The One Who Sees All Living Beings

Convenience store night shift, three in the morning. Shen Jue saw a dark green thing on the guest who entered the door - multiple layers of entangled, hooked and thorny things, and it was digging into his neck inch by inch. That thing lives. The guests themselves cannot see it. That was the first time he knew that what he saw in the world was not everything. Everyone is wrapped in an invisible web - iron gray is for control, beige is for pleasing, dark green is for parasitism, and pure white is for children and animals without judgment. The nets on some people were faded and stiff - he later learned that they were dead people. This is only the shallowest layer on a sentient being. Further down, there are shadows, archetypes, larger things that should not be looked at directly by humans. He didn't want to be anyone's savior. He just saw something from that night that shouldn't be ignored - including himself. Slower, deeper. This is a story about "seeing".