The figure crouched in front of his house had to be a fairy.
It had long, lightning-shock-white hair, pin-straight and spilling around its shoulders. When it looked up, its face was pale and angular, neither male nor female, with eerie blue-white eyes. There were no wings, but there was an odd glow radiating from its body, leaking out into the dark night.
“May I have some food?”
He stared. Were they just pretending like it wasn’t clearly a fairy?
His legs were aching. After a long day of standing at the pharmacy, exchanging superficial greetings with customers, he’d been dragging his legs through the dark streets. He’d bought some bread from a nearby bakery because he knew he’d have no energy to cook in his tiny, lightless apartment. Why cook when all he had to do was sleep, wake up, and repeat an empty day?
He fished the bread out of his bag and held it out.
The fairy took it and ate it in three quick bites. He watched the white being chew, the faint glow intensifying in the night, like a second, brighter moon. “Thank you,” it said, after swallowing. It uncurled itself, standing up. Its true height wasn’t much taller than its sitting form. “To be perfectly honest, I am a fairy.”
“Wow,” he said. “I am so shocked.”
“In exchange for your kindness,” the fairy said, “I would like to grant you a wish. What is it that you want, dear human?”
His feet felt heavy. His shoulders did, too, weighed down even in the cool night breeze. He thought about what he wanted. What could he use in his life? A comfortable house? Money, to break him out of that monotonous job? What would it do? It wouldn’t buy him a family. It wouldn’t buy him buy him loved ones who knew him, had known him for years and continued to want to be around him. It couldn’t buy him people who wanted to talk to him.
He ran his hand through his hair, sighing. “I wish I could just not exist.”
“That is your wish?”
His eyes widened. That had been an involuntary comment, a thought that had just slipped past his lips. “No, wait—”
“Very well, dear human. Your wish has been granted.”
The world went black.
***
He woke up.
He went about his day.
He was still in his tiny apartment, still using the same cracked dishes in the small kitchen. He remembered the last night. The fairy. Absolutely nothing had changed. He was still here.
Maybe it had all been a dream.
He reached the pharmacy, wrapped up in a thick puffer jacket to protect against the sudden cold. He shoved his hands in his pockets, pushing the door with his shoulder. The tiny bell above the door tinkled as he walked inside.
He stopped.
He didn’t recognize the woman at the counter.
The woman at the counter straightened, her eyes flashing with a familiar look—the ‘welcome, customer!’ face that his face felt heavy with just the memory of. “Good morning!” She said, brightly. “How can I help you today?”
He squinted, scanning her face over and over. But no. No recognition. “Are you new here?”
“What?” She asked.
“Is this your first day?” He asked. Surely the boss would’ve informed him if they were hiring a new employee. “I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.”
She shook her head slowly, brows knitting. “Um…no. I’ve worked here for the past year.”
“For the past what?”
For the past year, the morning shift had been his. He had never seen this woman, not during any shift changes, not during the occasional team dinners where he sat quietly in the corner, not while watching people join and quit, come and go, walk into the store and out of it.
“For the past year,” she clarified. Her face turn concerned. “Sir, are you feeling alright?”
“Y-yes,” he mumbled. He took a step back, nearly tripping over his own feet as he turned. He stumbled out of the shop. The cold morning wind hit him like a slap to the face, pricking the goosebumps already present on his skin.
“Did you see?”
He turned.
There, sitting outside the pharmacy, was the fairy.
He looked around. It seemed like no one else on the streets could see the wild, white being. They all walked by, looking straight ahead, as if they didn’t even notice the glowing thing.
“What have you done?” He breathed.
“What you wanted.” It raised its translucent, blue eyes to look at him. “As you wished, you have awoken in a world where you don’t exist. Where you never existed.”
He had to sit down. His knees were weak.
As he collapsed to the sidewalk, the passerbys kept walking left to right, without sparing either of them a glance. The road beneath his knees was cold, but the glow emanating from the fairy was, surprisingly, warm. He looked up at the fairy, now close enough to see the hints of white in its eyes. “What do you mean?”
