You asked for clarity. Now carry it.
These words echoed inside Shino Taketsu's mind. He had never spoken them aloud, but they repeated themselves each time another truth settled on his shoulders.
Knowledge had come to him like a flood. Not all at once, but steady, relentless, filling every corner of his perception. He saw details no one else cared to notice. He recognized patterns others dismissed as accidents. He understood motives hidden behind words, fears hidden behind smiles, betrayals hidden behind gestures.
And with every truth uncovered, the world grew heavier.
---
Do you remember when life was simple?
He asked himself this at night, staring at the ceiling, when the silence was too loud.
He remembered — the laughter of friends, the lightness of believing in promises, the sweet ignorance of thinking people always meant what they said. But those memories felt like distant shadows now, belonging to someone else.
Because once you see, you cannot unsee.
Once you know, you cannot unknow.
Once the curtain is torn away, the stage is never the same again.
---
He carried truths others could never understand.
He knew the weakness in men who pretended strength. He knew the bitterness behind kindness. He knew how fear disguised itself as anger, how envy wore the mask of admiration. To him, every face carried two layers: the one shown, and the one hidden.
And the hidden one was always heavier.
---
At first, he tried to speak. He wanted to share what he saw, to open others' eyes.
But when he warned a friend, "Be careful, that man envies you," the friend laughed it off.
When he said, "That smile hides something else," they called him paranoid.
When he cut through illusions with sharp words, they flinched as if he had struck them.
He realized then: people do not want truth. They want comfort.
And so, he swallowed his words and buried them inside.
---
Why me? he asked himself. Why must I carry this alone?
No answer came. Only the silence of winter, the silence of faded friendships, the silence that reminded him this was his path, not theirs.
Perhaps knowledge is never meant to be shared equally. Perhaps some are chosen to see, and others to remain blind. And perhaps the weight of truth is the price of mastery.
---
There were nights when it hurt more than any wound.
To sit among people and watch them laugh at illusions he had already torn apart inside his mind. To see betrayal approaching and know he could say nothing without being dismissed. To recognize weakness where others saw strength, and to remain silent because the world preferred its lies.
That silence was the heaviest burden of all.
Because the burden of knowledge is not only knowing. It is knowing alone.
---
He stared at his reflection one evening, the room lit only by a dim lamp. His eyes looked back at him — calm, sharp, but older than they should have been.
"They will never understand you," he whispered to the mirror.
"They cannot. And you must not expect them to."
The reflection did not argue. It only agreed in silence.
---
Sometimes he envied those untouched by truth. Their lives looked lighter, easier. They could trust without suspicion, laugh without analysis, dream without calculation. They were free in ways he could never be again.
But envy passed quickly. For he knew their freedom was fragile. One betrayal, one collapse, one moment of broken trust — and their world would shatter. His would not. His world was already stripped to the bone. Nothing could break what was already bare.
That was his strength. That was the gift buried within the burden.
---
Carry it.
The voice in his mind spoke again.
Do not run from it. Do not curse it. You wanted to rise higher — and higher ground is always colder, lonelier, heavier. Carry it.
And he did.
He carried it through every silence, every smile he knew was false, every conversation that felt like performance. He carried it when others celebrated shallow victories, when they wasted themselves on illusions. He carried it when they looked at him and mistook his restraint for arrogance.
They would never see what he saw. They would never understand why he could not return to their simplicity.
And he accepted that.
---
Mastery is not only the power to act. It is the power to endure.
Endure truths that others cannot bear.
Endure silence that others cannot stand.
Endure loneliness that others cannot name.
This was his crown, invisible yet undeniable. Not given by the world, but carved by the weight of knowledge pressing down on him day after day.
---
He closed his eyes that night and whispered, almost like a vow:
"I will not collapse beneath this weight. I will make it my strength. Let them laugh in their illusions. Let them chase comfort. I will carry what they cannot. And when the time comes, this burden will become my blade."
In the stillness, he felt it settle deeper into him. Heavy, yes. But also steady. The burden of knowledge would not crush him. It would forge him.
And though no one else would ever understand it, he no longer needed them to.