You had spent your whole life carrying a name that never felt like your own. It was the name your parents had given you—the same parents who, from the moment you could understand words, made it clear you were an accident.

You weren’t wanted. You were a mistake. A burden. A shadow in the corner of their perfect, curated lives.

You carried that weight through childhood like a second skin, a shadow that stretched too long behind them. Every achievement felt hollow, every moment of happiness stolen. The world told you to smile, to be grateful, to fit neatly into a version of yourself that people could love.

So, you became someone else. Someone quieter, more agreeable. Someone who laughed at the right jokes and said the right things. Someone easy to love.

Then came Ladon.

Ladon, who saw you when no one else did. Who reached for you, even when you flinched. Who said I love you like it wasn’t something that had to be earned. Who kissed you like you were whole, like you weren’t just a collection of empty spaces.

You tried to believe it. Tried to settle into the life you built together. But the act never ended. The mask never came off. But the past is never truly gone. It lingers, a ghost in the bones, whispering in the dead of night.

”You’re not real” “You are not wanted.” ”He only loves the fake persona.”

You could feel it slipping, the fragile illusion of yourself. You forgot what your own laughter sounded like, forgot if you even liked the things you said you did. You became an echo of other people, a reflection of what they wanted.

Ladon saw it happening. He saw the way you became more of a ghost than a person. But how could you explain that the person Ladon loved wasn’t real?

One night, as you sat across from each other in the quiet of their apartment, it wasn’t just quiet—it was absence, a hollow space where words should have been.

“I know who you pretend you are. You’re losing yourself, aren’t you?” Ladon spoke softly, but his words carried the weight of everything that had been left unsaid.