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Long, long ago, he had read a book written by humans.
That day, the circus was traversing a desolate land. Winter had arrived according to the Gregorian calendar; merchants had long since headed south, and the northern trade routes were deserted. Jester quickly assessed the situation and ordered them not to stop or set up camp, but to continue onward. Harlequin grumbled a few times, more out of boredom than frustration, and then fell silent. No one else objected.
He lagged slightly behind the others.
When he looked up, the sky was a hazy gray. The clouds drifted by heavily like weary bodies. Although it was still afternoon, the vendors had already begun packing up their goods. Their movements were slow and resigned. Many items remained untouched, neatly arranged as if no one had moved them all day. Cars roared past, their metal shells emitting a piercing whine, disappearing in an instant. Pedestrians with their heads bowed vanished among the crumbling buildings and bare trees. No one looked up. No one looked at him. As they walked, it was as if the world before them was the only world allowed to exist.
The fact that no human stared at his appearance was strange. The fact that he wasn’t noticed also loosened something in his chest.
That night, the circus stopped in front of an abandoned house on the edge of a residential area. The others quickly dispersed, finding places to rest. Jester gave him a brief reminder, then turned and disappeared into the darkness, leaving him alone in the corridor.
He stood there, looking up through the cracks in the leaky roof. Only scattered fragments of the night sky were visible. Finally, he began to move, his footsteps moving silently down the corridor.
At the end of the corridor was an empty room. He pushed open the door, the hinges scraping with a harsh, painful sound. The doorknob was heavily rusted. He closed the door behind him and walked to the huddled bed in the corner. The bed frame was twisted and warped, the mattress sunken. He sat on the floor, leaning against the bed frame. The window was dim, stained, and covered in a thick layer of dust. There was no moon nor stars tonight. Only a bottomless darkness, thick and silent, like a swamp without a surface.
He remained there for a long time. Then, his hand twitched. His fingers touched something sharp under the bed. He bent down, reached in, and slowly pulled it out. A book came into sight, covered in dust and cobwebs, its cover strewn with the remains of long-dead insects. His large, sharp fingers brushed across the surface carefully. A children's book. He had learned enough human languages to understand almost everything on the cover.
The paper was yellowed, the ink thinned with age, but the characters were still clearly visible. In the darkness, he slowly traced each letter with his fingertips, reading aloud in a low voice, so low it seemed only he could hear it. His tall frame hunched forward.
Deep in the ocean once lived a fish. Its body was twisted, its skin pale and thin, its eyes seemingly existing only to endure the darkness. Fish like it were born there, foraged there, fell ill there, and died there, never raising their heads.
It shouldn't have had any desires. But sometimes, corpses would fall from above. The flesh of those fish would split open, their entrails turned inside out. Before they died, they would utter a sound, and the content of that sound was always the same:
Sunlight.
This fish had never seen sunlight. Neither had the creatures of the deep sea. But the dying fish said that sunlight was warm, while the cold of the ocean made living feel like waiting for some kind of end. So, the fish began to swim.
It swam past shipwrecks buried in silt. The hulls were open like broken boxes. Gold and silver jewels poured out, still shimmering faintly. The fish thought: Perhaps these were once warm. Perhaps they still remember that warmth.
It continued to swim. Through the ravines that tore the earth apart. It swam past creatures larger and hungrier than itself. It swam farther than its kind. The water was sometimes thin, sometimes thick, its currents overlapping like bruises. Hunger would come and go, only to reappear in different forms. Sometimes it seemed to see something—
a pale tremor in the distance, a crack in the darkness, like a wound trying to heal. It struggled toward it, its heart stopping, its fins burning—
but it was always something else. A group of glassy, slender creatures throbbed weakly. A clump of plankton emitted a borrowed glow. An illusion created by weary eyes.
Other fish appeared briefly. Some were swollen, slowly sinking, their eyes veiled by a thin membrane, their mouths opening and closing as if trying to speak.
Do you see it? the fish asked them.
