Chronicles of the Pale Moonlight

I was afraid of ghosts, so I became the fiercest Ghost King. I locked every ghost in the world inside the moon. The attic was my fortress, my parents’ arguments the cracks of hell. I made water ghosts and fire ghosts fight inside my body to keep my fear at bay. My classmates’ jeers were taunts from monsters. I imagined I was Sun Wukong, but my golden cudgel always vanished the instant I swung it. They said I was crazy. Only I knew the truth: I was the reincarnated soul of vengeance, the last of a clan that had been annihilated since time immemorial. And she was “Xihe,” who held dominion over space, my fated other half. Only together could we awaken our sleeping power. But in eighth grade, the bewilderment in her eyes in the cafeteria pierced my fantasy like an icicle. Her words, “You’re kind of scary,” cast me into the abyss. Later, she deleted me online, and I heard her crying over the phone. I had shattered the only light in my life with my own hands. Deep within my soul, twelve ancient beings argued fiercely: should they abandon this failed vessel, or keep squeezing this despairing reincarnation dry? Tonight, there was no moon. The silence after the arguments died down was more terrifying than ghostly howling. The ancient souls inside me roared until my skull nearly split, while the cold of being abandoned by the whole world burned in my heart. Enough. I crawled to the window and gazed beyond the clouds at the vague, enormous cage that belonged to me. On my fingertip gathered all my pain, humiliation, madness, and crushed hopes. This time, I would tear it open. I would let the countless ghosts in the moon see who the real king was. The story of a lonely boy who builds a world out of fantasies, only to bring it crashing down with his own hands.