Clocks move or stand still. Or pretend to move when in reality they couldn't care less about you.
The desire of one to see you pathetic can stop any external resistance, even if space itself has already reached for the curtain, ready to lower it on the final act.
Or perhaps the one being humiliated has convinced himself that someone is rushing to spare him this shame.
Though, if you think about it... does it even matter anymore?
The ant long ago accepted that it's insignificant before the human. And the clearer it understands this, the less attempt to resist the inevitable remains.
Space laughs at you. Over and over, it replays memories, as if there's something like a TV in front of it, tuned only to the most disgusting frames for you.
And you can't say anything. You're forced to swallow them deeper than words, right down to the tonsils.
And it might be bearable if the fashion show used your things. Your past. Your mistakes.
But no.
It's using your hated enemy's things. Maybe that's what infuriates most. Or maybe I'm just trying to dull the taste of my own insignificance, stuck somewhere in my throat like a lump.
But we're dealing with reality. That very reality you can't escape if it's chosen you as its target.
And so all that's left is to greet it strained, almost sarcastically: "Welcome."
Space continues its movement. Echoes of the past, one after another. Like a child refusing to finish the last spoonful of porridge, it resorts to cheap, almost lazy manipulation.
Cheap, but sometimes... effective. That's exactly how this scene looks now. Yes, turns out I just admitted I'm a child.
"Yo-ho, Yoo-haa, Enua. I think champagne's still too grown-up for you... We'll make do with a bottle of milk in honor of your revelation."
"Seems the shards have multiplied... Could this be a sign of someone's approaching end? Oh... from such a sight, the eyes just scatter in all directions!"
One.
Two.
Three.
Ten.
A hundred...
"No, a thousand memories seeping in for one single thought: just how insignificant you are... Ha-gha-ha-kha-ha!"
...
...
..........
"If the defendant has nothing to present," the witch announced. "We will continue our most splendid trial."
A memory is something you appropriated. As if it were your own house, and someone once decided to take it from you. But if you look reality straight in the eyes, without averting your gaze... the only intruder here is one. And that intruder is you.
Rewriting history isn't that hard when you're the narrator. The narrative can't show its reverse side if it has no key. And that side... was easily hidden.
After all, the true owner of the key simply doesn't exist in this story.
A broken part can be replaced. And done so masterfully that it seems like it was the original all along.
But now the narrative changes direction. It no longer follows the rules imposed by the intruder. It's free.
And with that, eyes finally open to reality. The world silently bears its burden until it's allowed to speak. So let's allow the heart to burst out.
The heart that has been silent since its appearance.
It expanded, and with it the burden placed upon it grew. It was ordered to be silent, as if it were inanimate. And the story from the beginning spoke of only one thing:
Fate acted wrongly. Fate was unfair to one who was not guilty.
But what makes you guilty at all? The mere fact of a bad act?
How to determine if it was truly bad if no one can give a genuinely objective answer about the boundary between "right" and "wrong"?
You asked: "Why?"
And got an answer almost immediately: "Can something be considered wrong if it didn't fully bloom?"
This question might have remained beyond correctness, but it bloomed. It expanded, it painted across your canvas.
And at some point you started thinking you weren't guilty of adding that paint. But this whole performance from the start boiled down to one thing — lies.
Lies carefully wrapped, packaged, and served to you as sweet truth. You were the one who gave birth. You were the one who expanded. You were the one who added the paint.
It's impossible to do something and blame it on another when your eyes saw everything. When they watched. You weren't happy, and that's what hurt most of all.
Having nothing, you watched the one who had everything dear to you. And it broke. Pain turned to despair. Despair — to malice. And what you fought so fiercely against lived inside you all along.
"AaAAAAaAA! aaAaA! aAaAAA!! aaAAaaAAAaaAa!!!"
The scream became a trigger. An activation button. But not for one — for all of them. Dozens of blades surrounded Enua, hovering in the air for one single instant. And after that, one by one, they began piercing his already wounded body.
First came "Kutō," going straight into the solar plexus.
Right after — "Zetsubō." At the moment of impact, it seemed to evaporate, but the truth was worse: it devoured him from inside, striving to turn organs into shapeless mass.
"Jiga" pierced the chest.
"Kioku" found its way into the spinal cord.
"Shinri" shattered the nasal bone.
And "Kyogi" struck the shadow, creating the feeling it had simply lost its mark.
"Lies tend to lurk in the shadows," the witch drawled with a light smile. Seems she just praised one of her blades.
The turn came to "Yokubō," and it chose the prostate as its target.
"Let the fun begin, Ho-ho-ho!" Mariana said, as if conducting a perfect orchestra of destruction.
Then "Unmei" shifted. As if only now time decided to move. Its target was the forehead. It flew there with such absolute speed that ℵ realized its insignificant smallness before Ω.
And then — "Hōkai." It wasn't ordered to "strike," rather to leave. Leave a trace for future excavations. Enua became a geometry lesson. A diagonal drawn across the living, and "Hōkai" slid along his body like dripping oil.
But Enua didn't scream, he waited. Not for mercy, and he was silent not because he felt no pain. He was silent because he couldn't speak of it.
And perhaps that's what hurt most of all.
One last blade remained. Like an unfinished period in an overly long sentence. But the body was already fading, crumbling like dust in the wind.
Enua dropped to his knees and covered his eyes with his hands.
"Well... Looks like the game has reached its final point," the witch said, as if reading a verdict. "Now do you understand where this battle led you?"
...
"In the end... you understand... that fate was blind. For, fighting the inevitable, you only destroyed yourself."
...
...I was blind. Seeing my own pain, I didn't see the pain I caused others. I beheld the monster, but not the one standing opposite.
The monster was me.
How ironic... I fought fate, not noticing that I myself had given birth to that very fate.
If the world gave me one more chance... I'd ask it for forgiveness.
In the end, all I ever wanted...
To love and be loved...
And finally, the blade "Seijaku" struck emptiness.
"Don't be afraid. This silence is far softer than all the words you've heard before."