Cristian's labyrinth was made of glass, and its walls were so thin that every word, every look, every touch shattered against them, leaving jagged shards in his mind. It wasn't a prison, but a fortress he had built with his own hands to protect himself from the outside world—a world made of chaotic sounds, smiles he didn't understand, and eyes that looked at him with infinite confusion. Sitting on the floor of his room, his back against his perfectly ordered bookshelf, his hands gripped his knees, and his heart was a drum playing the melody of an infinite sadness.
The voices weren't in the world. They were in his head. The voices of his teammates, of their parents, of the coaches. "He's a strange boy," "He doesn't talk to anyone," "He's not a leader." The voices of a world he couldn't grasp, a world that couldn't grasp him. And then there was the other voice, the voice he feared most of all. His father's voice. The voice he had never heard, yet knew in the depths of his soul. The voice that screamed his absence at him.
Why am I so strange?
The question he had asked his mother was the same one he asked himself every day. It wasn't a question of curiosity; it was a question of pain. It was an acceptance of his failure. It was an acceptance of his loneliness. And his mind, a labyrinth of logic and patterns, couldn't find a solution. It couldn't find a reason for his existence. His mind, usually a place of order, was now a swamp of murky, heavy thoughts. Every breath was a weight, every beat of his heart a defeat.
He stood up, his legs weak and trembling. He moved to his bed and sat down. His hands, once so precise and disciplined, now shook. The sadness was a physical entity crushing him. It was a weight on his chest, a shadow in his heart. And his heart, which once beat with the regularity of a clock, now beat with the melody of a surrender.
There was no thought. There was no plan. There was only a desire. The desire to stop the noise. The desire to stop the pain. The desire to stop the labyrinth. He stood up again, approached his desk, and took a piece of twine he used for his drawings. He gripped it tight, his hands trembling. It wasn't a gesture of anger, but a gesture of resignation. The King... the King had failed. And now, the King had to pay for his sins.
But then, a moment before the twine could tighten around his throat, he heard it. His father's voice. It wasn't a sweet voice. It wasn't a voice that reassured him. It was a cold, empty voice, like the sound of wind in the desert.
"You can't even manage to live."
It was like a punch to the stomach. The sadness, the pain, the fear... everything transformed. It turned into rage. A pure, raw rage that burned through his veins like acid. You can't even manage to live. Who was he to say that? Who was he to judge? Who was he—the man who had abandoned his family—to tell him he couldn't live?
A silent scream tore from his throat. The twine fell from his hands. He stood up and, with a strength he didn't know he possessed, grabbed his painting and hurled it against the wall. The glass shattered into a thousand pieces, and the sound of breaking glass was the symphony of his rage. He took another chair and threw it against the bookshelf. The books tumbled down, their perfect order destroyed. The rage was a volcano erupting, a fire burning away everything he had been. There was no more sadness. There was only rage. Rage for the father he had never known. Rage for the world that didn't understand him. Rage for his very existence.
Martina heard the noise and rushed into the room. She found Cristian sitting on the floor, surrounded by a chaos of glass and books. His eyes, once so sad, now burned with a cold fury. She said nothing. She approached him and held him tight, but he did not return the embrace. His body was rigid, tense—a suit of armor forged from rage. "Cristian," she whispered, her voice a silken thread, a balm for his tormented soul. "What happened?"
Cristian didn't answer. He stood up and, with a hollow expression, walked to the door. His hands moved in a mechanical gesture, touching the handle three times. He walked out of the room, leaving Martina alone in a labyrinth of broken glass.
Outside the room, in the hallway, his face was a mask of indifference. But in his mind, the voices hadn't stopped. His father's voice was still there, but now there was another voice. His own. A voice that no longer asked why he was strange, but a voice that said: "I am. And I don't need you to tell me how I should live."