The act of forgiving was not an instant liberation. It was work. Dirty, exhausting work, like a miner chipping at rock with a tiny chisel. Kneeling in the landfill of my own bitterness, I began the slow, painful process of dismantling.
One by one, I focused on the objects that imprisoned me. The torn movie ticket. I forced my mind to push past the pang of feeling like a second choice and to imagine the scene from Carlos's perspective: his girlfriend's call, her tears, his own frustration at being caught in the middle. "I forgive you," I whispered, and the ticket's weight lessened enough for me to peel it from my skin. It turned to dust. The cracked fountain pen. I forced myself to think of the teacher, not as an antagonist, but as a stressed woman at the end of a long day, dealing with thirty exams and a suspicion that, from her perspective, might have been valid. "I forgive you." Dust.
Each forgiveness was a small triumph, an ounce of vanishing weight. But for every object I managed to release, it seemed ten more emerged from the dusty ground, drawn by the activity. A half-used lipstick (a classmate who ridiculed me for my accent when I was a child), a scratched CD (a friend who copied my homework and got a better grade), a solitary key (a landlord who unfairly charged me a security deposit). The landfill was a living organism, and it seemed to resent every attempt I made to escape it.
And then there was the bicycle frame. The weight of the grudge against my father was so immense, so fundamental to the architecture of my misery, that every time I tried to focus on it, the pain and self-pity overwhelmed me. The image of the betrayed child on the ground was more powerful than that of the scared man trying to teach a lesson. My forgiveness felt hypocritical, a lie I told myself to pass the level, and the bicycle frame remained cold and heavy against my back.
The white, sunless sky began to pulse. At first it was subtle, a barely perceptible change in luminosity. Then it became more erratic, flickering like a dying lightbulb. With each flicker, the landscape shifted. The objects in the landfill rearranged themselves, blended, merged with each other, creating grotesque, ephemeral shapes. A pile of broken phones fused into the shape of a giant insect that crawled a few meters before collapsing. A wave of chipped coffee mugs rose and crashed against a tower of torn books. The world was becoming unstable. My mind, stripped of the protection of its grudges, was exposed to the raw madness of this place.
The sound began. A low hum, like a high-tension power line, that seemed to emanate from the very ground. The hum gradually built into a note, then many notes, a dissonant cacophony that swelled in volume. The broken objects began to vibrate, each emitting its own sound: the screech of rusted metal, the tinkling of broken glass, the dry rustle of old paper. It was the symphony of abandonment, an orchestra of broken things, and it was driving me insane.
"Stop!" I screamed, covering my ears, but the sound was inside my head.
With each flicker of the sky, the madness intensified. The rules of the previous levels were crumbling. Memories were no longer contained experiences; they bled at the edges. I saw a flash of Fushimi Park, but the cherry trees were made of rusty keys. I heard the echo of screams in the school office, but the voices were distorted, played through the hum of a thousand broken modems. The smiling Valerias from the banquet hall appeared and disappeared among the piles of trash, their smiles now jagged, terrifying rictuses.
My mind, which had found a kind of calm in acceptance, was now being assailed from all angles. This level was not a linear test. It was an ambush. It was as if the system, frustrated by my progress, had decided to throw its entire arsenal at me at once.
I crawled through the chaotic landscape, the bicycle frame crushing me, the chains clanking, the symphony of the broken piercing my skull. Forgiveness became impossible. How could I focus on a single person's perspective when a thousand memories and a thousand sounds vied for my attention?
And then, a new form of torture began. The ground beneath me became translucent. I could see through it, as if walking on smoked glass. And below the glass, I saw a new level. A landscape of gray, identical rooms, office cubicles stretching into infinity. In each cubicle, a solitary figure sat at a desk, typing on a non-existent keyboard, talking into a phone that wasn't there. I saw future and potential versions of myself: the apathetic office worker, the frustrated artist who had given up, the middle-aged man alone in an empty apartment. I was seeing my own potential personal hells, the lives I could lead if I failed, if I gave up.
The symphony intensified. The sky flickered so fast that the world seemed like a strobe-lit film. My brain could no longer process it. The distinction between past, present, and future dissolved. I was in the office with my parents, while eating the katsudon of resentment, while forgiving Takeda for the manga, all at the same time. The child who fell off the bicycle cried in my arms while I explained to Valeria why I hadn't gone to her exhibition.
"Stop, stop, stop, stop!" I screamed, but my voice was just another instrument in the orchestra.
This was the breaking point. The final dismantling. Not just of my spirit, but of the very fabric of my perception. The system didn't want me to solve a puzzle. It wanted my mind to shatter so it could be rebuilt into something new. Or perhaps it just wanted it to break.
I fell to the ground, completely immobilized by the weight, deafened by the noise, blinded by the flickering lights. There were no coherent thoughts left. Only fragments.
...the smell of tatami... my mother's hands... "don't leave"... the taste of ash... "get up"... Ctrl+Z... the vacant smile... the creak of the swing...
My consciousness was dissolving, not into the peaceful void of death, but into a whirlwind of sensory white noise. My identity, the "I" that had been fighting and suffering, was disintegrating. And in the very last moment, when the last piece of my ego was about to be swept away by the current, an image broke through the chaos.
It was my father. Not in memory, but here, in the landfill. He stood a few meters away, with the same impassive face I had interpreted as coldness my entire life. He didn't speak. He simply looked at me, lying on the ground, crushed and broken.
But this time, I saw through the mask. I saw his eyes. And in them, there was no disappointment, no anger. There was a deep pain, a sadness that mirrored my own. The pain of a father watching his son suffer and not knowing how to help, because his own language of love is toughness, discipline, "get up." I understood in that instant that his silence was not indifference. It was his own form of helplessness. His own chain.
He looked at me, and for the first time in my life, I felt truly seen. Not the failed student, not the rebellious son, but me. And in that gaze, he forgave me. He forgave me for not understanding, for my anger, for my weakness.
And in receiving his silent forgiveness, I could finally give him mine.
"I forgive you, Dad," my voice was a whisper lost in the cacophony, but it was the only sound that mattered. "I forgive you for not being the father I wanted you to be. And I forgive myself, for not being the son you needed me to be."
The bicycle frame on my back dissolved. It didn't turn to dust. It turned to light. A warm, gentle light that spread from my back, dissolving all other objects, all the chains. The weight disappeared.
The symphony of the broken faded into a single, long, pure note. The sky stopped flickering and settled into a quiet white. The ground became opaque again. The landfill, with all its grudges, had vanished. I stood, alone, on an infinite white plain.
My father's figure faded, leaving me with the echo of his gaze.
I was free. I was empty. But this emptiness was different. It wasn't the nothingness of depression or the void of distance. It was a clean emptiness. A blank canvas. I was broken, yes. My mind felt like a vase pieced back together, the cracks still visible. But I was whole.
Before me, in the infinite whiteness, the fifth staircase appeared. I felt nothing at seeing it. No fear, no resignation. It was simply the next step. I began to walk towards it, each step light and silent on the white ground. I no longer knew who I was. The Kenji who had entered that subway no longer existed. His fears, his grudges, his sorrows, had been burned away. What remained was something new. Something unknown. And for the first time, I wasn't afraid to find out.