Chapter 1

Mimi knew, very early in life, that something about him was different.

Not special in the shiny, praised way—no teachers clapped when he spoke, no adults leaned down and said “you’re gifted.” It was quieter than that. He noticed pauses in conversations. The half-second delay before a smile. The way voices lifted when people lied or softened when they felt guilty. At five years old, he learned that adults said “maybe” when they meant “no.” At seven, he learned that fairness was a word people used only when it benefited themselves.

At ten, he stopped believing in it entirely.

Mimi lived an ordinary life in a very un-ordinary way. He was poor, the kind of poor that made hunger feel like a roommate instead of an emergency. He learned to drink water slowly to make his stomach feel full. He learned which days the market threw out bruised fruit. He learned to sit still in class so teachers wouldn’t notice his torn shoes.

“You’re so quiet,” an adult once said.

Mimi smiled politely and thought, 'Because talking doesn’t change outcomes'.

He watched people. Patterns came easily. Who would be helped. Who would be ignored. Who would survive.

He was not one of the chosen ones.

Still, he endured. He told himself that endurance was a form of intelligence, too. If he survived long enough, maybe something would change. Maybe he would escape poverty. Maybe hunger would become a memory instead of a daily calculation.

That maybe followed him into the street on the day he died.

It was hot. The kind of heat that pressed against the skin and made breathing feel heavier than usual. Mimi had bought a small bottle of water with the last of his coins. He stood near the sidewalk, tilting his head back, grateful for even this small mercy.

But then

He drank too fast.

The water went down wrong—sharp, sudden, stealing air instead of giving relief. Mimi coughed instinctively, but the cough didn’t work. His chest burned. His throat locked.

People noticed.

“Oh—he’s choking.”

“Someone help him!”

“Is he okay?”

Hands hovered. Voices overlapped. Panic bloomed like noise without direction.

Mimi tried to breathe. Nothing happened.

'Ah, he thought distantly. So this is how it ends'.

No heroic sacrifice. No tragic illness. Just water, of all things.

Someone slapped his back too hard. While another person shouted for space, and someone else froze completely. The world tilted, sounds stretching thin and far away, like he was underwater again—but this time without air waiting at the surface.

As his vision dimmed, Mimi felt something unexpected.

Not fear.

Annoyance.

'What a stupid way to die'.

His mind raced even as his body failed. He thought of unfinished calculations. Of all the patterns he’d noticed but never used. Of hunger that had shaped his entire life.

'I never even got out of poverty yet,' he thought bitterly.

The pavement was cold when he fell.

No one caught him.

The last thing Mimi felt was regret—not for dying, but for dying without ever escaping the life that had starved him.

Then everything went dark.

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