[Yo, I'm the one called Logan Hart... yeah, I know... it's kinda awkward talking here without the quotation marks as in dialogues.
[Well... why, you ask?]
[It's because... I want to recap my miserable life before I became perfect, so... please enjoy the ride while I comment on it.]
Logan Hart stood in front of the full-length mirror in his small apartment, fixing the collar of his fitted black shirt. The fabric fit perfectly over his shoulders, which is something that doesn't happen by accident.
He ran a hand through his blonde hair, pushed it back, and looked at himself in the mirror with a steady gaze that didn't waver or drop. "Goddamn it... look at how handsome and sexy I am in this mirror."
"No wonder all girls, even women, start falling for me because they couldn't handle such a perfect man behind the mirror... and of course, behind the mirror himself is me, Logan Hart." He said it while touching the mirror.
"If only I could date myself... I would totally do that."
[That sounded gay, actually... You can forget about what the idiot said.]
[Anyway, I bet he wouldn't have been able to hold that stare for more than two seconds two years ago because he was a completely different person back then... yeah, I know... it's me...]
[Okay, okay, okay... I'll shut up for now and let the narration do its thing.]
...
The memory of his miserable life came back to him like it always did, out of the blue and painful. He remembers the bright lights in the high school gym.
Families were taking pictures and cheering in rows of metal folding chairs. Principal Martinez went on and on about bright futures and endless possibilities while Logan sat in the back row, alone, counting down the minutes until he could leave.
No one had set aside a seat for him. When the ceremony started late, no one had looked for him. His mother didn't come because she was too busy dealing with whatever was going on at home this week, and his father hadn't been around since Logan was seven.
He walked across the stage, got his diploma from a principal who didn't know his name, and then walked back out into a life that felt as empty as that handshake. But that was only the end of a much longer disaster.
Beginning with elementary school. Logan still remembers eating lunch with people who stopped talking when he tried to join in.
He was the quiet kid that teachers forgot to call on and the last one picked for every PE team. He wasn't mean or strange, but he was just easy to forget because of how invisible he really is. He was the type of child who could miss a week of school without anyone noticing until they received a letter from the attendance office.
[Heeshh... glad that kid didn't plan on having revenge by bringing something that... you know... kills...? Okay... that kind of thing is banned here, forget what I said.]
It was worse in middle school. For some kids, puberty was like a blessing, but for others, it was like a freight train.
Logan was firmly in the second group. He had acne, braces, and growth spurts that made him awkward and gangly. He had really tried to make friends, but every time he did, he ended up feeling embarrassed.
At the time, he asked his classmates to his birthday party, and only two of them came, both of whom were neighbors whose parents made them come. The time he finally got up the nerve to talk to a girl he liked and she laughed at him, not in a mean way, but because she really didn't understand why he thought he had a chance.
High school was the last straw for his self-respect. He went in hoping for a new beginning, but he found more of the same.
The popular kids didn't pick on him because that would have meant they were aware of him. They looked right through him, like he was made of glass.
He had joined clubs that didn't want him, tried out for teams he shouldn't have been on, and failed at every important social interaction.
[Yeah... it's sad, I know... but I can't just stay like that and hope that a truck could run me over at any time, right?!]
[There's no such thing as reincarnation or a second chance! You need to use it now to be better!]
Logan had mastered the art of being a ghost by the time he was a senior. He sat in the back of every class, ate lunch in the library, and went straight home every day to a house that felt more like a storage unit for broken dreams than a home.
His mother had two jobs and drank as much as she could in the time she had left. They would meet up once or twice a week, talk for a few minutes, and then go back to their own sad corners.
The graduation ceremony was the end of a sentence that no one wanted to read.
...
Logan blinked and came back to the present. He felt like a different person now, like a sad stranger he used to know.
"What a fucking sad life I had back then..." Tears ran down from both of his eyes.
He turned away from the mirror and picked up his gym bag from the corner of the room. The familiar weight of it brought him back to the present.
"But now, I understand that the present is going to be better, and I earned this gift through my own hard work."
He could still remember the exact moment he decided to change. Three days after graduation, he was alone in his room at two in the morning, scrolling through social media and seeing everyone else celebrating their futures while his seemed to be going nowhere.
He was about to close the app when he saw his own face in the black screen of his phone. Eyes that are empty. Shoulders that are slumped. The face of someone who had already given up before the race even started.
That night, something inside of him broke open. There was no sense of inspiration, motivation, or anything that clear. It was more dark.
[That inspiration and motivation, of course, didn't come from any short video of someone doing a workout!]
He realized that if he kept going the way he was going, he would always be this person. Still not seen at the age of forty.
If he reached 60 years old and wondering where his life had gone. It'll probably be dead and not missed.
The idea scared him more than any embarrassment ever had. He had made up his mind after overthinking all of that and made a promise to himself.
It was not a promise to be great, successful, or well-liked. He made a simple, harsh promise that he wouldn't hate himself anymore.
He had to change into someone who wasn't worth hating if he was going to stop hating himself.
[There it is... someone whose life is going to change.]