Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 204: A Room Always Lit

Chapter 204: A Room Always Lit

I no longer moved, frozen into the cushion like a body too empty to protest, too heavy to still exist other than horizontally — and yet, I was still breathing, barely, as if breath itself hesitated to stay.

My back molded to the shape of the cushion, but it wasn’t comfort. It was a surrender. My limbs weren’t tense, just absent. Even my skin seemed too heavy to be felt, as if shame had seeped into the flesh, rendering it numb, useless.

The song had fallen silent. Or maybe... maybe I had finally pushed it away, not by force, but by exhaustion, like one closes a door too slowly to be sure, like one extinguishes a voice that has haunted the inside too long.

Only my breath remained — dry, irregular, raspy like a confession one fails to formulate, a guilty breath, too loud to disappear, too human to still deserve to exist in this silence.

I wanted to get up, yes, to straighten up despite the dizziness, despite the shame, despite this body that no longer wanted to follow — I wanted to continue, despite everything, continue through this hell like one crosses a burn that can no longer be put out, simply because there is nothing else to do but keep walking.

But something... was holding me back. Not the child. Not the fatigue. Something else. Something motionless. Ancient. A dull mass lodged somewhere inside me, like a knot that cannot be untied, like a memory frozen in shadow — a mute, dense presence I didn’t understand, but which kept me from moving forward.

And she appeared. Not like a vision. Not like a creature emerging from nothingness or from an overloaded dream. No. Like a presence. An evidence. Something that had always been there, hidden in the folds of the air, in the exact crease of my silences — a form without contours, without origin, but whose waiting had always vibrated.

She did not descend. She did not emerge. She broke no veil, tore no space. She revealed herself — slowly, naturally, as if the world had simply stopped hiding her. Right in front of me. There, always. Like an answer one finally sees because one no longer has the strength to look away.

Woman. Blurry. But not blurry like a soft or distant dream — no, blurry like a forbidden memory, an image buried too deep to be admitted, too precious or too dangerous to be looked at directly. A silhouette erased by grief itself.

She had a face, yes — a face I sensed more than I saw, whose features vibrated at the edge of the visible, where memory blurs what it no longer wants to confront. And I couldn’t look straight at it. Not out of fear. But out of refusal. Out of instinct. Because a part of me knew that to recognize it would be to fall.

Her eyes were pale. With a strange paleness, almost translucent, too light to truly be named, too light especially to be looked at without getting lost — like two fragments of naked truth, devoid of mask, capable of reflecting what one no longer wants to see in oneself.

Her lips, meanwhile... opened. Slowly. Without sound. Without threat. Like a crack in the silence, a delicate breach through which something old was about to escape — not a word, not right away, but a breath, a weight, a world.

The silence tightened. It wasn’t empty. It vibrated. Like a string stretched between two moments, just before it snaps. I didn’t know what was coming. But I knew it was too late to step back.

— You preferred to stay hidden.

Her voice was not a reproach. Nor a caress. It was a straight line, laid there like an evidence, cold, bare, almost surgical. A sentence with no apparent weight... but which, upon falling, cracked something inside me.

— Because it was simpler.

I didn’t respond right away. My lungs forgot the air. My chest contracted without breath. My heart, it jolted, a short, brutal jolt, as if an invisible hand had just squeezed too hard. And my stomach twisted. Heavily. Like wringing out cloth. Like swallowing back shame.

I wanted to scream. But scream what? At whom? There was no enemy. Just me. And her. And this past that had never stopped breathing between us.

— That’s not true, I whispered.

But the word died barely born. It had no nerve. No flesh. Just the dry tremor of a breath at the end of its course. An empty, scratched attempt. Even my voice seemed to know I was lying.

She stared at me. Or no... it wasn’t a look. It was a traversal. She passed through me as if I were transparent. As if my body no longer had enough substance to contain anything.

— You remember.

I closed my eyes. A futile reflex. A desperate gesture. As if the shadow of my eyelids could erase what vibrated inside. But the image was there. It didn’t come. It was there. Always.

The door ajar. The slivered light, carving out shapes. The body, on the floor. Twisted. Motionless. The screams... muffled. Like chewed. And me. Small. Silent. Hidden in the shadows like one slips into a grave. Not to survive. To disappear.

That memory wasn’t a past. It was a permanent present. A room always lit, somewhere in the backyard of my nerves, where nothing had moved. Where I was still breathing.

— It wasn’t me.

The words came out in a hoarse breath. Like one recites a prayer that has lost its god. I had said them a thousand times. Ten thousand times. In a whisper, out loud, in nightmares and in silence. I still said them not to collapse.

— I was just a child.

But she didn’t react. Not a blink. Not a twitch. Her silence didn’t protect me. It confirmed. There were no words needed to condemn. There had never been. Silence alone was enough to lay the blade. It carried that cruel calm of those who no longer need to accuse.

And I, there, in the hollow of the cushion, suddenly felt that even my body wanted to flee. But it was too late. Too late to move. Too late to deny. Too late to believe myself innocent.

Because there was nothing to add. No word to defend, none to erase. Because I knew. Deep down. Always had. Even before the images printed themselves. Even before the screams formed.

There was that weight. That knowing. Like a shadow in the belly. A cold stain no forgetting ever dissolved. And that was enough. Enough to silence me. Enough to keep me there, frozen, crushed under the weight of that simple truth, too simple to be spoken without collapsing.

Truth doesn’t always strike. Sometimes... it waits. Lurking in a corner of the belly, silent, patient, almost tender in its cruelty. It doesn’t need to scream. It simply stays there, inside, still, until one collapses. Alone. Because there’s nothing left to deny it. Because there’s no more strength to keep pretending.

I got up slowly. It took time. Not a decision. A suspension. As if the body, too, had to wait for one last inner consent. Or a forgiveness it would never receive.

Every gesture seemed to weigh more than it actually did, as if my own body still doubted the momentum. The cushion didn’t hold me back. It didn’t resist. It simply gave me one last shiver, discreet, almost tender, like a farewell caress — that of a shelter endured too long.

And I resumed the stairs. The child in my arms, against my chest, warm, silent. The weight seemed heavier, yes. But not from fatigue. Perhaps... simply more real. More grounded.

As if, this time, I wasn’t only carrying a body — but what it represented. What it awakened. What it demanded from me.

Behind me... the voice remained. It did not follow me. It didn’t even try to impose itself. It stayed there, suspended in the air I had just left, like a soft but tenacious shadow.

Not to follow me. Not to haunt me. Just to remind me. What I had fled. What I had seen. What I was.

And perhaps... what I had to become. If I still found the courage not to flee again.