The Sniper Hides His Eyes
The choice was never mine to make. From the moment I was born, the world had thrown me straight into hell mode. Shut-in. Loner. Loser. Hikikomori. Those were the keywords of my life. And the reason was simple: I was blind.
Locking myself away in my room had been the most natural outcome. It only made sense that I couldn’t understand a world I had never once seen. Then one day, something strange appeared in my perception.
You have awakened.
Ah. So this is what people meant by seeing things. It was the first time in my life that I had actually “seen” something with my own eyes. Or… had I? Was it really sight? I wasn’t sure. It felt like someone had shoved text straight into my brain. After all, there was no way a person who only knew Braille could suddenly understand written letters.
“Must be a dream,” I muttered.
At first, I genuinely believed it was. But something felt off. Even blind people dream, yet for someone like me—born completely without sight—visual elements simply don’t exist in dreams. Light, color, shape… those were alien concepts I had never experienced. They were nothing more than abstract shadows my other senses might try to imagine.
“Guess it’s time to die.”
I closed my eyes and opened them again. The message was still stuck right in front of me. I rubbed my eyes. I waved my hands around. Nothing changed.
“…This is starting to scare me.”
That was when it happened.
Ding!
Status Window
The F-rank label on the skill. “How very like me,” I thought. It suited someone who had started life in hell mode, blind from birth. As I waved my hand around, I must have accidentally selected something, because the skill description popped up next.
Ding!
Name: Inversion (反轉)
Rank: F
Cooldown: One-time use only.
Description: Instantly reverses the attributes of an object, situation, or concept.
Whatever. It was just a dream anyway. I had no desire to take any of this seriously. So I decided to try it out.
“Then let’s invert this F-rank skill called Inversion.”
It was supposed to be a small joke. But… something was wrong. A blinding light exploded outward. Even though I had never seen light before, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the sensation of being blinded by it. The text in the skill window began to change.
Fwoooosh!
Name: Inversion (反轉)
Rank: Ex
Description: An absolute power capable of flipping the world itself. A single use can even defy destiny.
Cooldown: One-time use only.
3 seconds remain until activation. If not used within the time limit, this skill will disappear permanently.
“…What?”
Ex-rank? From the absolute lowest F-rank straight to Ex? And more importantly—tick, tock. I could see the seconds counting down. Three. Two. The pressure of having to use this ridiculously overpowered thing before time ran out hit me like a truck. But I had no idea what to use it on.
My mind was going blank. In that split second, without thinking, I pointed a finger at myself.
“Then… can I use it on me?”
It was just a thought that popped into my head. Time was running out, and for a blind person, nothing else was visible anyway. When you can’t see, your own body, your own senses, your own existence are the first things you become aware of. So I used the skill on myself.
The moment the words left my mouth, everything stopped. Time froze. The air froze. Even my heartbeat seemed to stop. No—it felt like the entire world had come to a halt.
But I felt it clearly. The Inversion that shattered the chains, the shackles, the darkness that had bound me, breaking them one by one and flipping them completely.
And then… for the first time, I faced the world.
I could see.
But I could see far, far too well.