Nothing: The God of Nothingness Chapter 1: The Boy Without a Name

Read chapter 1 of Nothing: The God of Nothingness by mrjapturk on NovelPedia.

I don’t actually know my real name. Sometimes, late at night, I try to imagine what it might have been. Maybe it was something simple. Something ordinary. Something a mother would whisper gently while holding her child close. But no matter how hard I think about it, nothing comes to mind. Only silence. Most people receive their names from their parents. A father chooses one proudly. A mother repeats it lovingly until the child learns to respond to it. But I don’t even know who gave birth to me. Where are they? Are they dead? Or maybe… They abandoned me. The villagers used to avoid talking about it whenever I asked. Some pretended not to hear me at all. Others simply looked away with uncomfortable expressions. As if my existence itself was something unpleasant. What did they call me? What is my real name? I still don’t know. And honestly… I stopped trying to find the answer a long time ago. I’ve always been alone — both inside and outside. No parents. No relatives. No friends. I lived in a small wooden house near the edge of the village where the trees grew thicker and the nights felt colder than anywhere else. No one came there unless they absolutely needed to. Sometimes I wondered if the villagers were scared of the house itself. Or maybe… They were scared of me. I never had anyone to earn food for me, teach me basic things, or take me outside like normal children. Well… There was one person. An old man everyone in the village simply called “the old wanderer.” To me, he was Grandpa. Even though I never knew his actual name. He took care of me for as long as I could remember. He cooked for me. Taught me. Protected me. And somehow, despite barely smiling, he never made me feel lonely. That alone made him different from everyone else in the world. The strange thing was… I don’t remember when he first appeared in my life. It felt as though he had always been there. Like a shadow quietly standing behind me since the day I was born. When I once asked him where my parents were, he didn’t even hesitate. “You don’t have any,” he replied calmly while cutting vegetables near the fireplace. No explanation. No emotion. Just those four words. At the time, I didn’t understand how strange that answer actually was. I simply accepted it. Because children tend to believe the only person they trust. And Grandpa was the only person I trusted. The villagers hated me. Not openly. Not at first. They simply avoided me. Whenever I walked through the village, conversations suddenly became quieter. Mothers pulled their children closer. Shopkeepers watched me carefully until I left. Even the dogs barked at me strangely. At first, I tried talking to children my age. But every single attempt ended the same way. Fear. There was always fear in their eyes. One day, when I was around six years old, I approached a group of boys playing near the river. “Can I play too?” I asked. The moment they saw me approaching, their smiles disappeared. One of them whispered something. Then all of them ran away immediately. As if I were some kind of monster. I stood there alone for a while, listening to the river flow quietly beside me. After that day, I stopped trying. If people wanted to avoid me so badly… Then I would avoid them too. Life became quieter after that. Lonelier. But simpler. Grandpa taught me many things. Things no ordinary child should know. History. Survival skills. Different species of monsters. Human psychology. Ancient kingdoms. Herbs. Poisons. Sometimes he even taught me how to skin animals properly after hunting them. At first, the sight of blood bothered me. But eventually… I got used to it. “You must understand life if you wish to survive in this world,” Grandpa once told me while sharpening a knife. “And to understand life, you must understand death first.” At the time, I didn’t fully understand what he meant. Still, I listened carefully to everything he said. Because Grandpa was never wrong. Our house was filled with books. Hundreds of them. Some lo