"Why are you ignoring me?"
Albert froze. He slowly turned his head. A cute girl was looking right in his direction, her hands resting on her hips.
"Sorry, I thought it wasn't—" Albert started to answer, raising a hand awkwardly.
Before he could even finish the sentence, a boy brushed right past his shoulder from behind.
"I'm sorry, I did not notice you. Let's go," the boy said to the girl.
She smiled, and the two of them walked away together, completely unaware that Albert even existed.
Albert stood there with his hand still half-raised in the air. His face felt incredibly hot. He quickly turned around and faced the wall, pulling his hand down. He prayed that they didn't hear him speak.
Please tell me nobody saw that, he thought, his heart pounding against his ribs. He wanted to dig a hole and bury himself.
This is exactly why I don't talk to people. I always misread the situation and end up looking like an idiot.
He started walking fast, so desperate to get out of that hallway.
I need to get out of here before I die of embarrassment. Come on, something—anything—needs to happen right now so I can forget I ever did that.
He actively scanned the area, hoping to accidentally stumble into a scenario to save his high school debut.
He mentally checked off a list of anime tropes that could happen in a high school setting:
*Bumping into a girl at a corner and dropping their bags.
*Opening the wrong door and walking into a girl changing her clothes.
*Rescuing someone from a group of bullies behind the gym.
Albert walked past the gym. He passed the noisy club rooms. He passed other students who were walking.
Nothing happened. Zero.
The hallways were just normal, chaotic high school hallways. No one bumped into him. No one asked for his help.
He stopped walking and looked out a window overlooking the courtyard. His plan for a high school debut was completely failing. He wanted to make new friends, but he lacked the basic social skills to just walk up and talk to someone.
He had tried to talk to someone in the classroom earlier, but he hesitated and failed. Now he was relying on lucky accidents, which he knew, deep down, was an absurd idea.
I always tell myself that I'm alone because I choose to be alone. It makes me feel better, like I'm the one in control.
He leaned his forehead against the cool glass.
But who am I kidding? I'm not alone because I chose to be. I'm alone because I don't know how to talk to people. I'm just an unsocial loser.
He thought about Leo and Maya back in the classroom, effortlessly surrounded by classmates who instantly liked them.
They are the main characters. They naturally draw everyone in just by existing. And me? I'm just the mob character. I'm the faceless student standing in the background of their story, only there to fill up an empty desk so the scene doesn't look empty. I'm not some cool, mysterious lone wolf who rejects society. It's the other way around. Society rejects me. It hurts to admit it, but that's the reality. I'm just background scenery that nobody notices.
In anime, mob characters are cool. But in real life, mob characters are social losers. We are pretending to be cool like someone who observes in the shadows. Pathetic.
He sighed heavily, pushed himself off the glass, and walked over to an empty bench in the hallway.
He sat down and stared at the floor.
To distract himself from loneliness, he pulled his smartphone from his pocket. He opened his contacts app first. The screen was practically deserted.
There were exactly four numbers saved in his entire phonebook:
Leo, Maya, his dad, and the national emergency hotline.
He sighed, closed the contacts, and tapped on LIME, the messaging app everyone used. The familiar bright green screen flashed for a second before loading his account.
He tapped the 'Friends' tab. It was a depressing sight.
At the very top, the friend count simply read '2'.
Below that were just two circular profile pictures:
Tachibana Maya and Sterling Leo.
The rest of his phone screen was just a massive, empty white space.
Just two friends. I'm really...
The smartphone that was supposed to distract him made him more feel the reality.
Thinking about his pathetic, unsocial life made his chest tighten. It felt heavy, like something was pressing down on his lungs.
He needed to stop feeling miserable. He blinked hard. When he opened his eyes, he forced his brain to switch gears. He let his nerd side take over.
The loud, laughing students walking past him started to blur. He stopped looking at them as human beings. In his eyes, they turned into active particles. He watched them move, mapping out their vectors and attractors in his head.
The group of guys heading to the cafeteria were just particles being pulled by an attractor. The girls walking down the hall were active particles following their invisible vectors.
Turning people into math made the tight feeling in his chest fade away. It made the painful reality bearable.
He kept his eyes focused on the ground, tracing the imaginary paths of the particles moving near the stairs in the distance.
That was when he saw it.
Albert blinked hard. Once. Twice. It's not a hallucination. It was real.
Lying on the floor, near the bottom of the busy stairwell, was a small piece of folded cloth. Students were walking right past it, ignoring it completely.
He stood up from the bench. He kept his eyes locked on the cloth so he wouldn't lose sight of it in the crowd. He stepped into the stream of students, adjusting his pace to slip between them without bumping shoulders or making eye contact.
He reached the bottom step, crouched down, and reached out his hand.
It was a pale pink handkerchief with a small, embroidered design in the corner. He brought it a little closer. It smelled faintly of light soap and a sweet floral perfume.
His inner otaku immediately flared up.
This is it. The legendary 'find a dropped handkerchief and return it to the heroine' scenario. This is the exact trigger event for a romance plot.
Then, reality ruined the fantasy. He flipped it over, but there was no name tag on it. There was absolutely no way to know who the owner was. His first thought was to find the girl and return it personally to trigger the event.
But walking up to random girls and asking to smell their perfume to match the handkerchief will instantly get me labeled as a creep.
The normal, logical thing to do is to drop it off at the 'Lost and Found.'
Albert looked down the long, crowded hallway. The Zenith Academy campus was massive. He had absolutely no idea where the administrative office or the 'Lost and Found' box was located, and searching for it now, through all these crowds, would take way too much time.
He neatly folded the handkerchief and slipped it into his pants pocket.
I'll just find the office and turn it in later.
Instead of heading straight back to the loud classroom, Albert hesitated. Finding that dropped handkerchief had sparked a bit of hope in him.
This is my high school debut. Maybe I should go look for a secret base. I know it's pathetic, but I still have a lot of time to kill before lunch.
He walked further away from the main buildings, amazed once again by how massive the Zenith Academy campus was. Eventually, the noise of the crowds completely faded. He found himself behind an old, brick club building. It was completely quiet.
This is perfect. It's totally hidden from the main foot traffic. I can make this my hiding place in the future.
Albert heard voices.
He got curious and then he peeked around the corner of the wall and froze.
Standing in the middle of a small, grassy courtyard was a large tree. Tied to one of its lower branches was an old, faded handkerchief that looked like it had been left there a long time ago.
The 'legendary confession tree.'
His otaku radar started pinging.
There were two people standing under the shade of the branches.
A boy and a girl. He was witnessing a live confession event.
Albert stayed hidden behind the wall, watching quietly. They were too far away to hear what they were saying, but the body language told the whole story. The boy bowed his head slightly, then turned and walked away in the opposite direction.
The girl stayed under the tree. Albert couldn't see the tears from this distance, but the way her shoulders shook and her head dropped made it obvious. She was crying.
Okay, time to go.
I shouldn't be here. Albert carefully took a step back, trying to exit as quietly as possible.
"Stop."
Albert almost jumped out of his shoes. His heart hammered against his ribs.
Endnote of Chapter 4
The Psychology of a "Mob Character"
People might notice Albert referring to himself as a "mob character" or background character. Clinically speaking, "Mob Character Syndrome" or "NPC Syndrome" does not actually exist. You will not find it in the DSM-5 or any medical manual; it is strictly an internet pop-psychology term.
Albert, being obsessed with data and logic, knows this perfectly well.
What he is actually experiencing closely aligns with traits of Avoidant Personality Disorder (AvPD), paired with a heavy use of a defense mechanism called Rationalization and Intellectualization.