SkyNaniDew: Who is the Enigma?

At the academy, Nani didn't have any friends.

Not really.

The others did — kids who laughed together in the dorms, traded snacks, and whispered stories under the covers after lights out. But Nani? He was different. Always isolated. Watched. Controlled. Many of the others thought it was some privilege — whispered behind his back that he must be special, must be important. Why else would the academy keep him apart?

They didn't know the truth.

Whenever the academy left him unattended, even for a second, he was met with sneers, mockery, shoves in the hallway. Jealousy had teeth — and Nani always ended up bleeding. Every day was the same. Wake up. Take medication. Submit to tests. Blood draws. Training. Then the chamber — the chamber that made him scream until his voice cracked, until his body gave out.

Every time, the result was the same.

He'd wake up on the clinic bed, white lights above, wrists bruised, throat raw.

But things shifted slightly as he grew older. They let him eat in the cafeteria sometimes. Just for short periods, just to observe how he coped among the others.

That's when he met Dew.

At first, Dew just stared. Wide-eyed. Curious. Nani didn't know what to make of it. He kept his head down, expecting the usual — a cruel nickname, a slap to the back of his head.

But instead, Dew walked up to him one afternoon and sat down right beside him, tray in hand.

Nani froze. Didn't breathe.

Dew reached into his pocket and pulled out a slightly squished chocolate bar. He unwrapped it and slid half across the table.

"From the canteen," Dew said. "It's good."

Nani just blinked at it.

He wasn't allowed to eat anything outside the prescribed nutrition plan. Nothing ever tasted like... well, anything. But that chocolate — sweet and bitter and rich — it sparked something inside him. Something familiar, though he didn't know why.

The next day, Dew came again.

This time, he brought a tiny book — a comic with bright, wild colors. Superheroes, flying through the air, fighting evil with capes and laser eyes.

"They'll turn us into one of these someday," Dew said, grinning.

Nani didn't respond, just looked down at the pages, tracing the images with his eyes. But the next day, he waited at the table before Dew arrived. He'd never say it out loud, but something in him looked forward to it.

After they succeeded in developing a compound to enhance Nani's senses, the academy relaxed the leash on him — just a little. He was given short periods of free time, and Dew filled them.

Always with something new.

Books. Comics. A drawing pencil and crumpled sketchpad. Dew liked to draw. Strangely, his favorite subject was always the same.

Nani.

"The most beautiful eyes in the world," Dew would murmur, tilting his head as he sketched. "Like... stardust."

Nani didn't know what to say to that, so he said nothing. Just watched Dew's fingers move with quiet focus. The drawings always came out beautiful — soft lines, detailed lashes, that shimmer in his eyes somehow captured on a page.

The experiments in the chamber never truly stopped. But something else changed.

Before, Nani would wake up alone. Cold. Shaking. Under that cruel white light.

But now... there would be Dew.

Always Dew.

Sometimes reading. Sometimes sketching. Always smiling like nothing was wrong. Like they weren't both trapped in a place that chewed up children and called it progress.

They would sit side by side, books between them. Sometimes not speaking. Just breathing the same air, letting the silence be enough.

In a world that treated him like an object, Dew looked at him like a person.

"Hey," Dew said one evening as Nani blinked awake, his throat sore from screaming.

Nani turned his head slightly.

"You look like a hero, you know?" Dew whispered, placing his hand gently over Nani's.

Nani closed his eyes.

And for a moment, it didn't hurt so much.

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