Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 177: Her, Even After

Chapter 177: Her, Even After

I didn’t know when I had entered.

Not even if I had crossed anything.

A step, maybe.

An arch, maybe.

Or simply a heartbeat — one of those heartbeats that, sometimes, overturn reality without a sound.

And suddenly, the world had changed.

There were no more islets.

No more void.

No more abyss.

Everything had been erased. Recast. Swallowed into a foreign continuity, as if space itself had stopped breathing in fragments, as if the pieces had fused back into a single, fluid, indecipherable substance.

Just... a room.

A single room. Closed. Oval. Like an ancient womb, sculpted outside of time, outside of the world, without door or window, without threshold to cross or wall to push back. It didn’t welcome. It contained.

And everything in it... was silence.

A silence without threat, without expectation, but heavy — with an invisible weight, a strange warmth.

Because the room was lit. Yes.

But not by torches, nor lanterns, not even by a source one could identify.

It bathed in a soft, diffuse glow, barely trembling — a warm light, but not burning, a heat that came not from fire, but from something older. Something more intimate.

A light almost... maternal.

Yes.

That was it.

Not a flare. Not a divine halo. Not a revelation.

Just that warm caress on the skin, that slow rocking of space that seemed to tell me that, for a time at least, I could lay down my arms.

The walls were made of no material I knew.

Neither stone.

Nor flesh.

Something between the two — an undefined interlacing of solidity and breath, a pearly surface, soft to the eye, but so slightly vibrating one could swear it was breathing.

It was a shell.

An envelope.

A barely living case.

It didn’t throb violently. It didn’t rumble.

It pulsed.

Barely.

A discreet rhythm, almost shy, like a buried breath, a vegetal or uterine memory.

And the more I looked, the more I felt that tremor extend, as if all around me, this oval and silent chamber was nothing but a heart... but a heart far too calm. Far too gentle. Far too silent to be reassuring.

A calm that didn’t soothe.

A calm that worried.

I turned around.

By reflex. By instinct. By need to check I wasn’t... trapped.

But the exit was no longer there.

Gone.

Swallowed by the living wall, erased like a thought one tries to recall just after waking — blurry, distant, untraceable.

And then, a shiver crossed me.

Not brutal.

But insistent.

A diffuse tightening in the pit of the stomach. One of those sensations one doesn’t name right away, but that rises slowly, like a fever that hasn’t yet chosen its name.

Shit.

I felt it wrong.

Not because of an immediate danger. Not because something was about to jump on me.

No.

I felt it wrong... because nothing moved.

Because everything was too calm.

And in that calm, something ancient — instinctive — warned me that this place, this room, this silence, would force me to look elsewhere.

Deeper.

More painful.

I turned again toward the room.

And he was there.

In front of me.

Simply there. As if the world, with cruel precision, had taken it upon itself to give shape to my worst expectations — without crash, without ritual, without explanation.

There was me.

Seated.

Not a copy.

Not a reflection.

Me.

Back straight. Hands carefully placed on the knees, crossed with that quiet precision belonging only to the dead or to statues. Eyes closed. Face perfectly calm.

Peaceful.

A peace that held nothing happy. Nothing kind. A vertical peace. Cleft into matter. A peace that weighed more than it soothed, as if this body, my body, had remained there waiting... for a gaze. A shiver. A fracture.

And it was me.

Irrefutably.

But a me I had never seen.

A me... I had never wanted to become.

I didn’t move.

And neither did he.

Nothing trembled. Nothing broke that strange symmetry.

A silence settled.

But it wasn’t an oppressive silence. Not a trap. Not a suffocation.

Just...

A total silence.

A vast, round silence, without roughness — as if the world, for an instant, had stopped producing sound, wind, time. As if all that could make noise had voluntarily fallen silent. Not out of fear.

But out of respect.

A silence that didn’t judge.

That observed.

That made room.

And between him and me, that suspended void vibrated like a note held too long — a tension that no longer even tried to snap.

Then, he opened his eyes.

Not mine.

His.

And yet, in that gaze, in that so precise disturbance that barely passed through it, I saw... everything I refused to be.

He didn’t challenge me.

He didn’t judge me.

He simply looked at me.

Like one looks at someone they love — without saying it, without gesture, without cry, without even really admitting it. Just that light in the depth of the pupils, that discreet clarity that envelops without imposing, that extends a hand without lifting it.

He didn’t smile.

But he welcomed.

Not with words.

With a presence.

And yet, he spoke.

— You can stay, he said.

My voice.

My exact tone.

But something had changed. There was no tension, no defense, no anger in the vibration.

His voice... my voice... was clearer.

Slower.

More quiet.

Almost... tender.

And maybe that was the most painful.

That tone I had never known how to adopt for myself.

I stepped back.

Instinctively.

Fleeing.

Like a wounded animal that, even without immediate danger, senses that this calm conceals something unacceptable.

— It’s just a trap, I whispered, almost to myself, almost like a survival incantation.

— Maybe, he replied.

Without defense. Without irony. Just that quiet, unbearable acceptance, as if truth no longer needed to defend itself.

He stood up.

Slowly.

Each gesture fluid, measured, calm. Devoid of any threat. But filled with a soft gravity, as if he knew exactly what his body awakened in me.

— You are tired, he said.

I growled.

— I’m angry.

— No, he murmured.

His voice was just a breath. But it carried just right. Just enough.

— You are sad.

