Chapter 151: The Hell of Sweetness
Something, yes... something was slowly rising in me, not in a jolt, not in a scream, not even in the painful burst of a sob, but like black water rising from the depths of a consciousness frozen for too long. It wasn’t anger. It was no longer a call. It wasn’t a surge of pride or a remnant of hatred. It was something else. A kind of defeat.
A dense, ancient, sticky capitulation, rooted in my vertebrae, infiltrated into my bones, heavier than remorse and more vivid than fear. A defeat without scream, without face, without word, but which my whole being recognized in the clammy silence that enveloped me.
And there, in the hollow of this murky softness, in this saturated silence like cotton that’s too warm, I understood. I understood the most unbearable truth, the most indefensible one, the one no rage can dissolve: this world didn’t want to hate me. It didn’t want to reject me. It sought neither vengeance nor justice. It refused to condemn me, refused to erase me, refused even to punish me.
This world, in its tender madness, still looked at me. It recognized me. Not as an enemy. Not as an abomination. But as something still... worthy. Something still... lovable.
And worse than all, yes — worse than all, it held out its arms to me. After the bodies, after the blood, after the screams and the claws, after the shame, after the abandonments, after the most repugnant betrayals... it continued. This world, this unforgivable matrix, kept looking at me as if I still existed.
It saw me. It pointed at me. It didn’t flee. It opened its arms. Not to correct me. Not to transform me. Not to cleanse me. But to love me. Simply. Without conditions.
And that was it — yes, that was exactly it — the most atrocious thing of all.
It wasn’t the roots. It wasn’t the fall. It wasn’t the whisper nor the abyss. It wasn’t even the memory of my own monstrosity. The worst was that damn sweetness. That insane sweetness, that tepid light sliding into my cracks like a balm I didn’t want to receive, that warmth that refused to fear my claws, that didn’t back away from my wounds, that invisible hand brushing my neck with tenderness while I was begging for my skull to be crushed.
That was the punishment. Not pain. Not solitude. But that persistent, absurd, unjustifiable mercy.