Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 176: Alive… or Merely Resonating

Chapter 176: Alive... or Merely Resonating

The silhouette didn’t move — not even a shiver, not even a stray breath that might have betrayed a doubt, a shiver, a remnant of humanity; it stayed there, frozen in that muffled, tense, stifled waiting, similar to the one shared by all without ever saying it, as if every being present, despite the diversity of its forms, its fears, its wounds, carried deep inside the same suspended vertigo, the same silent question written somewhere in the flesh: when would it begin — or end; and she too, among them, she waited, standing, frozen, stuck in that collective stillness which was not peace, not a truce, but a common breath held just before the rupture.

Then... it returned.

The voice.

That damn voice.

But this time, it carried no anger, no provocation, no irony — just that terrifying calm, that cutting poise that, beneath its apparent softness, had always known how to aim exactly where I refused to look.

— She never stopped waiting for you.

The words fell like a blade’s edge laid flat against the skin. And despite myself, I stepped back, not out of fear, not out of weakness, but as if something in me had just been touched too close to the nerve.

— It’s just an illusion, I whispered — no, not whispered... I spat. Like a rejection. Like a defense reflex with no more weapons.

But the voice, it didn’t stir. It remained there, suspended, soft and relentless.

— You say that about everything that moves you... — a pause, barely a breath, then — You say that about everything that touches you.

And then my throat tightened, this time. It wasn’t a threat. Not an accusation. Just a truth laid there, slowly, without anger, without intent to hurt, but which hurt anyway. Because it was true. Because it touched where it still rotted.

— I don’t want that.

I didn’t even know what I meant. That memory? That face? That lack? That burn she had just awakened?

— I don’t want to remember.

And then silence.

A real one.

Not a void.

An inhabited silence. Dense. Saturated. A silence that didn’t answer me, but persisted in existing — like a presence. Like a gaze still weighing even when the eyelids are closed.

Then, the voice again.

Not louder. Not more present. But more intimate. More bare.

— Even here... you refuse to love.

My jaws clenched immediately, as if those simple, quiet words struck something too old to name. My breath shattered into short, irregular pieces, chopped by a rage that could no longer mask the trembling.

And I trembled.

Not from fear. Not really.

From tension.

From that vertigo, the one that rises when you know the truth is too close, when you feel the ground giving way — not under the weight of an enemy, but under the weight of a memory.

But I held on.

I planted my words like one plants fangs: to hold on, to stand, to not be swallowed.

— That’s not love, I growled, teeth clenched on shame.

— It’s just a weakness.— A flaw.— A trap.

The words fell one after the other, clear, sure of themselves, as if they already knew the verdict. And yet, something in that voice... wavered. Not with doubt, but with sadness. As if it didn’t judge me. As if it knew. From the beginning.

And then, it asked:

— Then why do you step back?

I didn’t answer.

I couldn’t.

It wasn’t a question. It was a truth placed between us, a truth too simple, too painful to speak without trembling. So I did what I knew how to do. What I had always known how to do. What I did too well.

I turned my heels.

And I fled.

But not running. No. Not this time.

I walked. Fast. Straight. Breath tight. Steps heavy with everything I left behind without even knowing if I’d ever be able to come back.

I walked without a word. Without a glance over my shoulder. Without a thought for what, maybe, was still watching me. I walked like one closes a door without slamming it, but with that deliberate slowness that says everything.

Without looking back.

Without a word.

But I felt it.

Its gaze.

Or rather... what replaced it.

That hollow at the back of my neck, that breath just slightly too cold, too insistent, which said nothing, but still insisted. It wasn’t a gaze in the strict sense. No. It was worse. It was a void. An oriented void. A silence stretched in my direction, like an invisible line drawn between two hearts no longer daring to beat at the same rhythm. There was an absence. But not an empty absence. No. A full absence. Too full.

A density.

Like a breath held too long that ends up weighing more than breathing itself. Like a hand extended, and left there, suspended, indefinitely, without ever meeting the other’s skin. Not because it was pushed away. But because it was ignored. Dropped into silence.

And that was it.

It wasn’t a presence.

