01 | The Empty Man

It has always puzzled me as to why people feel so much. What makes them cry at movies as their cheeks dripping wet, laugh at stupid jokes they made no sense to anyone, or stare at sunsets as if the sky was winking its secrets to them alone. I have never understood it. 

Like the blind's colors, the deaf's sounds, emotions are something that exists but is never for me. 

It's not that i don't function. I do. I get up, I do what I do, I go on living. I know when to give a smile when a person recognizes it is expected of you. I do nods, I do handshakes, I say, "I understand." But I don't. Not really. 

I was never cruel. They assume that the lack of empathy equals being a monster, that without kindness, there must be evil. But I don't hurt people. I don't feel the need to. I simply exist, separate, detached. 

My world is built on logic. I move forward, and so I observe and I analyze. I don't live in the past nor look forward to the future. I have a story, but my life is not. It's a straight line. 

However, one day, she appeared. 

I first went up to the café right by my apartment and I saw her by the window staring out and into the rain as if it was keeping some kind of secret. The rain brings most people rushing through it, cursing, covering their heads, and eager to be anywhere else but under the downpour. Rain was something to be thankful for, she just sat there, a small smile playing at her lips. 

It didn't make sense. 

Only she was different, I noticed her. She wasn't loud, or dressed peculiarly, or doing something dramatic, in the way people think. But then, it was the way she was, how she lived, how she was there, how she was meant, how the rest of us were merely going. 

I watched her for a moment longer than necessary, then turned back to my coffee. 

It didn't matter. 

By coincidence or design, I saw her again at the bookstore I visited regularly. Kneeling in one of the aisles, she was flipping through the cracked pages of a battered book. 

She didn't look up but asked, "Are you just going to stand there?" 

I blinked. I hadn't realized I was staring. 

I mumbled sorry and reached for a book beside her on the shelf. 

Then she finally looked up at me, tipping her head in attempt to solve the puzzle. 

"Do you believe in God?" 

Almost I laughed at the absurdity of the question, so out of place. Instead, I said, "No." 

As if she had expected that, she smiled. "Why not?" 

"I don't have any faith, so belief requires faith." 

She didn't seem offended. If anything, she looked... curious. "Then what do you have?" 

"Reason." 

Humming, she seemed to roll my answer over in her mind. "Reason doesn't give you hope." 

"I don't need hope." 

She didn't argue. I don't think she knew what she was saying, but she just nodded. "Maybe you will, someday." 

After that, I didn't know why I continued to talk to her. Perhaps because she didn't tell me what I wanted to hear — she didn't tell me to persuade me, dismiss me or call me clinical. She just listened. 

For the first time in my life, I pondered whether someone like her could relate to someone like me. 

Not that it mattered. 

Because at the end of the day, I was still the same. 

Empty. Detached. Unchanged. 

Almost human. 

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