Kafka locked eyes with his mother, and for the first time since their reunion, he saw something new in her gaze.
The pitifulness, the despair, the heavy sorrow that had clouded her face before were gone.
In their place shone a brightness, fragile, trembling, but unmistakable.
It was as if she had been handed a reason to live again.
Just because her son wanted her alive, just because he rejected her death, she now clung to that as her anchor.
And that sight relieved Kafka more than he could ever say; he did not want to be the son of a woman constantly seeking her own end. He wanted his mother living, breathing, facing him as she was now.
His eyes then drifted down to her neck. Pale, flawless, unmarked, smooth as porcelain.
