Author's Notes: Here's the next drabble in the series, which flashes back to Hayner's old life. Sorry there's not much Seifer, but I felt like this context was important. Also, I didn't want to post anything that spoiled the answer to the trivia, because no one has gotten it yet! (Sorry, it's not Cloud.)

So yeah, the next installment is actually already written, but it does spoil that answer, so I don't want to post it until someone's answered the trivia, or at least I've gotten a few more guesses. xD If you've forgotten, the question is: Who is Hayner's brother? I'll give you a couple of hints - one, he's adopted (in the new universe). And two, there are actually two correct answers. (So... I'll actually give out two extra points if both are guessed!)

There are no warnings for this drabble, except that it's kind of depressing.

Invisible

No one looked at Hayner anymore.

It had developed slowly. There was the catalyst—the thing with Roxas—Hayner didn't ever think about Roxas. Then his remaining friends drifted away from him, probably because he wasn't much to talk to after that. He stopped fighting with Seifer—stopped reacting at all, in fact—and as everyone knew, bullies didn't bother tormenting people who never showed that they were tormented. And no one else had ever really cared about the blond with the attitude except when Seifer brought attention to him, so it wasn't long after that before the entire school had basically forgotten he existed.

His parents didn't count; they'd never really treated him like a person in the first place.

There was one day when Hayner fully realized for the first time that he might as well be invisible. As the first signs of excitement spread through the school, a sense of dread started to pool in his stomach. The rumors said something about "Leonhart"—wasn't there a kid here with that name?—but it turned out they were talking about a man, possibly the kid's brother, though Hayner really couldn't care less at this point. The guy was military, and he was going to look over some of the students in their class to see who might be a potential fighter. Hayner wasn't quite sure why this made him nervous; maybe it was because he'd stopped fighting.

The scene played out vividly both in the moment and in his memory later: Sixty-eight students stood in a row. Some stood up straight and faced forward; others ignored the purpose of the meeting in favor of gossip. Hayner was somewhere in the middle, not talking to anyone, but not very focused either, at least not until Leonhart actually came into the room.

Shit, the guy looked good. It wasn't that Hayner felt sexually attracted to him or anything—he didn't really think about that sort of thing now that Roxas wasn't around to talk to about it—but he exuded a kind of quiet confidence as he started to walk down the row, an utterly serious expression on his face. Unconsciously, Hayner straightened his back a bit, following Leonhart's movements with his gaze as he waited almost impatiently for the man to reach the spot where he stood.

And then Leonhart was there, and—

The sensation of that pair of blue eyes traveling across his face without even seeing it was… uniquely unpleasant.

After that, Hayner didn't even try to exist.