As always, the man wore an emotionless expression.
It had been like that from the first time I saw him. Those golden pupils were as barren as a dried-up lake, making it hard to find even a fragment of humanity. It felt like a blade worn down and dulled to a gray sheen.
Yet, to resemble me so much like this.
It was like facing a malicious prank. As if hearing a prophecy filled with malice that I too would end up like that someday.
To be honest, yes.
I disliked that man.
“There was a time when I had a period like yours.”
The voice bleached of emotion rasps like sand. The golden pupils soaked in fatigue illuminate me like moonlight.
“That I wouldn’t lose anything, that I didn’t want to give up anything more.”
The man sitting on the rock still showed no movement at all.
He was merely gazing at me with dry eyes.
In fact, that was enough.
To imprint an intense presence on me, as fierce as the burning sunset. More than the band of twilight scorching the horizon, the man’s golden pupils etch a clearer trace on my retina.
“I must have collapsed hundreds of times, despaired thousands of times. Failure, frustration, regret…….”
Word by word.
The man’s tone, recalling emotions now faint, tattered. Suddenly, I thought his gaze was sweeping somewhere other than me.
Was he recalling old wounds?
“At the end of that long agony, I finally realized it, barely.”
“What?”
“That it’s impossible.”
Declaring so, the man slowly stands up.
The speed was yawn-inducingly slow. If anyone saw, they’d think only his time was flowing slowly.
But I knew.