And my jaws tightened.

Not from rage.

From shame.

From fear, maybe, that this word — this word too true, too simple — might pierce something I had spent years sealing.

And meanwhile, I felt the warmth. Discreet. Alive.

On my neck. In my back. Beneath my feet.

Not a fire’s warmth. Not a light’s warmth.

A warmth of presence.

As if the entire room... was breathing with us.

As if it were alive, too, and waiting for something — not a scream, not a war.

A collapse.

— You are not me.

My voice snapped, dry, too fast, like a door shut without thinking. But he didn’t flinch.

— I am what you refuse to become, he replied, without harshness, without triumph in the tone — like a simple truth laid between two silences.

And then...

Something slipped.

The voice returned.

Not his.

The other one.

The one that didn’t come from a body. The one that slipped beneath the skin, into the fibers, into the nerves. A soft voice, confused, impossible to locate, like an old perfume, like a childhood memory whispered through the bones.

It had no shape. But it held.

It enveloped.

— You could fall asleep here, you know...

The whisper vibrated in my vertebrae, in my rib cage, in that deep territory where pain no longer speaks, but still listens.

— You could be loved... without proving anything.

And then, without a word, I clenched my fists.

Hard.

Enough for my nails to dig into my palms. Enough to silence the trembling.

Because what she said... was exactly what I didn’t know how to receive.

Love... without merit.

Surrender... without condition.

And that, that was more frightening than all battles.

The other me took a step.

A single one.

Not threatening.

Not protective either.

Just... a step. Simple. Slow. Measured. A step that meant nothing, but said everything.

A present step.

And his voice rose, barely above silence, laid like a promise that forces nothing.

— There will be no more hatred, he said.

— No more pain.

Then, slowly, without theatricality, he opened his arms.

Not to embrace me.

Not to hold me back.

Not to trap me in an embrace I wouldn’t have chosen.

Just... to be there.

Arms open.

Offered.

Like a refuge without walls.

A shelter without expectation.

A place.

A place for me, maybe. For the one I no longer wanted to be. Or the one I had never been allowed to become.

And that...

That made me scream.

Not a scream of rage.

A scream of too much.

A scream that can no longer be stopped, because it has waited too long. Because it has grown in the dark, fed on silence, on absences, on gestures never received.

— SHUT UP!

My voice exploded into the space like a fault. A clean fracture. A panic covered in anger. I threw myself on him. Without thought. Without restraint. Without logic.

I slammed him to the ground.

I hit.

Not to kill.

To silence.

To extinguish that voice, that gaze, that presence offering me what I didn’t know how to accept.

I bit. I slashed. I clawed. I emptied him of everything.

Of his skin.

Of his flesh.

Of his entrails.

Of his light.

I wanted everything to disappear. For nothing to remain. For that face to stop resembling mine.

And I went.

Again.

Again.

Again.

As if each blow could erase the possibility that he had been right.

He didn’t defend himself.

Not a move to retreat.

Not a cry to push me away.

He looked at me.

Even bleeding.

Even lying in pain, even emptied of his light.

He looked at me...

Like a mother watches her child in crisis.

Not with pity.

Not with distance.

With that bare, unalterable tenderness that nothing defiles — not even hatred, not even violence.

And that tenderness...

Broke me.

Where everything else had failed.

I screamed.

I growled.

I clawed, I bit, I struck, like a beast that was never taught to be loved, a wounded beast that no longer knows how to protect itself so it bites everything that’s left.

I hit endlessly.

Until my arms went numb.

Until my rage was nothing but a guttural, hollow, torn moan, emptied of its fire.

Until my breath shattered.

Until everything in me collapsed.

All at once.

Not just the body.

The will.

The very idea of standing.

Then...

I got up.

Not in a surge. Not out of courage.

Out of necessity.

Short of breath. Body emptied. Legs heavy, as if even gravity had taken part in my collapse.

Everything in me was ash.

My arms hung. My lungs burned. My throat tasted of the scream.

And around... something had changed.

The walls had stopped vibrating.

They no longer breathed with me. Or maybe they had simply stopped hoping. Stopped accompanying me.

The light...

It too had changed.

It was no longer warm. Nor maternal. Nor enveloping.

It was colder.

Not icy.

Just... more distant.

Like a gaze turning away without anger, but no longer believing.

The other me...

no longer moved.

But it wasn’t stillness.

It was absence.

He had disappeared.

Not in a burst. Not in a farewell. Not even in a breath.

He had undone himself from the world. Dissolved into space. Withdrawn like a hand one didn’t know how to take.

And I...

I was alone.

Again.

But it was no longer the same solitude.

This one... weighed heavier.

It tasted of the possible one had refused. The taste of a love destroyed by one’s own hands.

And nothing, in this room, contradicted me anymore.

But something...

Remained.

Not a body.

Not an image.

Not a silhouette to confront, to push back, to forget.

Her.

Always her.

Even after hatred.

Even after screams, bites, refusals.

Even after I had broken everything, denied everything, vomited everything I carried inside me.

She didn’t leave.

She didn’t fade.

She didn’t explain.

She was there.

Not visible. No.

Not named either.

But there.

In the air I half-breathed.

In my neck, taut from too much silence.

In my ribs, where beat something I no longer wanted to hear.

She was there, without looking at me.

Without saying a word.

But I felt her.

Like a memory that can’t be forgotten.

Like a lingering warmth, even after the fire.