It shrugged. “Exactly what I said. You were not born. You were never raised in that orphanage. You don’t have the debt from university. You were never hired here. I left you your house so you’d have somewhere to go. But otherwise, you are free. You have no attachments, and no burdens.”
He felt breathless. His head was spinning. “So—what now?” He managed to say.
“Whatever you want,” the fairy said simply. “You can do anything you wish, dear human. You are free.”
Free? What did freedom mean?
If there was something he’d wanted to do, he would have wished for it. What was he supposed to do with this life now? “Why didn’t you just kill me,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes. “What the hell is the point of this?”
“Why are you giving up on life so soon?” The fairy stood, a jingling sound in the air as it did so. “Come. Come with me. Let’s walk.”
As if under the influence of some magical command, his feet moved. He rose from the sidewalk, and soon found himself walking down the streets, the little white fairy at his side.
The world was unchanged. People went by in long coats and thick hats, brisk paces, their lives the same as last night. What had he hoped for? He’d had a remarkably unremarkable presence. What would change if he disappeared? Nothing. For anyone.
A body fell in front of him.
He screamed.
He stumbled back, ankle twisting below him. He crashed to the ground. Pain flared through his tailbone, up his back, and yet he could barely feel it.
All he could see was the body.
It was an adult male. Somewhere in his fifties or sixties, with greying hair. The white streaks were now being gradually stained with slow-dripping blood. Blood was beginning to pool around him, thick under his neck, red on his shoulders and shirt.
He recognized that man.
“You remember him?”
Heart in his throat, bile in his mouth, he nodded. He answered the fairy, even without being able to tear his eyes away from the body. “He was a customer yesterday. He asked for anxiety pills, more than the required dose. I refused to sell them to him.”
It wasn’t unusual. Often, customers came with dangerous requests and an empty look in their eyes. He always turned them away.
The world was moving around him. People were running out of the building the man had fallen out of. The first, the fastest, was a young woman. She crashed to her knees beside the body, hair a wild mess. Her spectacles fell straight off her face with how hard she’d fallen, but she didn’t seem to care. She was screaming. Loud and harsh, something incoherent, only a few words clear through the mess of her screams. “Father! Fath—an ambulance—someone—please!”
He couldn’t breathe. There were people running around, shouting, pulling up phones, but the body remained there.
“What—what—” He could barely form words.
“You don’t exist,” the fairy said. “Which means you didn’t exist yesterday. The woman at the counter gave him the medications he wanted. That man took the pills to numb himself and jumped off of the roof.”
His mouth dropped open. He snapped his head up to look at the fairy. “So this is my fault?”
“Of course not. You didn’t exist. How could it be your fault?”
“Didn’t you just say—if I had been here, it wouldn’t have happened!”
“But it’s not your fault he chose to take such a drastic step. You bear no responsibility for this. There is no blood on your hands. You can walk away with your heart unburdened.”
But he couldn’t walk. His legs wouldn’t move.
As he watched the surroundings change, the fairy kept talking, its voice somehow audible over the ungodly blaring of the sirens. “You see that woman there?”
He nodded, faintly. She was being pushed aside for the emergency personnel to load the body into the stretcher. She looked like she needed a doctor herself, swaying as she climbed into the ambulance.
“That is the man’s daughter. After you refused him service, he felt like someone cared about his life. He would have confessed his depression to his family, who would have taken him to a doctor. His daughter would have come by today to thank you for saving her father’s life.”
He was left staring at the bloodstains on the grey street.
“She would have taken you out for lunch. It would have been the start of something new.”
Flabbergasted, he turned up to the fairy. “What the hell? Are you saying she would’ve married me?”
The fairy shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. But it would have been something.”
The crowd was beginning to disperse. Eventually, only he was left, sitting on the bloody sidewalk with the tiny fairy beside him. Alone.
“What’s the point of telling me this now,” he said, finally. “Are you trying to rub it in? That my life would have changed if I hadn’t met you last night? If I’d hung on for just one more day? How was I supposed to do that? How would I know that things would have been different? I’ve spent my whole life alone. How was I to know that it would be different?”
The fairy crouched beside him. Its glow was close enough to touch, warm on his skin. “Did you have to know that?”
