They say jerking off weakens your spiritual pressure. Some people say it lowers your confidence and makes you less visible to the general public. The genius scientists say it reduces your risks of cancer. But nobody cares about that; no teenager does it for health purposes. All we can be sure of is the regret that comes with that post-nut clarity after those ten seconds of pleasure.
All these thoughts hit seventeen-year-old Shino at 6 AM, as he was waiting for his 3 inch meat to recover so he can stroke it for the second time in a row after finding a better video on the adult website. Ahh. There it was, the sharp, fleeting pleasure, cresting for about five seconds before ebbing away into the hollow silence of his room.
He stood, the physical world rushing back in, the gray dawn light seeping through the blinds. He shuffled to the mirror above his dresser, avoiding his own eyes at first, looking at the smudge of toothpaste on the glass. When he finally met his reflection, it wasn't disgust he saw, but a profound, weary pity. His face looking gloomy, his hair a chaotic mess, his eyes holding a blankness that felt like a personal failure.
"I should stop doing this," he mumbled to the silent room. His ritual began: disconnecting the Wi-Fi, switching off his phone and shoving it deep into a drawer. But the shame wasn't in the devices; it was inside him.
If only I had a girlfriend, the thought arrived. If only I were taller, if my voice were deeper, if I could just make people laugh instead of flinching… The mental reel of other, better boys from school played on a loop, their easy confidence, their casual touches, their unearned right to occupy space.
This pathetic self-pity clung to him as he turned toward the shower. He stepped in, letting the stream hit his neck, wishing it could scour the regret from his mind. The pleasure was a ghost already.
The steam cleared just enough for Shino to hear the floorboards groaning outside. The house was already waking up, and with it, the familiar weight of his reality.
He stepped out to find his Aunt standing in the hallway, her face pinched in a permanent expression of disappointment as she clutched a basket of laundry. She didn't look at him; she looked through him, as if he were a stain she couldn't quite scrub out. Behind her, her husband, Uncle Ken, was already nursing his first coffee, his eyes glued to the morning news.
Then there was Mei, his older cousin. A college dropout with a biting tongue and a habit of loitering in the kitchen in her oversized pajamas, she was the only one who bothered to speak, though it was usually to remind him of his place.
"Still hiding in the bathroom, Shino?" she drawled, her eyes flicking over his slumped shoulders with a cruel smirk. "Careful, or you'll go blind before you even graduate."
Their presence was a cage, a constant reminder that in this house, he was the charity case, the boy who would never measure up.
If home was a cage, school was a stage where Shino was the only one without a script. He navigated the corridors like a ghost, hugging the lockers to minimize his physical presence. Every burst of laughter from a group of "cool" kids felt like a targeted strike against his dignity. He was the boy who sat in the back, his head buried in a notebook to avoid the lethal gaze of the teachers or, worse, the pity of the girls who didn't even know his name. To the school, he wasn't a person; he was a placeholder, a background character whose only function was to make the "Titans" look brighter by comparison.
The final bell of the day was a mercy, though it only signaled a shift from one silence to another. He had spent the last hour of class staring at the back of a girl's head, imagining a conversation that would never happen. He slunk out of the gates, his oversized backpack filled with the tools of his isolation.
The walk home was a well-trodden path of dejection. But today, he knew the house would be empty. His aunt and uncle were at a conference. Mei said she had a job interview. It offered a chance for the only intimacy his shame and loneliness allowed.
But as he pushed the front door open, the silence he expected was shattered.
A high, sharp sound pierced the quiet from upstairs. Mei's scream.
He dropped his bag, grabbed the kitchen knife from the table and rushed upstairs.Yet, with each step, the scream changed. It didn't sharpen into fear; it melted into something else, a throaty, guttural moan. His sprint faltered to a confused creep. Now, other sounds wove through the air: a low, masculine groaning, the wet, rhythmic slap of skin on skin and the creak of bedsprings.
He froze outside her door, the reality crashing into him with a physical force. She wasn't hurt. She was getting fucked.
He looked down and noticed his little dick was already straining against his zipper, a brutal betrayal. Disgust warred with a desperate hunger. He was already a ghost; what more could he lose? He couldn't stop himself. Silently, he slipped back out the front door and around the side of the house.
There, through the slats of her half-open blinds, was the scene. A tall, broad-shouldered man, all defined muscle and tanned skin was draped over Mei. He had her hands pinned to her back, her face buried sideways in a pillow. Her back was arched in a perfect, painful curve, her teeth gritted not in pain, but in intense, overwhelming pleasure.
"Harder… yes, right there!" she gasped, her voice muffled but unmistakable.
"You take it so well, you tight little thing," he grunted.
The sight was devastating. It was a live-action echo of every fantasy that had ever tormented Shino, but made loud, and real. It was everything he wasn't. It was the vivid life that had left him behind.
Trying to get a clearer view, he reached for the window sill. His fingers found a chink in the mortar, and he pulled himself. The window frame gave a faint, betraying creak.
The rhythm in the room stopped dead.
Two heads turned in unison. Mei's eyes, wide, met his. For a second, their gazes locked.
Panic, pure and absolute, short-circuited his brain. He forgot he was perched on a narrow ledge. He jolted backward, his hands flailing for a purchase that wasn't there. The world tipped.
Then, he was falling.
The descent from the first floor was only seconds, but time stretched. The image of Mei's pitying face hung in the air before him. This is it? The thought was cold and clear. Dying at seventeen. A virgin. A peeping tom. A loser. Just like they all saw me. Just like I saw myself.
The concrete patio rushed up. A crushing impact exploded in his back, followed by a bright, final CRACK as his head snapped against the stone.
Darkness swarmed in, his final fading thought was not of the impact, but of the sound of his own voice, now just a whisper in the dissolving static:
"What a pathetic way to die…"