Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 193: What I Carry, What I Am

Chapter 193: What I Carry, What I Am

I kept climbing, slowly, not out of weakness but out of a refusal to speed up, as if each step had to be chosen, assumed, torn from the slope. It wasn’t exhaustion that slowed me down. It was something else. A more diffuse, older weight. A kind of inner resistance, almost sacred, that wanted me to feel each degree, each roughness, each beat of air as proof that I was not fleeing.

And yet, even the air, that breath supposedly meant to support the effort, seemed to have turned against me. It helped nothing. It oppressed. It clung to the skin like an invisible fever, clammy and insidious, seeping into the nostrils, into the throat, down to the depths of the lungs, to deposit a film of soft but constant asphyxiation — a suffocating sensation that didn’t kill, but gnawed slowly, patiently, as if the atmosphere itself refused to carry me.

Each step seemed to slip under my feet like a polished tongue of mother-of-pearl, treacherous, excessively smooth, as if the staircase itself did not accept my ascent.

As I progressed, something changed in me — not a sharp pain, not a clear alarm, but a dull, insidious tension that settled into my shoulders and pulled them backward, as if an invisible weight was already clinging to my shoulder blades.

It was too early to be fatigue. Too precise to be a simple malaise. It was something else, deeper, older — perhaps a presence, or a memory, curled up in my back, weighing down without form, without voice, but very real, as if it wasn’t me climbing, but a heavier version of myself, laden with everything I still refused to name.

I was carrying nothing, and yet, each step felt like I was lifting more than just my own body — as if, silently, without realizing it, something had latched onto me, something intangible, massive, deeply intimate.

It wasn’t a burden one could see. It wasn’t a bag, nor an identifiable load. It was a shapeless weight, but omnipresent. That of unspoken thoughts. Of pains we believe we’ve passed through. Of absences carried for too long.

An invisible mass, yet so heavy it bent me without even touching my shoulders, slowed me without my muscles understanding why.

Once again, on my path, something came to break the uniformity — a discreet but irrefutable anomaly, forming in the distance, just enough to disturb the climb.

I didn’t know what it was. I couldn’t make out outlines or precise colors, but it was there, a shape, a tremor, a crack in the monotony of the scenery, as if the world, for a moment, had decided to inscribe a doubt on my trajectory.

On a suspended platform, where several staircases converged like branches of a forgotten network, it lay.

A tiny body, frozen in almost solemn stillness, sculpted in a material I couldn’t name — not quite stone, not quite flesh.

A pearly, white and translucent substance, that seemed to catch the light without ever truly reflecting it, as if it absorbed even the very idea of brightness.

It was a child. A child alone. Silent. Offered to sight like a riddle placed in the middle of the path.

He didn’t move. Lying on his side, curled up in a fetal position so perfect it seemed sculpted by waiting itself, he lay there, arms pulled to his chest, legs closed as if to protect himself from something no one had ever managed to name.

He looked asleep, yes — but with a sleep too ancient, too deep, as if time itself had stopped passing through him. Or perhaps... frozen in a dream that wasn’t his. An imposed dream. An inner exile from which he had never managed to escape.

His back, slowly, seemed to match the rhythm of the rain — an imperceptible undulation, almost impervious to the eye, but regular enough to shake my certainties.

I didn’t know if it was real. If this subtle tremor came from him, or simply from me, from my need to believe, from my mute hope to see him still breathing.

But if it was an illusion... then it was so right, so precise in its rhythm, so intimate in its way of existing, that it became true. True like a memory we refuse to question. True like a pain we recognize without ever being able to prove.

I approached, with slow, careful, almost trembling steps, as if the simple act of moving forward might break something — in him, or in me.

Each step was a doubt, a weight suspended between the desire to understand and the fear of awakening the irreversible. Each step carried a silent, unresolved question, not truly seeking an answer, but clinging to my ankles like a memory never expressed otherwise than through waiting.

— It’s just a symbol, I whispered, in a murmur I wanted detached, rational, almost mocking.

But my voice trembled. Barely. Just enough to betray what I refused to admit.

Because deep down, I knew. It wasn’t a symbol. Not a trial. Not a test invented to challenge my will. It was something else. More intimate. More dangerous. A call, perhaps. Or worse — a one-way mirror, held out before me without frame, without permission, reflecting not what I was... but what I was fleeing.

I leaned over, slowly, until I felt my own breath brush the pearly surface of his back. I didn’t want to touch him. Everything in me screamed not to — not out of fear of him, but fear of what that gesture might awaken.

A shiver brushed me, coming from within. I didn’t want to. But I did it anyway. Not out of bravado, nor instinct. But because I had decided, somewhere within me, to no longer step back. To no longer flee. Even if I didn’t know what I was about to face.

My hand rested on his shoulder, with that fragile slowness we give to sacred things, to thresholds we dread crossing. The material under my fingers was neither cold nor smooth as I had thought. It was warm.

Warm with a strange heat, discreet but undeniable — warmer than the rain running down my arms, warmer than the damp smell saturating the air, warmer, even, than anything mother-of-pearl should have held. It was a living warmth. A warmth that said: I am here.

And then... he opened his eyes. Not suddenly, no. Slowly. Like someone who had been prevented from sleeping for too long. Like a being who, forced to stay awake against their will, had forgotten the gentleness of sleep, and for whom waking was no longer anything but a continuation of vertigo.

