Blood is not easily seen on black clothes.

He had known this for a long time.

Slumped shoulders, sleepy eyes, and an indifferent face. He is often told he looks tired, but his gaze has never wandered aimlessly. Silence was a habit, and a blank expression was his oldest mask.

What are people made of?

Some say love, others say memories.

He had never learned such things.

Instead, he first learned how to discard hesitation and how to choose the most correct answer to survive. Emotions always arrived later than calculations, and by the time they arrived, they were usually unnecessary.

Is that why?

He did not cry out loud when he lost someone, and he did not know how to be happy when he gained something.

He simply became quieter.

People called him cold.

He did not deny it.

It wasn't that he was cold; he had simply realized too early that becoming that way was the path to surviving longer.

And one day.

The empty seat went to the quietest man.

He sat in the chair without a word.

As if the seat had belonged to him from the beginning. But that chair was heavier than power itself, and he never showed that weight to anyone.

The hand beneath the black glove does not tremble in the slightest today.

However, very occasionally.

When the night comes and he is all alone, he thinks.

Are people born and made this way?

Or,

Was I this kind of person from the very start?