Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 218: What Follows Me Now

Chapter 218: What Follows Me Now

I left the room without making a sound, without turning back — not out of fear, nor prudence, nor even respect — but simply because something in me, older than will, refused to cast one last glance at what had just taken place.

There would have been something indecent, perhaps, in turning around. Something impure, or desecrating. As if the simple act of seeing again could break what had been contained. Or reopen a wound that, for once, hadn’t bled.

The silence I had passed through... no longer felt like a constraint, nor a punishment inflicted by an external world, but something more intimate, more ancient, more inviolable — a deep rule, engraved somewhere between my ribs and my memory, a rule of accord, yes, but of an accord that was no longer negotiable, no longer amendable, a law without decree, without explanation, that I could no longer violate, that I could no longer transgress in this world without splitting myself apart.

I passed through the soft membrane, that living wall which had closed again after my passage, as if the world itself had wanted to seal the wound of my intrusion.

It opened again for me, slowly, almost with caution, in a mute undulation, as if it recognized something — not my name, nor my breath, but that discreet tension that now vibrated differently beneath my skin, that infinitesimal shift of my axis, that inner signature I didn’t control, but that it, perhaps, already perceived better than I did.

As if my outlines had silently deformed, as if this world — or this body — I passed through, already knew what I had just become before I even admitted it.

And as I returned to the suspended corridor, in that weightless light that seemed to float between two heartbeats, something brushed against me — imperceptible, almost absent, yet there, fleeting, insistent in its very erasure, like a vegetal feather carried by a breath that didn’t exist, like a filament fallen from the wall itself, detached without sound, without cause, simply driven by the organic logic of this world that breathed through its own membranes.

A world without nerves, but vibrating. Without words, but full of answers. A world that no longer awaited my decisions, but absorbed them.

I turned around, slowly, almost reluctantly, like one searches for a trace where one already knows there will be nothing — and indeed, there was nothing.

Nothing visible. Nothing expected. But a quiver lingered, suspended in the air like a residual vibration, a wave without source, something too faint to be named, too present to be denied, lodged somewhere between my nape and my memory.

Near the wall, right where my steps had slid just moments before, something stirred — a soft, vaguely pulpy excrescence that I had first taken for a simple variation in the wall, an innocuous fold of the living, but which now slowly detached itself, with that animal slowness, supple and hesitant, proper to beings who do not yet know if they should flee or approach.

It had no defined shape, nothing resembling a stable outline, no limb, no axis, no readable orientation — just a supple, moving mass, a trembling agglomeration of translucent fibers, as if the world itself, in an obscure and silent gesture, had formed there a fragment of its own flesh, an excrescence born to be offered, entrusted, slid toward me without explanation, without message, but with that strange density gifts have when they’re not understood.

It crawled gently, without hurry, without readable intention — not toward me, no, but with me, at my exact pace, as if our movements, without consultation, had found by themselves a kind of secret accord.

It wasn’t following me. It wasn’t tracking anything. It simply advanced, at equal distance, regular, almost respectful, without insisting, without sound, like a thought that does not seek to impose itself, but refuses to be forgotten.

It didn’t seek my gaze, didn’t try to catch attention, nor even provoke an exchange — it demanded nothing, neither contact, nor gesture, nor sign.

But it didn’t leave either, didn’t return to where it came from, as if the very idea of retreating, of disappearing, of breaking this strange synchrony between us, had lost all necessity.

It seemed unaware even of the possibility of departure. As if staying, here, beside me, was less a choice than a state — a state of being, or of link, or of memory. Something that was not decided.

It remained there, present without insistence, gentle but irresistible, carried by a will too calm to be understood.

Within me, something was being born — a strange, displaced sensation that I could not name, neither quite mistrust, nor true welcome, but a suspended state, between tension and openness, as if my body itself hesitated to recognize what it perceived.

It was a gift I didn’t understand, a silent offering without a key, a gentle burden, almost tender in its persistence, and yet too full of mystery to be received without trembling a little.

I didn’t push it away. I no longer reached out to remove it, nor even stretched my mind to understand it. I simply stopped interpreting it, stopped seeking a meaning, an origin, a logic. It was there, that was all, and that simple, inexplicable fact now sufficed to justify its presence.

I kept walking, without speeding up, without slowing down, carried by an inertia that was no longer quite voluntary — and it, without sound, without clash, simply slid at my side, like a thought settling in unannounced, like a shadow that chooses no longer to detach.

It had no weight. It touched nothing. And yet, I already felt its imprint slipping into me, not like a trace... but like a fold. A fold in the very fabric of what I was becoming.

It was slightly behind, barely offset, moving just a bit behind me — not like a real presence, but like a memory too vivid to fade, or perhaps like an ancient instinct, lurking beneath the skin, walking without being called.

And I knew — without being able to explain it, without even trying to analyze it — that it was tied to what I had kept silent, that it existed only because, finally, I had stopped speaking, stopped naming, stopped fighting this silence that now fully inhabited me.

It was the mute extension of my renunciation, the strange form taken by that stifled word, that breath I had not released, as if the world, in response, had materialized my restraint to place it gently at my side.

And maybe one day — if I stopped again, if I silenced even more of what remained of me — it would take form. Not to speak, but to carry what I would never again be able to say.

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