His eyelids lifted with an almost ceremonial slowness, as if each millimeter of opening demanded a disproportionate effort, a will torn from oblivion. And beneath... two grey irises. Distant. Matte. Empty.

Not dead, but absent — like rooms without doors, without windows, where nothing could enter or leave. He didn’t cry. He didn’t speak. He simply looked at me. With a direct, raw gaze, without apparent intention, yet containing something unfathomable, something broken.

As if, behind his eyes, there was no emotion to hide, only an entire world whose light had been turned off.

I almost stepped back, a step, a reflex of defense, as if that empty gaze struck something too vulnerable in me. But I didn’t.

My legs trembled, yes, but stayed grounded. Only my breath cut off — sharp, brutal, torn from my chest without my doing. There was no scream, no startle. Just that internal suspension, that missing beat, as if my body hesitated to remain there.

And then, gently, almost awkwardly, he extended his arm. A hesitant gesture, weak, but precise. Like a hand thrown at the edge of shipwreck. Like a mute call.

And in that charged silence, I thought I heard his voice — not really in the air, not really in space, but somewhere in me, slipped into the moment:

— I’m here. Don’t leave me alone.

I took him. Not out of kindness. Not out of tenderness. But out of refusal. Refusal to step back once more. Refusal to become again the one who flees whenever something trembles.

My arms wrapped around him, awkward at first, then surer, as if this gesture, I had been waiting for it without knowing. I tried to lift him — simply, mechanically — but that was when something struck me.

His weight. Or rather... the lack of it. He weighed nothing. Literally nothing. As if I had just taken into my arms not a child, but an idea. A memory. A shell of being.

And that emptiness, that void in the hollow of my palms, frightened me more than any pain.

But everything in me... cracked a degree. Not violently. Not suddenly. Just a muted fracture, intimate, an invisible line extending inward that no one could see.

My neck bent, as if under the weight of an ancient name. My elbows buckled, without warning, giving in to a fatigue that wasn’t that of muscles but of the soul.

And my knees, they creaked, cracked under a mass the world around me couldn’t see — but that I carried nonetheless, whole, compact, indisputable.

A mass made of images, of silences, of gestures left undone. A mass without shape, but crushing all.

I felt it. Not in the muscles. Not in the arms. Not in the back. I felt it elsewhere — deeper, darker, in that blurry and vulnerable space no organ really knows how to name.

It was there, in my belly, in that exact space where feelings are born, where the body becomes memory, where pain becomes perception, where something trembles before we’ve even had time to think.

I felt it like a dull burn, a reversed heat, a shapeless weight laid just there, at the intersection of soul and breath.

The child didn’t move. He didn’t cry. His gaze remained open, motionless, with a strange fixity, not frozen by fear but held by a kind of knowledge I didn’t yet understand.

And then, without the slightest tremor, without even blinking, he slowly raised his hand and placed it against my cheek. His palm was warm, almost unreal in its softness, as if it had been sculpted for that gesture, for that precise moment.

His mouth didn’t move. No words were spoken aloud. Yet, I heard it. Clearly. A sentence, limpid, carved in a crystalline voice, pure to the point of becoming unbearable:

— You’ve carried this weight before. You just chose to forget.

I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t understand. Nothing in me could make clear sense of those words. I knew nothing, or so little.

But one thing, however, became clear. One thing bare, pressing, irrefutable.

I had to move on. Now. Not later. Not after thinking. My legs had to start walking again, my breath had to catch up with time.

Because every minute lost, from this moment on, was no longer just a delay — it was a mistake. A risk. A renunciation. And I couldn’t afford it anymore.

So I stood back up. Slowly. Much more slowly than when I carried nothing.

Not because of fatigue, but because of what the gesture now implied. Each movement required a new precision, a kind of almost sacred attention, as if standing back up meant lifting something more than just my body.

There was no urgency in the gesture, but a gravity, a density. As if I was lifting a memory. As if I was hoisting, with him, the weight of a truth I was not yet ready to face, but which I refused to leave on the ground.

I took one step. Just one.

And instantly, something vibrated. Not beneath my feet. Beneath him. Beneath that body too light, too silent, curled against me like an ancient secret.

It was imperceptible, but real — a muffled wave, a buried resonance, as if the world itself, in its deepest matter, recognized the gesture. As if it welcomed the burden I had just accepted.

And in that discreet, almost shy vibration, I thought I felt an assent. A mute approval. As if the universe, for once, stopped testing me... and accepted that I pass through it.

The rain... changed too. Subtly at first, almost imperceptible, then more clearly, as if it too reacted to what I was carrying.

Its rhythm became deeper, denser, each drop falling with a sticky, warm slowness, as if weighed down by a memory too full.

It was no longer just the sky’s runoff — it was a song. An older song. More veiled. Heavier.

As if something cried up there, not out of immediate sadness, but from a grief that had lasted too long. A rain of soul. A rain that knew.

And I climbed — or descended, I no longer knew — with him, with myself, with this troubling and shapeless weight I still refused to name, but carried nonetheless.

Each step was a wavering. A hesitation between impulse and fall.

I didn’t know if I was reaching a summit or sinking deeper into something older, more intimate.

But I kept moving. With him against me. With all that I was. With all I had fled.

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