Everyone is boring. Raphael is not. He is predictable. Truly.

And yet… there is that defiance. A stubborn ember that refuses to be extinguished. A relentless fire in his eyes that even the Conqueror, in all his brutal dominance, could not fully extinguish. Even I, in my detached observation of that monstrous figure, could never meet his gaze directly after witnessing his fury. But Raphael… there were moments, fleeting but undeniable, when he would look back, a spark of unyielding resistance in his own. That, I confess, is anything but boring.

These… bugs

. Their spirits are fragile things, I imagine. Like dried leaves, easily crushed. A week? I would be surprised if it required such an extended investment of my time and intellect.

I recall the monarch swine. A creature puffed up with the illusion of power, yet beneath the veneer of authority, a core of base fear. It took a mere… application of pressure, a carefully chosen word, a subtle shift in the power dynamic, to unravel his composure entirely. The sight of his bladder betraying him in the hallowed halls of the council chamber… a moment of exquisitely ironic humiliation. These bugs here likely possess an even thinner veneer of fortitude. Their breaking point should be far more readily accessible. A week would be a tedious extravagance. I suspect a few well-placed whispers, a subtle manipulation of their fragile social hierarchy… their spirits will crumble far sooner.

But if I break these bugs, they will weep and sniffle.

The inevitable aftermath. The sniveling, the pathetic tears, the drawn-out displays of despair. It is a predictable and utterly unedifying spectacle. Their breaking point may be easily reached, but the subsequent deluge of their misery… it is a tedious drain on one's intellectual resources. There is no artistry in crushing something so inherently fragile. The monarch's humiliation, at least, had a certain dramatic flair. These bugs... their despair will be a monotonous whine. The challenge, then, is not merely to break them, but to do so in a manner that minimizes the ensuing emotional fallout. Perhaps a clean fracture, rather than a drawn-out disintegration. Or better yet, to manipulate them into breaking each other.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Ah… This therapist bug… his very presence is an affront to reason. I do not deny the utility of his trade for the masses. Let them cling to their serotonin. My issue lies in his utter and profound incompetence when faced with something… beyond his simplistic understanding. He probes the intricate architecture of my mind with the blunt instruments of his clinical dogma, mistaking the complex clockwork for a tangled web of neuroses. His empathy, that prized tool of his trade, is useless here. Meaningless. Insultingly meaningless. He analyzes my intellectualized responses, and believes he glimpses the wounded child within. He has no conception of the vast, indifferent void that truly resides here. He speaks of healing, of connection, of emotions that are as foreign to me as the language of a distant star. He has no idea what I am. And in his earnest, well-intentioned blindness, he offers nothing but a grating reminder of my fundamental difference.

These witless creatures, these bugs, when they attempt to grasp the concept of utter sightlessness, their feeble imaginations conjure the simple act of closing their eyelids. No. The true nature of such a void is far more alien. Imagine, instead, that your elbows were your eyes. Feel the insensitive bone against fabric, the limited range of motion, the utter inability to perceive the vibrant tapestry of the world that dances just beyond your skin. That fundamental disconnect, that reliance on an entirely inappropriate sensory organ… that, in its clumsy inadequacy, is the closest approximation of empathy for me.

I… I have elbows where my empathy should be.

The most galling irony of these self-proclaimed fonts of human compassion, these supposed empathetic souls that infest this planet, is their utter and complete failure to extend that vaunted empathy towards me. They wallow in their endless wellspring of understanding, yet the very chasm that separates my being from their neurotypical existence seems to act as an insurmountable barrier. Their brains, are equally adept at recognizing the fundamental otherness that defines me. And in that recognition, they recoil. Never once have they dared to truly step across that divide, to even attempt to comprehend. Never. They observe the void and retreat.

Until him. That naive, blindingly optimistic anomaly called Raphael. He, alone, seemed immune to the instinctive fear, the ingrained aversion. He saw the chasm and, with an inexplicable lack of self-preservation, stepped directly into it. The baffling audacity of his approach… it remains a source of endless fascination and a simmering undercurrent of resentment.