Time no longer passed.
It frayed.
Once, I could feel it sliding over me like a warm current, soaking my days in shades and traces.
Now, it flowed without touching me, indifferent, as if it had forgotten me.
Since the incident, my life had become a cruel laboratory.
Every pain, every wound, every fracture, every impact…
I inflicted them myself.
Out of curiosity.
Out of need.
Like a man pinching his skin to check if he is dreaming.
I slammed into walls, let myself fall, tested myself.
And each time, my body closed itself.
Relentlessly.
My flesh obeyed a logic I could not understand.
At first, I thought it was a gift.
Then an exception.
Then a curse.
The pain remained.
Raw.
Sharp.
But it no longer meant anything.
The years slipped away.
Twenty-five. Twenty-seven. Thirty. Thirty-two.
Always the same face in the mirror.
Same gaze. Same skin.
No fatigue. No mark.
Around me, the others changed.
Their faces wrinkled.
Their voices thickened.
Their bodies stooped.
And me…
I drifted.
Shinjiro, meanwhile, had followed the path of men.
A home. A wife.
A child. Then another.
He still laughed, but it was a dried-up laugh.
More a cough than a burst of joy.
"Damn, you still look the same… It's not normal, man."
I laughed too.
A polite, transparent laugh.
And inside that laugh, there was a hint of unease.
As if he knew.
Without admitting it.
The silences between us grew longer.
Heavier.
More real.
Time began to take everything from me.
Gently.
Without noise.
My father died first.
Cancer. Silent. Brutal.
I stood by his bed as his lungs emptied.
He looked at me.
For a long time.
And in his eyes, there was something stronger than pain.
A certainty.
He knew.
He knew I shouldn't be there.
Still intact.
My mother died a year later.
She withered away, like a flower left too long in water.
I did not cry.
I no longer knew how.
Shinjiro grew old.
His back bent.
His voice lost its sharpness.
But he kept calling me.
Out of habit.
Out of loyalty.
Perhaps out of fear of forgetting.
One evening, we met again on the bench of our youth.
It rained a little.
The vacant lot across from us had been replaced by buildings.
He sighed.
"You're still the same, bastard…"
Then he coughed.
A dry, tired cough.
"Seriously… tell me it's a joke… your body. Your eyes."
I looked at him without answering.
He smiled.
A weary, resigned smile.
And as always, I played my role.
The mask.
The one who does not age.
The one who says nothing.
But the silence burned me.
It wasn't that I suffered.
It was worse.
I no longer even knew what suffering meant.
I was no longer part of their world.
I was no longer a man.
I was a witness.
A parasite clinging to a dead era.
A fragment frozen in a clock that refused to move.
One day, I stood before the mirror.
Again.
Nothing had changed.
My reflection stared back at me.
Unaltered.
Inexplicable.
And finally, I understood:
I am suspended.
I am the residue of a world that continues without me.