Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 181: Something Still Waits

Chapter 181: Something Still Waits

The song...

That fucking song...

It was coming back again.

Without brightness.

Without strength.

But with that insidious, persistent, indestructible softness — the softness of things that can’t be killed. The kind that seeps even into the hardest silences, that pierces walls, screams, refusals.

And it was soft.

Terribly soft.

Not a fake softness.

Not a mawkish softness.

A true softness.

Ancient.

The kind that doesn’t try to fix.

That asks for nothing.

That judges nothing.

That is there... simply, because it’s always been there.

But that softness...

It wasn’t a softness for me. Not an offering, not a refuge. It wasn’t that expected warmth one receives with open arms, a heart finally ready. No. It was a slow blade, a tender poison. A hand laid on a wound one wanted to forget, believed to have covered in ashes and oblivion.

It hurt me.

Terribly.

Not with a sharp pain, not with a blow one could name. But with a soft, continuous, inner suffering — the worst kind. The one that doesn’t scream. That doesn’t defend itself. That stays there, stubborn, silent, and that still looks, with love.

And that gaze... that song... that tenderness that offered no explanation, that blamed me for nothing, that asked for nothing... was destroying me more surely than all the violence I had suffered or inflicted.

So, without realizing it, I stopped breathing.

Not as a decision.

Not to die.

But because my body, saturated, couldn’t do it anymore. Because there was too much — too much emotion, too much light, too many memories infiltrated under the skin, too much of that bond impossible to break, impossible to accept, impossible to flee.

A moment.

Then another.

A long moment.

Suspended, frozen, as if even time hesitated to go on.

My breath held, as if it would be enough not to move anymore for the world, finally, to leave me alone.

But peace... wasn’t there.

There was only that song.

And that light.

And me, between the two, incapable of loving, incapable of fleeing.

Only... crossed through.

Deep inside me, in that blurry zone where emotions no longer have names, where thoughts dissolve in a matter older than words, a truth settled.

It didn’t strike.

It didn’t impose itself like a revelation.

It pierced nothing.

It simply laid itself down, slowly, like a soft dust one no longer tries to chase. It sank into the layers of my silence, into the still-warm folds of my retracted heart.

And that truth... I didn’t want to admit it.

But it insisted.

It stayed.

That memory...

That fragment...

That piece of before, torn from oblivion, come back through the song, come back despite me — it wasn’t an illusion. It wasn’t a fabrication. It wasn’t a mirage.

It had existed.

Truly.

It had happened. It had been lived. By me. By her.

And now... it was coming back to me.

Without hatred. Without blame.

Only with that light.

And that voice.

And now...

I could no longer go back.

I could no longer pretend to have forgotten it.

That memory was no longer a distant echo, a blurry silhouette at the edge of my nights. It was no longer a dust one brushes away with a gesture, nor a vague image one relegates to the bottom of a dream.

It was there.

Anchored.

Clear.

Inscribed in my flesh, in my bones, in that very breath I’d been holding for too long. And it burned softly, not to punish, not to accuse, but simply to exist.

I could no longer deny it.

I could no longer act as if nothing had stirred within me at the sound of that lullaby, as if that voice had not once had the power to soothe me, to put me to sleep, to protect me.

I knew.

And knowing... was a new kind of pain.

Calm.

Irreversible.

I moved away.

From the light.

From the lullaby.

From the memory.

Not with a sudden gesture, not violently, but with that full slowness that is neither hesitation nor weakness — just an old fatigue, a dull certainty. The invisible wall that had held me earlier had disappeared, as if it had never existed, or as if it too understood it no longer needed to be there.

But this time...

I wasn’t running.

I wasn’t fleeing.

I wasn’t looking for an exit, nor for shelter.

I walked.

Straight.

Without purpose, maybe, but with that cold rigidity belonging to bodies that have yielded too much. Each step echoed like a silent slap. A dry shock. Not against something external. Against myself. As if the ground, beneath my feet, returned to me each of my gestures, each of my lies, each of my refusals.

It wasn’t rage.

It wasn’t an impulse.

It wasn’t even an emotion anymore.

Just... a calm refusal.

A solid refusal.

A refusal with no return.

Around me, the white began to dilute, not all at once, nor like a mist dissolving, but with the imperceptible slowness of things that yield without breaking, of silences that tint without making noise. Little by little, almost against the grain of the world, colors reappeared — not bright, not clear, but like memories come back from another plane, like remnants of emotion still embedded in the air’s surfaces.

It wasn’t a chromatic explosion, it wasn’t life coming back in one single gesture. They were pale tones, washed-out, hesitant, as if even light still doubted its right to exist here. A very sad blue, diffused, coming from the depths of a sky no longer daring to open. Ashy shadows sliding across invisible walls, formless, directionless. And in places, sickly streaks of pink, like old wounds reopened in the scenery.

Everything was faded, devitalized, but there.

And maybe that... was the most disturbing thing.

The void, too, began to fragment again, as if it suddenly remembered it had once contained shapes, as if pure absence could no longer stand against the slow insistence of reality. It didn’t break, it didn’t give way all at once — it cracked. It fractured from within, until it gave birth to those soft islets, those floating chunks suspended in the air, which seemed to arise from nowhere and yet hold together despite the impossible.

They weren’t laid down, nor stable, nor solid.

They were suspended by fine, trembling roots, almost invisible, but braided with a living precision — like nerves stretched across space, like sensitive fibers escaped from a body too large to show itself. In their silent quivering was something feverish, fragile, precisely at the edge between the living and the memory.

And little by little, the world was being stitched back together.

Thread by thread.

Gesture by gesture.

Not to heal, not to be reborn, but simply to stand upright a little longer. Like a wound never closed, one keeps covering again and again, without believing in it, but because there’s nothing else left to do.

And at the center of the next islet, where the roots seemed to join with more care, more precision, there was a cocoon. Suspended in the air, held without ropes, without visible ties, as if space itself had decided to carry it.

It barely moved — just a minuscule, imperceptible swaying, like a breath held too long. But something in it was different.

It wasn’t like the other shapes, not like the shadow masses or the disordered fragments of the rebuilding world.

This cocoon was smaller, more folded in on itself, denser, as if it held a truth no one should look at. Tighter, yes, but above all... more intimate.

There was in it a warmth, or perhaps a memory, something alive, still beating, still curled up in its own waiting.

Its envelope barely vibrated, almost imperceptibly, as if even its quiver had been muffled by the density of the air or by a will greater than itself.

But despite that apparent stillness, its fibers glowed. Not with brightness, not to be seen. They glowed faintly, discreetly, like a shy presence not yet daring to exist.

It was a fragile light, internal, barely brighter than shadow, a diffuse shimmer that seemed to come from within the cocoon, like an echo of ancient warmth.

It wasn’t a call.

Not a signal.

It was something else.

Something organic, suspended, contained.

An invisible breath.

A slow exhale one holds without realizing it, because the moment is too fragile, because the slightest noise might break everything.

And in that breath... in that waiting... I felt it: something, inside, was still there. Something was waiting. Not ready to hatch. Not ready to speak. But present. Infinitely.

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