From childhood, Yuz’s father had instilled in him the ancient adage, “A person should live by preserving his ‘face,’ just as a tree lives with its bark.” This philosophy had taken deep root in Yuz, shaping his every thought and action. In a society where face and reputation mattered more than anything, Yuz worked tirelessly to maintain his own fragile sense of dignity. Yet, reality continuously betrayed his efforts. His upbringing was modest, his appearance plain, and his finances barely covered life’s basic needs, let alone the social expenses needed to uphold his reputation. As Yuz struggled to make his way through life, his quiet desperation grew, a dark and insidious force lurking beneath his unassuming exterior.
On the surface, Yuz seemed like a gentle, almost meek man. He would lower his head respectfully when speaking to neighbors, offer quick, tight smiles, and rarely raised his voice. His clothes were worn but always meticulously clean, a last vestige of the pride he so carefully tried to maintain. Each day, he silently fought to uphold this image, using his limited resources to present himself respectably. However, his humble background and his modest appearance were constantly there to remind him of his perceived inadequacies. When he looked in the mirror, he saw not only a man with thinning hair and clothes that had faded with age but a face that told him he was “less than” others.
Yuz’s sense of inferiority clung to him like a shadow. Every encounter in daily life became an agonizing reminder of the chasm between who he was and who he felt he should be. He longed for the effortless confidence of wealthier men, for the bright eyes of the respected and successful. But in every interaction, he felt his “lack” exposed, raw and painful. When he visited friends or relatives, he would agonize over small gifts, trying to find something that wouldn’t make his poverty too obvious yet wouldn’t insult them either. One Chinese New Year, he had arrived at a relative’s house without a customary gift, a slip that would haunt him. No one had said anything, but he felt the weight of their unspoken judgment. He hadn’t returned to that relative’s house in years, the shame too heavy to bear.
In the small town where he lived, Yuz became known for his quiet and often evasive demeanor. He avoided eye contact with people of higher status and rarely joined community gatherings, fearing the critical gaze of those who could see through him. These gatherings reminded him of his inferiority—he could never afford the things they discussed, and the jokes they made left him feeling like an outsider. But he stayed quiet, never admitting his true thoughts, hiding his resentment and shame behind a polite, submissive smile.
Yet Yuz’s inner life told a different story. At night, alone in his cramped, dimly lit room, his inferiority took on a life of its own, gnawing at him with relentless hunger. He felt trapped by his limitations, cursed by circumstances that had denied him the chance to rise above his station. The anger he could never express in daylight turned into bitter self-loathing in the dark. He resented his inability to “measure up,” hated the relentless feeling of being judged by society. It was as if everyone else had a place, and he was doomed to linger on the margins, forever unseen and unacknowledged.
As time passed, this resentment grew, festering like a wound he could not heal. Yuz’s reality became a prison built from his own self-doubt and wounded pride. His hatred for his own weakness fed a dark, unspoken fantasy: what if, just once, he could have control? What if he could do something that no one would forget, something that would finally force the world to notice him?
The decision to act didn’t come suddenly, but rather, in small, subtle steps. A lingering look at a stranger, a sense of powerlessness creeping into moments of social interaction. With each incident, he grew more emboldened, feeling as if fate itself was nudging him towards a path he’d never dared consider. Slowly, Yuz’s suppressed anger and shame began to emerge in a twisted form. He felt an almost perverse satisfaction in envisioning his own empowerment, a scenario where he no longer felt small, no longer invisible.
And then, one night, he crossed that line. Driven by years of resentment, of wounds cut deep by shame and inferiority, he took a life—not out of sudden rage, but from a place of long-standing anguish that had been denied, suppressed, and ignored. He felt an unsettling relief, as though some part of him had finally been set free. In that moment, he felt what he had longed for all his life: power, control, and a twisted sense of validation. He had broken free from his inner prison, but at a terrifying cost.
Yuz’s transformation from a meek, humble man into something darker was not the result of a single action, but rather the final step in a long, inevitable descent. His need for recognition, his desperation to matter, had driven him into the shadows, where his need for “face” had morphed into something monstrous. In those quiet moments after each act, he could feel a sickening satisfaction, a temporary release from his deep-seated shame. Yet, even this satisfaction would soon wear off, replaced by an even darker emptiness that only seemed to grow, urging him to act again.