you notice immediately…

and those who learn to make themselves forgotten.

And for a long time, I believed I belonged to that so-called second group.

Not exactly invisible.

But… transparent.

People saw me. Sometimes they spoke to me.

But I always had this strange feeling of only existing halfway. Like a reflection in a window: present if you look closely, but easy to ignore.

Reflections have always been honest with me.

In bus windows, in automatic doors, in the fogged mirrors of bathrooms… I always found the same young man.

Shoulders slightly hunched. An uncertain gaze.

A smile ready to apologize for existing.

A young man doing his best not to disturb the world.

And that was enough.

It was enough for me.

Because when you take up no space, no one can push you away.

It’s a surprisingly effective strategy.

The problem is that when you stay too long at the edge of things… you eventually forget how to truly enter the room.

I thought my life would continue like that.

A few studies. A quiet job. Polite conversations. Days passing without a sound.

Nothing dramatic.

Nothing spectacular.

Just a decent existence, a little away from the center.

Until the day someone looked at me.

Not the way you look at a classmate.

Not the way you observe a colleague in an open-plan office.

No.

As if I truly existed.

And I think that’s where my story begins.

Not the day I was born.

Not the day I started university.

But the day someone decided to see me.

And I could no longer pretend to be invisible.