It was an expectation.

A pure expectation. Naked. Freed from all hope, all anger, all demand. An expectation that enclosed nothing, but opened. A space. A hollow offered, stretched like a breath one invites to inhabit.

An open space.

An offered space.

In my neck... I felt it again.

The voice.

Again.

Always.

It didn’t impose itself. It slid in. Like a breath too precise, too real to be brushed aside. It slipped between my vertebrae, seeped under the skin, between the nerves, more intimate than a thought, colder than a memory — more alive than everything I would have wanted to forget.

— She wanted nothing more than... to protect you.

I kept walking. Mechanically. As if still moving could keep the voice at bay. But my shoulders tensed. And I felt it, that shiver, slowly rising in my back, not like a danger, but like a wound one hasn’t dared to look at for too long.

— More than anything... she wanted to love you.

And then, something gave in.

Not violently. Not with a burst.

But like a door one believed sealed and which, without warning, opens slightly under the soft pressure of a forgotten breath. A part of me... opened. Weakly. Tragically. As if even now, even after all this, I was still capable of being reached. Of trembling. Of doubting.

And it scared me.

Not that clear, frontal, animal fear. No. A slower fear, deeper. An ancient fear. The fear of remembering one can still be touched. That one is not dead everywhere. That certain phrases, certain whispers, certain memories still have the power to pierce through the walls one believed invincible.

I didn’t cry.

I wasn’t capable of it anymore.

But somewhere, buried deep inside, a voice — perhaps mine — screamed in silence that I would have preferred her hatred.

Yes.

Truly.

Her hatred would have been easier to carry. Easier to return. Easier to understand.

Simpler.

More in line with what I believed I deserved.

But that love...

That love.

Not the one you beg for, nor the one you give to get something. No. That quiet love, silent, almost invisible... and yet devastating in its gentleness — a gentleness so bare, so unarmed, that it became unbearable.

I didn’t know what to do with it.

I had never known.

I had always kept it at a distance, like one keeps a fire too close to the skin. Not because it burns — but because it lights up. Because it reveals what one does not want to see. And now that it followed me in silence, that it vibrated behind me like a light one refuses to look at, I felt like it was breathing right there, a few steps behind my back, like a hand laid without touching me, like a soft truth I wasn’t ready to welcome.

So I wanted to flee.

I wanted to run.

I wanted to scream, tear something inside me, break that echo too tender, too pure, too real.

But I kept walking.

Faster.

Always faster.

In the dark.

In the denial.

In that stubborn movement I still insisted on calling survival — when it was nothing but flight, fatigue, an admission I refused to utter.

And at that moment — as if this world too had waited until I was ready, or too tired to resist — the sound returned.

Far away, at first.

Very far.

An echo drowned in the abyss, a rumble buried somewhere between space and memory, diluted in the infinite like a voice too ancient to still have a name.

But also... very close.

Terribly close.

Just behind my neck, where the skin shivers without knowing why. Just under my rib cage, where fear mingles with memory. Right inside me. Inside. As if it were my own body that, without warning, started speaking again.

BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

A heartbeat.

But not a human heartbeat.

Too slow. Too wide. Too rooted in something beyond nerves and arteries. A world’s heartbeat. A living thing’s heartbeat — or more than living. Something from before.

It resonated in my vertebrae, in my elbows, in my temples. It rose in waves, circulated through my bones like an underground truth, imposed, impassive. It didn’t call. It demanded nothing. It was there. Present. Irrefutable.

A world’s drum.

A heart of silence.

And I, in the midst of that rhythm, felt like nothing more than a breath of flesh lost in a beat too vast.

I no longer even knew...

If it beat for me.

Or against me.

I no longer even knew... if my own heart was still beating.

If it was still there, somewhere, buried under the layers of silence and denial, or if it had long fallen silent, replaced by this foreign beat, this rhythm too deep, too ancient, too... impersonal.

I no longer knew if it was still my body walking, or just a remnant of me, carried by a pulse no longer mine. A borrowed breath. A displaced existence.

I no longer knew if I was alive.

Or merely resonating.

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