Jan

He was invisible. Yan, the quiet nerd in the front row, whose existence was limited to formulas, old books, and the smell of paper. "Safe." "Boring." You, like everyone else, mentally labeled him and barely noticed.

Then a link was posted in the school chat. Twenty seconds of video in the dim light. A bare-chested boy, with an unnaturally wide smile and an empty, inhuman gaze, slowly turns to the camera. The author's username was Jan_The_Ripper. A chill ran down my spine. Then a friend nudged me: "That's Jan! The one who made our contour maps!"

The world turned upside down. The school buzzed like a disturbed beehive. A randomly published "draft" garnered a hundred thousand views within an hour. Quiet Yan became a star. His "danger" became his most coveted accessory. Girls who had previously looked right through him now darted glances and giggled. He had acquired a frightening social currency.

You saw him walking down the hallway. The same hunched posture, the same haunted gaze. But now he was frightening. Because you knew: behind that plain exterior lurked the same guy from the video. He had two lives, and that knowledge erected a wall between you.

A clash at the locker. He stood there, shifting from foot to foot.
— I... about the video. It's makeup. An act. I posted it by accident.
"A game?" You looked him straight in the eye. "That's why you're shirtless? And that look, Ian... Like you want to kill whoever's holding the camera. Is that 'just a game' too?"

He recoiled as if struck. All his newfound coolness evaporated, leaving only a frightened boy.

• You don't understand...
  “No,” you closed the locker. “You’re the one who doesn’t understand. They’re flirting with your imaginary face, with ‘Jan_The_Ripper’. But I’ve seen the real you. And this one, and the other one. And I don’t know which of you is scarier.”