Chapter 191
"Fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-four..."
The voice inside his head continued on, monotonous and without pause, like a child learning to count in a classroom that had no teacher, no books, and no final destination.
Between the numbers, he occasionally heard the hum coming from the east, a hum that never ceased, never changed its frequency, only continued endlessly like the long song of something that never slept. Apathy found himself wondering whether the exploded castle was still releasing smoke, whether the reality on the third floor that had been rewritten by the blast had finished changing or was still transforming into something beyond the understanding of a creature with a triangular head like him.
On the seventy-third step, Apathy passed a large stone lying by the roadside. Its shape was strange, resembling the face of someone crying without eyes. Without realizing it, he stopped for a moment, staring at the stone with empty eyes, eyes that sought no meaning because he was simply too exhausted to search for meaning in a world where meaning had never been easy to find.
"Eighty-seven," he whispered.
Then he moved his foot once more, one final step before the count reached a number that was not extraordinary, yet somehow felt special simply because he had decided it should be.
Eighty-eight.
A symmetrical number, a number that looked like two snowmen standing side by side, a number regarded in some cultures of the world of the faithful as a symbol of good fortune, though Apathy had never truly believed in luck.
He stopped.
Not because he was tired.
Not because his feet were injured.
But because eighty-eight felt like a good place to pause, to stand motionless in the middle of that nameless path, with the thin mist dampening his uniform and the distant hum continuing to fill the silence like a second heartbeat pulsing somewhere outside his body.
Apathy lowered his gaze, not merely bowing his triangular head as he so often had inside Miara's house, but truly looking down at the ground beneath his feet. The earth was wet, muddy, and covered with moss, utterly indifferent to who stood upon it, how many tears had fallen onto its surface, or how many undelivered letters lay buried beneath it.
Within the emptiness that had filled his mind, something slowly began to emerge. It was not a complete thought, but fragments, tiny shards like broken glass scattered across the floor, pieces he would have to gather one by one even if they cut his fingers until they bled.
"Are you doing all right over there?" he asked silently.
He mentioned no name and no place, because neither was necessary. A name was unnecessary for someone who remained in his thoughts even when his mind was completely empty, and a place was unnecessary for someone whose departure had never been explained, whose leaving had never been announced, someone who had simply vanished one day like morning mist dissolving beneath the sunrise, even though the sun in the world of the Satanists rarely ever rose completely.
"Wherever you are now... do you still remember that I'm here? Do you still remember that I'm still waiting, still walking along this nameless path, still counting my steps because counting is easier than remembering?"
He slowly raised his head, a movement that felt unbearably heavy, as though he were lifting an iron gate that had rusted shut for years.
His eyes, so often lowered, now looked upward toward the overcast sky, a sky painted gray by thin clouds that were not dense enough to blanket everything, yet thick enough to conceal the stars that had never truly existed in the world of the Satanists. This world had not been created to possess stars. It had been created to possess smoke, dust, and mist that never truly disappeared.
Within that empty sky, Apathy searched, not for stars, nor for the moon, but for something far vaguer, far less tangible, something closer to a feeling than an object.
Was the one he loved gazing toward the same sky from somewhere beyond his sight, somewhere forever beyond his reach?
Was that person also standing somewhere, on some road, in some world that might have been different yet beat to the rhythm of the same passing time, asking the very same question in a different voice?
As his eyes remained fixed upon the silent gray sky that offered no answer, something shifted inside Apathy's triangular head.
Not because he had intentionally chosen to remember, but because memories possessed a will of their own, appearing like water seeping through cracks in stone that had never been noticed before.
The world around him changed, not violently, but gently, like a layer of mist peeling away one reality and replacing it with another, one that was older, dimmer, and damp with tears that had never been given the chance to fall.
He was no longer standing upon the nameless path on the outskirts of town.
Instead, he found himself in the courtyard of an old school whose ground was paved with rough, cold stones. Children his age gathered together in tightly knit circles, circles whose entrances had never been open to someone with a triangular head lined with serrated edges.
"Hey, Apathy! Want to play with us?"
The voice of a boy with blazing red hair called out from the distance.
But the laughter that followed, joined by five or six other children standing behind him, made it clear that the invitation was nothing more than bait. If Apathy approached, he would not be greeted by hands inviting him to play, but by feet waiting to trip him, tongues ready to hurl words sharper than knives, and eyes eager to watch a boy with a strange head fall face-first onto the cold, rough stones.
Fourteen-year-old Apathy said nothing.
With his thin body and a head far too heavy for his fragile neck, he quietly walked away from the crowd, retreating to a corner of the schoolyard where sunlight never reached because enormous trees cast permanent shadows over it.
It was there that he learned solitude was not a choice, but a necessity.
It was better to have no friends than to have friends who would abandon you in your darkest hour.
The bleak world of the Satanists had never been made for creatures like him.
That schoolyard became the daily stage for mockery thrown at him without invitation and without interruption from anyone, because the teachers were busy lecturing about rituals of resurrection, the principal was occupied reporting attendance records, and no one had time to care about a child whose head was triangular, whose serrated edges trembled whenever fear overtook him, and who never dared to fight back because he did not know which words could wound others the way he himself was wounded every single day.
"Apathy, don't you have any feelings?" shouted a girl with twin braids after deliberately spilling her drink over Apathy's notebook.
In the classroom filled with laughter, Apathy simply bent down and picked up the soaked notebook with hands that dared not tremble, because if they trembled, everyone would know he was hurt.
And if they knew he was hurt, they would only attack him even more fiercely.
"Of course I do," he answered within his heart.
But those words never escaped his lips, because he had already learned that no one would listen.
In this world, the voice of a strange creature like him would only become another reason for ridicule.
It was better to remain silent and endure than to speak and be broken even further.
To be continued...