Chapter 96: A Seed of Purpose
Do you know how sad it is to be happy that you died alone?
It wasn't the fleeting moments of despair or even the dramatic melancholy that storytellers often adorned death with. No, it was quieter, crueler. The kind of sadness that had no climax—just a slow, relentless erosion.
It wasn't relief or peace—it was resignation. A hollow gratitude, as if loneliness could somehow be a gift in death. No burdens left behind, no tearful goodbyes. The silence had become a cocoon, its suffocation strangely comforting. He had clung to it, not out of choice, but because it was all he had left.
It revealed so much of what his life had been. The isolation he had once convinced himself was self-imposed, a shield against the chaos of the world, had calcified into something inescapable.
He turned the idea over and over in his mind, examining it from every angle. Was it guilt? Guilt for never opening himself to the world? Or was it fear—that even in death, he might have been a nuisance? The concept of burden clung to him, a ghostly tether refusing to sever.
What did it say about him, about his life, that he had valued his absence more than his presence?
The laughter he once shared with others had been carefully rationed, doled out in moments he could afford to be vulnerable.
The connections he'd made had been perfunctory at best.
As his days in this body passed, the echoes of that final thought refused to soften.
He didn't cry, not because he couldn't, but because it felt too indulgent. Instead, he analyzed, overanalyzed, and picked apart every shred of mistake he had made.
Was it possible he had mistaken his intelligence for wisdom? Had he confused self-sufficiency with strength?