Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 207: It Wasn’t Me… Yes. It Was Me

Chapter 207: It Wasn’t Me... Yes. It Was Me

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Author’s note: Read the Chapter after ’it takes two’ before this one. enjoy your reading :)

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I hadn’t looked back in a long time. Maybe since the statue. Maybe since the confession. I was still climbing, endlessly, in that spiral without end, that path suspended between the sky and nothing. But something was different. Subtle. Almost imperceptible. A faint softness slipped into the loop. Not comfort. Not joy. But a form of acceptance. A breath a little less painful. A gravity a little less crushing.

The loop was still there, yes — repetitive, narrow, demanding. But it felt a little more livable. A little more human. As if, now, it was no longer a trap. Just a passage. And as long as I kept climbing, even slowly, even exhausted... I was no longer running away.

The child against my chest. Silent. Warm. Present. His small body breathed in rhythm with mine, sometimes offbeat, sometimes echoing, like a fragile music still searching for its tempo. He didn’t speak, but he had weight. Not as a burden, no. As a reality. As a truth one finally accepts to carry without wanting to set it down.

His arms around me did not squeeze. They rested. And that simple contact, that bare, defenseless closeness, reminded me with every step that I was no longer alone. That I didn’t have to be.

My breath steadier. My head held higher.

There was something infinitesimal there, maybe invisible to the outside eye, but which, in me, marked an entire shift. A slightly more regular breath, a rhythm no longer just trying to survive but to hold. A head that no longer bowed under the weight of shame or the past, but that, without pride, without victory, rose. Just a little. Just enough.

It wasn’t a glorious straightening, not a triumphant return. It was more discreet, more intimate, more true. A fragile verticality, like that of a broken tree that, despite everything, keeps growing, keeps reaching upward. And that movement, that unflashy straightening, was already a refusal. A refusal to go back down. A refusal to dissolve into silence.

I walked. Still. Less out of will than out of necessity. Because now... something in me wanted to see how far I could climb.

And then... I heard it.

Not a cry. Not a distinct word. Just a breath. A faint voice, untethered from time, that seemed to float in the air like a note escaped from a memory. It didn’t impose. It didn’t strike. It slid gently, between two heartbeats, between two held breaths, as if it had always been there, lurking in the thickness of silence, and was simply waiting for the right moment to exist.

It wasn’t a call. Not a summons. It was... a sonic presence. A fragile warmth, carried by the wind, by the rain, by everything the world had left behind me. And that sound, so faint, so discreet, touched me more deeply than all the screams. Because it asked for nothing. It simply said: I’m here.

The footsteps echoed behind me. Slow. Steady. Uneven, though. As if they hesitated to exist, but refused to disappear.

It wasn’t a heavy walk, not a pounding stride — no. It was more discreet. More intimate.

But each step had weight. A rhythm. An ancient truth. Like a memory the world had tried to drown for too long and that, now, refused to remain silent.

Each step seemed to say: I’m still here. Not to frighten. Not to haunt. But to remind.

Remind of what was silenced. What was buried. What always returns, gently, when one stops running.

I didn’t turn around right away. It wasn’t out of fear. Not really. Nor forgetfulness. It was... instinctive.

As if something in me knew it was necessary to wait. To first listen. To let it come. To let it approach.

The step behind me was not a threat. It didn’t rumble. It didn’t press.

It simply waited, at its own pace, at its own distance, as if it knew better than I did the right moment.

And I, frozen in that inner movement, remained facing the fog, the ascent, the vibrating silence, barely breathing, with the confused certainty that turning around too early would break something.

Desecrate a fragile balance.

So I waited. Because sometimes, not turning around... is also a way to face.

I knew that rhythm.

I recognized it immediately, even before understanding it. It vibrated in me like an old song never learned, but that the body remembers how to sing.

A simple tempo, irregular, fragile. And yet, familiar. Intimate.

After all... I had shaped it. With my own hands. In a frenzied, trembling state, possessed by a memory too heavy to remain silent.

I had sculpted it in the nacre, each gesture drawn from a vertigo, a burning necessity, a need to make the invisible visible.

And then I had abandoned it. Back there. A few thousand steps lower.

I had left it behind, deliberately, thinking it was just a fragment. A trial passed. A frozen trace.

But it was there, now. It had returned. Not to haunt me. But to join me.

And now... it was climbing.

The statue. My statue.

The one I had left behind, frozen in the mist like a solidified cry.

The one I had shaped in urgency, in fear, in that vertigo where one sculpts what one cannot say.

It was no longer motionless. It was no longer just a memory raised in stone.

It was moving. One step after another. Uneven. Hesitant. But alive.

And I felt it throughout my body — that shift from the past that no longer stayed in its place, that fragment I had tried to bury that was now joining me, no longer as a fault, but as a part.

A part of me I hadn’t been able to love, that I had left back there, alone, in the cold.

And now... it was climbing. As if it too had understood. As if it too had decided that the time for silence was over.

