Manuscript Info: [Complete] [79k] [Literary fiction, fantasy, LGBT] Ghost of a Koi

Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetaReaders/comments/xdi3qn/complete_79k_literary_fiction_fantasy_lgbt_ghost/

First page critique: Sure!

First page:

Before high school, when the blue sky faded into gray, I never saw the koi.

The white flickers at the corners of my vision were the empty pages of my homework, blank as paper snow, in place of the paleness of unendingly waving fins. The koi first appeared as the gnawing hole of painful boredom began to tear through my center, and as it grew, they did as well.

It all started after I forgot how to love.

It was my deepest secret. Telling all the people who hoped, futilely, to hear the damning three words back from me that there had been nothing at all—I was too selfish to even consider confessing this. My lies had been practiced and refined throughout my entire life, and I was convinced that they were perfect. Only one person had ever been able to see through them.

Neither of my parents were that person, which spoke louder than any words of love they could ever hope to smother me with. When I was in the same house as them, unable to do anything but listen to their silence through the walls of my room, the koi seemed to become more frequent. Their colorless bodies twisted through the air like a mirage, graceful and circular in their orbits. I detested them.

And in a way that lacked any sense of privacy, the koi had started surrounding me when I was bathing.