“What?” He squinted at its small, mysterious face. “Did I have to know? Of course! Why would I hang on unless I knew something was waiting for me?”
“For the sun.”
“Huh?”
The fairy looked up, around. “Why did you need someone else to be a reason to hang around? Why wasn’t the sun enough?”
He fell silent.
“You’ll make the sun sad.” The fairy looked directly at the sun, eyes wide, like it didn’t hurt to stare right into the light. “Haven’t you noticed it dim today?”
“No.”
A small smile played on its lips. “I suppose it’s hard for humans to notice. But it is. The sun misses you. As do the skies and the seas, and the wind and the earth. Your footsteps are missed, as are the breaths you let out into the world.”
“But there was no point to those steps and those breaths,” he said bitterly. “No one cared about them.”
“The sun did,” the fairy said evenly. “The sun cared about you.”
“Oh, what does the sun matter!” He snapped. “What does that do for me? It changed nothing for me!”
“But it changed things for him.” The fairy gestured with its chin, towards the bloody sidewalk. “And her.”
“So what? I should live my life because I might someday be of some use to someone else?”
“No,” the fairy said, calm even in the face of his rising tone. “You should live your life for yourself.” When he went silent, again, it continued. “But if you can’t do that, you should live your life for the sun. For the breeze and the flowers. If you disappeared, they would miss you. The sun will miss you.”
After a long pause, he spoke again. “So what am I supposed to do now? Just…go on, knowing what might have been?”
The fairy hummed. “You have some change in your pocket, right?”
He touched his pocket with his fingers, felt the bulge of bills and coins, and nodded.
The fairy stood up. “Buy me some bread. The one from last night was quite delicious.”
As if magic had taken over him again, he found the strength to move. He walked with the fairy along the short path to the bakery, where he was let in. He exchanged some cash for plain bread—the cheapest thing they sold. It honestly wasn’t that nice. He would only have it for something filling and quick. For sustenance, not pleasure. Just like everything else in his life.
He watched the fairy eat it, once again in three quick bites.
Then the fairy looked up at him. “To be perfectly honest, I am a fairy.”
He raised his brows.
“In exchange for your kindness,” the fairy said, “I would like to grant you a wish. What is it that you want, dear human?”
His lips parted. “I—can I—” He took a breath. He had to watch what he said this time. “Undo what you did last night. Give me my life back.” He smiled, wryly. “Let’s stop the sun from missing me.”
The fairy smiled too, the warmth of it at odds with its cold, white appearance. “Very well, dear human. Your wish has been granted.”
***
He woke up.
He went about his day.
He was still in his tiny apartment, still using the same cracked dishes in the small kitchen. He’d woken up after a long, deep sleep. It had been a while since he’d rested so peacefully. Last night he’d been dragging his feet as he walked back from the pharmacy, but today there was an unusual spring in his step.
When he went outside, the sun was startingly warm. He took off his thick jacket to allow the heat to soak into his bare skin. The breeze was slow, ruffling his hair. He didn’t want to hurry to the pharmacy today. The tiny flowers lining the street were eye-catchingly beautiful. He looked at them as he ambled along.
Without quite knowing what had changed, or why he was doing this, he stepped into the bakery. Instead of buying his usual plain bread, he spent a little extra, and purchased a cinnamon raisin bagel, slathered with a generous helping of cream cheese. He would never have allowed himself this indulgence, but—today, it suddenly felt like he could.
It left a sweet, tangy taste in his mouth as he opened the pharmacy, set up for the day. It didn’t take long until the bell rang, signaling the first customer.
He looked up to see a woman. She was pretty in the usual way, dark hair tied back, spectacles in front of eyes that widened when she saw him. She looked like she recognized him, though he was sure he’d never seen her before. But something about her seemed—familiar.
“How can I help you?” He asked.
Unexpectedly, she smiled. It looked warmer than the sun. “You already have.” She approached the counter with quiet, quick footsteps, her smile turning warmer and softer the close she got. Once she reached the counter, she finally spoke, staring right into his eyes.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”
“Huh?”
She laughed. “I wanted to thank you. You don’t know it, but—you saved my father’s life.”
React