That little boy, huddled, that I had frozen behind a half-open door...

I saw him now, no longer as a distant sculpture, a fragment abandoned in the marble of the past, but as a being in motion.

He was moving. Slowly. Fragilely. But he was moving.

The one I had imprisoned in a posture of fear, of silence, of refusal.

The one I had locked there, crouched, knees to chest, hands over ears, not to hear, not to see, not to exist.

The one I had sculpted to punish myself for having been him.

He was climbing. Through the mist. Through the same staircase.

And I... I was no longer ahead. Not really. I was with him.

I already sensed that this path was no longer mine alone.

That this frozen past was claiming its place in the present. Not to accuse. But to continue. To finally breathe. To walk, too.

He was walking.

Not to catch up to me. Not to stick to my steps, nor to extend a hand, nor to beg for a glance.

He wasn’t chasing me. He didn’t reproach me.

He moved forward. For himself. For me. For what we were, both of us, separated too long by shame, by denial, by that urge to forget that always ends up choking what one meant to save.

He didn’t come to join me. He came to remind me.

Remind me to move forward, too, like him.

With that hesitant slowness, but straight. With that bare fragility, but real.

With that fear still clinging to the belly, but that no longer stopped the legs from moving.

He didn’t walk to flee. He didn’t walk to show me the way.

He walked to exist.

And that simple movement... compelled me to go on.

To not betray myself. To walk, no longer to survive, but to be worthy of the one I had left behind.

I decided to turn around. At last.

Heart a little tight, legs heavy with anticipation, as if that simple gesture carried more weight than all the steps climbed so far.

And he was there.

Not aggressive. Not pleading. He asked for nothing. He expected nothing.

He didn’t judge me.

He was simply... alive. Present.

A shape made of memory and matter. Of what I had fled, of what I had locked away, and of what, perhaps, I was beginning to welcome.

He didn’t shine. He didn’t tremble.

He was there, standing, shaped by my hands, but now animated by something beyond me.

His eyes, hollowed but deep, stared at me.

Without reproach. But without forgetting either.

They didn’t try to erase, to forgive, to console.

They simply said: I remember.

And in that gaze... I felt the whole naked truth of a past that no longer wants to stay frozen, but that does not ask to be erased.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t need words.

He walked. That was all. And it was enough.

And I... I resumed climbing too.

No faster. My steps were still heavy, my legs still marked by the old fatigue, that fatigue of living with what one has long refused to see.

But I climbed more truly. Each step, this time, had a weight that no longer tried to disappear.

Because now I knew. I could no longer pretend.

No longer look away, no longer push away the trembling hand within.

I could no longer hide behind forgetting, behind excuses, behind that phrase I had repeated a thousand times like an empty prayer: it wasn’t me.

Yes. It was me. The silence. The refusal. The flight.

It was me, huddled behind that half-open door, it was me, frozen in the nacre, it was me who had let it happen, because I was too small, too terrified, too incapable.

But now... I knew. I accepted it.

And I climbed. Not in spite of it, but with it.

Because sometimes, to acknowledge... is the first step toward something else.

Not toward forgiveness. Not toward peace.

Just... toward a step a little straighter.

He was there. Behind me.

I didn’t see him. I didn’t need to turn around.

I felt him. His presence was like a breath behind the neck, a timid warmth that didn’t weigh, but that remained, constant, watchful.

With every step, I knew he was there. That he was watching me.

Not to overwhelm me. Not to crush me under the weight of what I had been, of what I hadn’t done.

There was no anger, no reproach, no bitterness in that gaze I felt vibrating in my back.

He watched me... to make sure.

To make sure I was no longer running. That I wasn’t falling back into those old reflexes of forgetting and silence.

That I wasn’t locking myself again into that eternal victim posture to never face the truth.

He didn’t want me to be strong.

He just wanted me to be there. To go on.

To walk, even if I trembled. To climb, even if I doubted.

And that silent gaze, resting behind me, had become a thread.

A promise. A soft but unwavering demand: don’t fall again.

I knew, deep inside, that I could no longer run.

Not out of constraint. Not out of exhaustion.

But because I no longer even wanted to.

It was gone. Dissolved somewhere in that climb, in that long vertical wandering where each step had emptied me of a part of my fear, my shame, my need to disappear.

I was better — not healed, not cleansed, not saved, but better.

I moved forward. No longer as a fugitive.

But as someone finally accepting to be here.

To inhabit his body, his memory, his gaze.

I felt it deep inside, in that fuller breath, in that way I placed my feet with a little more truth.

And I felt it too: I was almost at the end of this place.

Of this infinite spiral, of this world suspended between sky and fall.

This place had never been a trap.

It had simply waited for me to evolve. To change. To go through it.

And I think... I think I was nearly there.

Because I was no longer the same broken beast I had been entering here.

At last... I hoped so.

Because doubt, that one, never really leaves.