SkyNaniDew: Who is the Enigma?

For most kids, the academy was a nightmare.

Strict schedules. Invasive tests. Sleepless nights in cold chambers. Fear stitched into every corner of the sterile white walls.

But for Dew... it wasn't that bad.

Not compared to what he'd left behind.

Back home, he used to hide in his closet whenever the door creaked open. Whenever the drunken footsteps echoed across the floor. His father hit hard, and hit often. With his hands, with words, with anything he could find.

His mother had left long ago. No note. No goodbye. Just silence.

At school, it wasn't much better. Torn shoes. Too-small uniforms. He became a target the moment he stepped into the classroom. The bruises never stopped. His arms, his face, even his stomach — always black and blue.

And no one came to save him.

So when Toby showed up — when someone finally looked at him not with disgust but wonder — it felt like something holy.

"You're special," Toby had said, kneeling beside him the day it all changed. "You just don't know it yet."

Dew had been curled up under a bridge, arms scraped, his breath hitching in short, terrified bursts. Just minutes before, he had been surrounded — a group of boys from his class, fists clenched, calling him garbage.

And then... something happened.

Something loud. Piercing. A crack that split through the world like thunder.

When Dew opened his eyes, the boys were on the ground, blood pooling under their noses and ears. Silent. Not dead, but barely moving.

He hadn't meant to do it.

He didn't even know how.

Toby found him that night, shaking and alone. Told him he wasn't a monster — that he was gifted. Dew didn't believe him at first. But then... where else did he have to go?

Toby brought him to the academy — a new place, clean and sharp and humming with something scientific. Dew was his first subject. His prototype. His precious breakthrough.

And for the first time in his life, Dew felt seen.

Toby was a young scientist, ambitious and wild-eyed. He spoke to Dew like he mattered. Listened to his fears. Helped him control the thing inside of him.

Under Toby, Dew trained hard. Took tests, endured scans and probes and injections — but he never complained. He wanted to be better. Stronger. Maybe even... a hero.

He got to go to school like the other children. Learned how to harness the energy inside his body. He could make waves in the air now — push things without touching them. Break glass with a blink.

He was special.

And Toby loved him for it.

But then... Nani arrived.

A boy with no memory. No past. Just a name.

Nani was different. Fragile in a way Dew couldn't describe. Quiet. Strange. Bleeding constantly. The doctors said his power was unstable — useless without external pheromone triggers. A failed subject. A dead-end project.

But not to Toby.

Suddenly, everything was about Nani. His results. His progress. His failures. Toby spent hours studying him, whispering theories, getting more and more frustrated as Nani failed to meet his expectations.

Dew hated it at first.

Jealousy flared hot under his ribs. For the first time, he wasn't the center of Toby's attention.

But then... he started noticing things.

Nani, slumped over in the hallway, blood dripping from his nose.

Nani, half-conscious in the clinic, lips pale and trembling.

Nani, eyes vacant like someone who had forgotten how to feel.

The envy twisted into something else. A strange mix of superiority and pity.

And one afternoon, without thinking too hard, Dew sat beside him in the cafeteria.

Nani flinched like he was about to be hit.

"Relax," Dew said, and pulled a chocolate bar from his pocket. "Here. I brought two."

Nani stared at it like it was a foreign object.

"You ever had one before?" Dew asked.

Nani shook his head.

"Try it. It's not poison, promise."

Nani took a bite, slowly. And something flickered in his expression — something soft, like a memory he couldn't quite reach.

After that, Dew kept coming back.

At first, it was just habit. A distraction. A way to pass the time.

But Nani was... something else.

He never complained, even when his body broke down. He never raised his voice. He never asked for anything.

He just existed — painfully, quietly — like someone who didn't believe he deserved kindness.

Dew started bringing comics. Sketching when they sat together. Drawing Nani's eyes over and over — because there was something mesmerizing about them. Almost unreal.

"The most beautiful in the whole world," Dew would whisper, not even knowing if Nani heard him.

He didn't know when it changed — when pity became protectiveness. When protectiveness blurred into something deeper. Maybe it was the way Nani looked at him, like he was the only good thing left in the world. Or maybe it was just the way Nani held on — to life, to small joys — even when everything hurt.

Dew didn't know.

All he knew was that he couldn't bear to see Nani bleed anymore.

Couldn't stand the way the clinic lights turned his skin ghostly. Couldn't take the empty look in his eyes when Toby injected him with another serum.

So he stayed.

Every time Nani came out of the chamber, Dew was there — sketchbook in hand, voice gentle.

"You're not alone," he'd say, even if Nani didn't respond. "I've got you."

And he did.

He always would.

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