It surfaced later in unexpected ways: in the way a memory refused to settle into a clean story, in the hesitation before repeating a familiar excuse, in the quiet discomfort when recounting events to someone who had not been there. Details no longer aligned as neatly. Motives blurred. Certainty frayed at the edges.
People learned to live with that too.
They learned which thoughts to push aside, which questions to avoid finishing. They developed new habits to manage the weight—humor, cynicism, abstraction. Some wrapped it in ideology. Some buried it under routine. Some called it maturity.
A few mistook it for guilt and tried to outrun it.
But it was not guilt.
Guilt demanded resolution.
This did not.
It did not insist on confession or punishment. It did not demand change. It simply stayed, faint but persistent, like a note held just below hearing.
