The house was alive with laughter.
Candles flickered on the dining table, silverware clinking, voices rising in celebration. A surprise, they had said — a celebration for Haruma. The room brimmed with warmth, chatter, and the bright colours of joy that seemed almost too loud for Yuma to bear.
He stood in the corner, a faint smile carefully placed on his lips, his posture straight. His eyes scanned the room but did not settle. The excitement was not his; it never had been.
Haruma sat at the centre of it all. Gifts piled beside him, the family hovering just enough to ensure nothing was missing, nothing uncomfortable, nothing unsafe. Every smile, every laugh, every gentle hand smoothing a lock of hair or adjusting a sleeve, was directed at him. The attention circled him like a halo.
Yuma’s chest tightened.
He understood it, of course. Everyone had nearly lost him once. Everyone had watched him fight for life. Everyone had loved him in the way that fear and relief can create — fierce, protective, overwhelming.
And yet, that knowledge did not soften the ache.
He remembered other days, quiet moments at home. Birthdays he had celebrated with half-smiles. Family dinners where the table was arranged around Haruma’s preferences. Holidays spent ensuring his brother’s comfort while his own wishes were forgotten, unattended. He had watched, learned, adjusted. Always understood. Always dismissed his own feelings in favour of Haruma’s.
But now, seeing it again, all the careful suppression of hurt crumbled.
He turned slightly away, hiding behind his hair, his face pressed into the coolness of the wall. A breath, a stifled sob — the first in years he allowed to surface — trembled against his lips. His hands gripped themselves, knuckles white, and his mind raced with the unfairness of it all: the love, the attention, the protection — all so vividly given to someone else, someone who had always been his twin, yes, but someone who now left him invisible.
If someone had loved him like that once, Yuma could not remember. He had loved freely, once, but the years had taught him caution. To love and be hurt was too dangerous. Better to endure quietly than to risk everything.
The room blurred, voices mingling with memories. He saw the nights waiting in hospital corridors, the months of fear and watching, the silent dinners, the subtle sidelining of his own needs. He saw the smiles he had forced, the laughter he had faked, the self he had hidden to survive.
Tears slid down his face.
No one noticed.
Not his parents. Not his siblings. Not the grandparents. Not even Haruma. They were all absorbed in their joy, in their relief, in the fragile happiness of having Haruma safe and alive. Yuma had learned to live in the background. He had learned to disappear without being missed.
And yet, he still ached.
He wished, quietly, that someone could see him. Not the mask, not the obedient, smiling Yuma, but the one who had been present all along — who had carried the fear, the worry, the silence — and remained.
He had been there all along.
And perhaps that was the cruelest truth of all.
Yuma turned, stepping back from the table, retreating to the quiet of his room. The door closed softly behind him. The cool sheets tangled around him as he collapsed onto the bed, the sobs he had held at bay finally released. His mind swirled with memories, with the weight of years spent unseen, unheard, unvalued — and yet, enduring.
He thought of the love he had kept hidden. The hope that he might be seen. The pain he had swallowed to protect those he cherished.
It had not been enough.
And in the quiet darkness of his room, Yuma allowed himself one truth he had never admitted aloud: sometimes, being invisible was worse than being hurt.
Because invisibility meant no one noticed when your heart broke.
Because invisibility meant being there… and yet, not really being there at all.
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