Webnovel's Extra: Reincarnated With a Copy Ability-Chapter 22: The Boy Named Jack

For a long time after Maya left, I just sat there.

The classroom’s distant chatter faded. Even Lucas’s presence beside me disappeared into background noise. My mind wasn’t in the Triangle anymore — it was somewhere far older, far quieter, far darker.

Maya had been forced to confront her truth.

It was only fair that I confronted mine.

Because before Dreyden, before this body, before magic and monsters and destinies...

There was a boy named Jack.

And this world had no idea who he really was.

Jack didn’t come from a tragic home.

He wasn’t beaten.

He wasn’t starved.

He wasn’t despised.

His life was quieter — the kind of quiet that drowns people without making a sound.

He had a little sister who played music too loud, laughed too hard, and danced through the living room like it was her private stage. She was the sun in a house that often felt gray.

He loved her more than anything.

But outside of her, Jack felt like a ghost.

Not hated.

Not targeted.

Just... unseen.

There are kids who are bullied, kids who are mocked, kids who are avoided.

Jack was none of those.

He was the kid no one remembered existed.

Teachers forgot to mark him absent.

Group projects were done without him.

People bumped into him in hallways and didn’t even realize they had.

Once, he spent an entire semester sitting next to the same girl in class.

She never learned his name.

Not once.

He wasn’t a victim of cruelty — he was a victim of indifference.

And for a child, being invisible is a slow death.

His parents weren’t bad. They just... weren’t there.

Not physically — emotionally.

They argued about bills, work, stress, everything adults bury themselves in. Jack learned early that speaking up only made them sigh or wave him off with distracted annoyance.

His sister was different.

She saw him.

Whenever she blasted her ridiculous dance playlists, she would drag him out of his room, force him to eat, talk, laugh — even when he didn’t want to.

She pulled him into the world by sheer force of will.

He never told her that she was the reason he didn’t disappear completely.

But the outside world wasn’t the same.

Being ignored slowly carved something into him. Something sharp and quiet.

He learned to watch people.

To understand them.

To predict them.

If people weren’t going to notice him naturally, he would learn how to make them notice without asking.

Observation became survival.

Manipulation became a necessity.

At first, it was small things:

Figuring out the right words to make group members include him.

Saying the perfect sentence to make a teacher think he had contributed.

Acting harmless so people wouldn’t push him away.

People listened more when he controlled the rhythm of a situation than when he tried to be honest.

Little by little...

Jack realized manipulation was easier than connection.

People didn’t care about sincerity.

They cared about usefulness.

For the first time in his life, Jack felt something close to power.

Not real power — but enough.

He wasn’t cruel.

He wasn’t heartless.

He just learned the world didn’t reward honesty.

And he refused to be invisible again.

Not at school.

Not in life.

Not anywhere.

But home?

Home was different.

His sister adored him.

Clung to him.

Played her music so loud he had to yell at her to stop.

But she took photos of him, asked his opinions, shoved her phone in his face to show him memes, cried when she failed tests, and curled into him when she was tired.

She was the one place he never had to manipulate.

The only place he was simply Jack.

He promised himself — silently, privately — that whatever darkness he carried would never touch her.

She deserved the brightest world possible.

So he became her shield.

And he smiled for her, even on days he couldn’t smile for himself.

Jack grew up like that.

Invisible to everyone but her.

Too observant to trust others.

Too lonely to stop trying.

Too afraid to be seen.

Too desperate not to vanish.

Maybe that’s why Webnovels hit him so hard.

A world where nobodies became powerful.

Where overlooked kids awakened abilities.

Where people like him could carve their own destinies instead of waiting to be acknowledged.

He devoured those stories, and The Dance of Power became one of them.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was alive.

He commented.

He theorized.

He participated.

And when the author announced a chance to insert reader-made characters...

Jack tried.

Because for once, someone might choose him.

He wrote carefully. Thoughtfully. He tried to be balanced, interesting, believable. Not too strong, not too weak. Just worthy enough to exist.

The rejection email came quickly.

Your character is interesting, but he doesn’t fit what I want... He’s just not good enough.

Jack didn’t cry.

He didn’t rage.

He just stared at the words for a long time.

"Not good enough" wasn’t new — he had heard the world whisper it his entire life.

So he closed the novel and moved on.

Or at least, he thought he did.

And then he woke up in another body.

In another world.

In the living room of a stranger’s house, holding a letter telling him:

"Dear Dreyden. You were accepted into the Triangle."

He wasn’t Jack.

He was Dreyden Stella.

His own rejected OC.

A character deemed "not good enough" by the author — thrust into a world where people like him died horribly.

No skill meant no future.

No power meant no rights.

In the Triangle, weakness meant death.

It should’ve excited him — a second chance, a new life, a world of power.

But the first thought that punched him in the chest wasn’t about him.

It was about his sister.

Is she still waiting for me? Will she think I abandoned her? Will she be okay without me?

The world might have given him a new identity, but it didn’t erase the part of him that mattered most.

He wasn’t trying to live because he wanted glory.

He wanted to survive because someone in another world would never understand why her brother vanished.

Jack—now Dreyden—leaned back in his chair in the Triangle’s classroom, breathing out slowly.

Maya wasn’t the only one carrying a truth too heavy to bear.

She had learned she wasn’t real.

He had learned he was too real.

He wasn’t born for this world.

He wasn’t destined for power.

He wasn’t shaped by this society.

He was a foreigner wearing someone else’s skin, adapting, maneuvering, manipulating — all instincts he had honed long before magic entered the picture.

Maya had Wendy — a reader’s soul, a meta-awareness, a fragmented identity.

Jack had silence, invisibility, and a lifetime of watching the world from behind a glass wall.

He was never meant to be the hero.

He wasn’t even meant to exist in the story. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

He was an accident.

A mistake.

A rejected idea.

Yet here he was... sitting beside the protagonist of the original novel, climbing ranks in a deadly academy, rewriting fate with every choice he made.

Somewhere in the real world, his sister was probably yelling at him to come eat, waving her hands dramatically, dancing terribly off-beat.

He couldn’t let her wait forever.

He couldn’t die here.

He wouldn’t.

The class bell rang distantly.

Dreyden turned to Lucas and said. "Let’s train after this?"

Lucas turn and looked at Dreyden and nodded.

Because he didn’t have time to hesitate anymore.

He had to get stronger.

He had to survive.

He had to change the future Maya feared.

Not for destiny.

Not for glory.

Not even for himself.

But because the boy named Jack...

...wanted to go home.

And he would tear this world apart before he let it kill him.

Bruises don’t heal overnight,

I’m a few sips from pulling the trigger...

Self-abusive, on the borderline,

Of having you be my gravedigger...

Leave me now,

Please — save yourself...

You’re crazy,

I won’t go...

You make me...

I’m damaged — please don’t fix me...

His thoughts spiraled like the lyrics of a song stuck in a broken loop.

I romanticized all the wrong things,

For the wrong reasons...

Now I’m paralyzed... traumatized...

Bleed me out,

Before I hurt myself...

You’re crazy,

I won’t go...

You make me...

I’m damaged — please don’t fix me...

Time to confess why you said this...

Okay, I confess—I’m heartless.

Okay, I confess—I’m jealous.

Okay, I confess—I’m a narcissist...

You’re crazy... I won’t go...

I’m damaged — don’t fix me...

Jack had fifty-two cards.

He drew the queen of hearts.

She wanted him.

She got him.

5150.

A danger to himself.

And maybe...

To everyone else.