They didn’t answer. Or their answers came too late. It was warm. It hurt. It was beautiful. I’m so cold.
As time passed, its body began to disintegrate. Scales loosened and fell away. Its fins tore, never to close again. A voice echoed endlessly in its head, like water trapped in a place it shouldn't be. It didn't look back. Behind it lay only its predetermined fate.
If warmth exists, it must be higher. Elsewhere.
Up and down lost their meaning. The seabed would never return, and the surface would never come. Now, water is the same everywhere. The fish spun helplessly, surrounded by darkness, a darkness that was no longer external. It pressed its head against nothing and opened its mouth in a soundless cry.
Why can't I find you?
Anger surged like a tide. It struggled, pounding the seawater, as if trying to tear it apart, rip it open, to let the light pour out. Its body convulsed. Its heart pounded wildly in agony. The ocean did not respond.
When he turned this page, the rest of the story wasn’t there. Cleanly torn away, as if someone had decided that the ending should not be known. Whether the fish found the light remains a mystery.
That night, he curled up with the book in his arms. The bed was too small for him; his limbs folded in on themselves awkwardly. He closed his eyes and seemed to see black water surging in from all directions behind his eyelids.
Seasons changed. Winter loosened for spring to arrive, summer burned itself out and autumn followed. The circus moved from place to place, migrating from one location to another. The story gradually blurred in his memory until only a vague outline remained. Eventually he left the old book in an empty house along the road the circus went, underneath a bed, and never looked back.
His knives were sharpened every day. The blade cut through skin with a crisp sound. On stage, the blade sliced through flesh and skull, making the audience applauded, completely unaware that they were witnessing the death of their own kind. He bowed. His mask reflected on the blade’s surface seemed to smile at him, empty and obedient.
When the theater emptied and the lights went out, he stood alone. Darkness enveloped him completely, so thick that even the noises outside couldn't reach him. It was if he had never left that monster-infested valley, those years without sunlight. He tore at raw flesh, forcing it down, but the emptiness in his heart could not be closed. The air was heavy and damp, as if he were submerged within it. His lungs weren't like those of the humans he had cleaved, yet he lived as if he might drown at any moment.
Human eyes followed him. Their hatred found him without reason. It tore him apart more cleanly and decisively than his own blade. After the rain, he stood in ankle-deep mud, his body bleed and bruised from stones being thrown at him by a furious crowd. His reflection was shattered and blurred in the water as he trailed back to the circus. Maybe this is how it will ends. He will live forever in the cold. He understood this as well as he understood hunger, that even if he ate until he bursted, he knew it wouldn't save him. Maybe in the end, he would die without ever seeing the light.
Then one day, while handing out circus flyers on the street, someone struck him in the face. He staggered, then went down on one knee. His first thought was not anger but calculation. This was not worth responding to. Retaliation led to questions, and questions led to trouble. The circus performance was tomorrow night, the tents were already up. So he stayed where he fell and did not look up.
He had learned long ago that violence rarely came with warning. It grew silently out of stares held a moment too long, out of mouths tightening, out of humans deciding he should not be there. He waited for the crowd to dispersed to stand up again, but instead, someone stood in front of him.
The murmuring around them thinned. He expected another blow, a foot, a word meant to finish the job. But a hand entered his field of vision instead. It held a small bandage—plain, already creased, the paper wrapper torn open. This human didn’t told him to go away. They didn’t rush him when he didn’t respond. They simply waited with their arm outstretched, as if this were an ordinary thing to do.
In a existence stretched thin by repetition like his, understanding often arrived too late, or at the wrong moment, after too much damage has already been done. Perhaps he had needed to be subjected to a long time of cruelty to finally came across kindness. Perhaps this was the only way it could have reached him.
His heart was an ocean. Vast and boundless, dark and lightless, without end. It was an abyss that flesh and blood, applause, and survival itself could not fill. What truly defined it wasn't the pain, but the waiting, the endless yearning for warmth. Perhaps he was lucky to have found warmth while he was still breathing.
In the end, that was all he had ever wanted.
To be treated kindly.