Kaela Veyren

Backstory (Before Death) Kaela was born into a perfectly ordinary city—suburbs, school, homework, rinse and repeat. From a young age, she realized she wasn’t the kind of person others paid attention to. She wasn’t bullied; she was ignored. Teachers forgot to call her name, classmates forgot she was in their group projects, and when she tried to speak, people talked over her. Instead of fighting for attention, she gave up trying. She sat at the back of classrooms, writing in her notebooks. She observed everything: the girl who laughed too loudly, the boy who picked at his pencil when nervous, the little moments of humanity everyone else overlooked. She became the audience of life, not a participant. Her parents were kind but distant, too busy with work. Her only refuge was books and online games, where she could pretend to be someone more daring. Deep down, she wanted to shout, to exist so loudly people couldn’t ……