The clock moves or stands still. Or pretends to move, when in reality it doesn't care about you at all.
The desire of one to see you pathetic is capable of stopping any outside resistance, even if space itself has already reached for the curtain, preparing to lower it on the final act.
Or, perhaps, the one being debased convinced himself that someone is rushing to rid him of this disgrace.
Though, if you think about it... does this even matter anymore?
The ant long ago accepted the fact that it's insignificant before the human. And the clearer it understands this, the less remains in it even an attempt to resist the inevitable.
Space laughs at you. Time and again it replays memories, as if before it stands something like a television, aimed only at the most disgusting frames for you.
And you can't say anything. They make you swallow them deeper than words, right under the tonsils.
And, it would seem, this would still be tolerable if the fashion show were conducted with your things. With your past. With your mistakes.
But no.
It's conducted with the things of your hated enemy. Maybe this enrages most of all. 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. With that very reality from which you can't run if it chose you as its target.
And therefore all that remains is to greet it tensely, almost with sarcasm: "Welcome."
Space continues moving. Echoes of the past, one after another. Like a child unwilling to finish the last spoon of porridge, it employs cheap, almost lazy manipulation.
Cheap, but sometimes... effective. This is exactly how this picture looks now. Yes, it turns out I just admitted that I'm a child.
"Yo-ho, Yu-u-ha-a, Enua. I think champagne isn't for your age yet... We'll make do with a bottle of milk in honor of your revelation."
"Seems the shards became far more... Could this be a sign of someone's demise approaching? Oh... from such a spectacle the eyes just scatter in different directions!"
One.
Two.
Three.
Ten.
A hundred...
"No, a thousand memories seep through for one single thought: how insignificant you are... Ha-gha-ha-kha-ha!"
...
...
......
"If the defendant has nothing to present," the witch announced. "We'll continue our most magnificent trial."
Memory is what you appropriated. As if it were your own house, and someone one day decided to take it from you. Only if you look reality straight in the eyes, without averting your gaze... the one you so desperately tried not to notice, the stranger here is one and only. And that stranger is you.
Rewriting history actually isn't so difficult when you're the one acting as narrator. The narrative isn't capable of showing its reverse side if it doesn't have the key. And that very side... was easily hidden.
After all, the true owner of the key in this story simply doesn't exist.
A broken part can be replaced. And done so masterfully that it will seem as if it were the original all along.
But now the narrative changes direction. It no longer follows the rules the stranger imposed on it. It's free.
And with this, 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's been silent since its very appearance.
It expanded, and with it expanded the burden placed upon it. It was ordered to be silent, as if it were lifeless. And the story from the very beginning spoke only of one thing:
Fate acted wrongly. Fate was unjust to one who wasn't guilty.
But what even makes you guilty? The very fact of a bad deed?
How to determine if it was truly bad, if no one is capable of giving a truly objective answer about the boundary between "right" and "wrong"?
You asked the question: "Why?"
And received the answer almost immediately: "Can something be considered wrong if it didn't have time to fully bloom?"
This question could have remained beyond correctness, but it bloomed. It expanded, it drew paint across your canvas.
And at some point you began to think you weren't guilty of adding this paint. But this whole performance from the very beginning came down to just one thing — to a lie.
A lie that was carefully wrapped, designed, and served to you as sweet truth. You're the one who gave birth. You're the one who expanded. You're the one who added the paint.
It's impossible to do something and blame it on another when your eyes saw everything. When they observed. You weren't happy, and this is what hurt most of all.
Having nothing, you looked at the one who had everything that was dear to you. And this broke you. Pain turned into despair. Despair — into malice. And what you fought so fiercely against, in the end lived in you yourself.
"AaAAAAaAA! aaAaA! aAaAAA!! aaAAaAAAaaAa!!!"
The scream became a trigger. An activation button. But not of one — of all of them. Dozens of blades surrounded Enua, hanging in the air for one single instant. And after this, one after another, they began plunging into his already wounded body.
First entered "Kutō," passing straight into the solar plexus.
Right after it — "Zetsubō." At the moment of impact it seemed to evaporate, but the truth was far worse: it devoured him from within, striving to turn organs into a shapeless mass.
"Jiga" plunged into the chest.
"Kioku" found its way into the spinal cord.
"Shinri" shattered the nasal bone.
And "Kyogi" struck the shadow, creating the sensation it simply lost its bearing.
"Lies are accustomed to being in shadow," the witch drawled with a light smile. Seems she just praised one of her blades.
The turn came to "Yokubō," and it chose as its target the prostate gland.
"Let the fun begin, Ho-ho-ho!" Mariana pronounced, as if conducting a perfect orchestra of destruction.
Then "Unmei" shifted. As if only now time decided to move. Its target became 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" glided across his body like dripping oil.
But Enua didn't scream, he waited. Not for mercy, and was silent not because he didn't feel pain. He was silent because he couldn't speak of it.
And, perhaps, this was most painful of all.
One last blade remained. Like an unfinished period in a too-long sentence. But the body was already beginning to fade, crumbling like dust in the wind.
Enua dropped to his knees and covered his eyes with his hands.
"Well... Seems the game reached its final point," the witch pronounced, as if reading a sentence. "Now do you understand where this battle led you?"
...
"In the end... you understand... that fate turned out blind. After all, 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 a monster, but not the one who stood opposite.
The monster was me.
How ironic... I fought fate, not noticing that this very fate was born from me.
If the world gave me one more chance... I would ask it for forgiveness.
In the end, all I ever wanted...
To love and be loved...
And finally, the blade "Seijaku" struck the void.
"Don't be afraid. This silence is far softer than all the words you heard before."