I had crossed the bridge — or what passed for a bridge — and already, behind , it had vanished, not like an object that disappears, but like a mory the world refuses to keep. It didn’t collapse. It didn’t fold. It simply decomposed, slowly, in a viscous silence, as if nothing had ever been there, as if the crossing itself had existed only for , for a single passage, before being returned to the organic void from which it had erged.
A mory that didn’t want to stay. Or perhaps a sign that this world only accepted motion — not traces.
As for the world... it thickened again, gently, imperceptibly at first, then with a more marked slowness, almost viscous, as if space itself was growing heavier around . The ground beca dense again, almost pulpy under my feet, filled with a soft and vibrant substance, neither stone nor flesh, sothing between moss and mbrane, which seed to absorb each of my steps with clammy complacency. The walls too drew closer, not like a trap, not with that direct hostility one imdiately recognizes, but with a form of imposed intimacy, suffocating, like a body too close you hadn’t chosen. And with each step, I slipped further into a narrowing corridor, more constricted, more organic with every ter, as if I were sinking into a vegetal throat, warm and foreign, passing through a living architecture that hadn’t been designed for , yet still swallowed all the sa.
And yet, sothing in it recognized . An acceptance without tenderness, without anger. As if I were expected, not desired but tolerated, like a parasite the host body decides not to reject.
In front of , I saw her.
A surface. Smooth. Convex. Almost liquid in the way it reflected light without truly returning it — as if it absorbed it, smothered it, digested it slowly in its curves. It erged in the center of the corridor, rising from a tangle of fibers and vegetal flesh, and yet... it was not part of it. It resembled nothing else here. It stood out, yes, with an almost brutal obviousness, like an anomaly the world itself had failed to hide. It was there, blatant, set in the heart of the organic like an artificial certainty, a soft and mute excrescence that didn’t even try to blend into the living — and that was precisely what made it unsettling.
It didn’t try to exist. It was simply there. Unmovable. Unexplainable. Like a verdict laid down without justification.
It was a wall, yes — but not a neutral wall, not a simple transitional surface.
It was a reflection.
Not of , exactly. Not of who I was at that precise mont. But of who I had been upon entering here. Of what I had carried the mont I crossed the threshold of the floor. The silhouette was there, frozen, static, embedded in the smooth surface like a mory imprinted on a sensitive material, not a mirror, not a returned illusion, but a reproduction — a displaced duplicate, etched into a living substance, too dense to be glass, too fluid to be tal.
It looked like . Yes. But with a slight delay. A subtle distortion.It still bore my entry fears, those nervous tensions I had tried to forget. It kept my hesitations, my initial doubts, those that had perhaps marked my flesh without my knowing. And it remained there, impassive, fixed in a ti that was no longer mine. It didn’t move, but it existed. That was the most disturbing part: it truly existed.
I approached, slowly, almost despite myself, drawn by that frozen silhouette the way one is drawn to a mistake of oneself that one cannot help but look at. And then... she opened her mouth.
No sound.
But the lips, yes — the lips moved.
Slowly. With an almost painful precision. As if each movent was a silent repetition of sothing essential. They ford words I could not hear, sounds that perhaps existed only for her, or that the wall itself absorbed before they were born. There was no cry. No complaint. Just that shift, that empty beat, between a silent language and my own mory, unable to grasp what she was trying to tell .
But that beat, that precise void... I knew it. It had existed in . Just before certain phrases. Just after certain silences.
What her lips said... I recognized it imdiately.Not like one recognizes a voice from the past, nor like recalling a too-fresh thought. No. It was deeper. More intimate. It was what I still refused to say to myself. Those phrases didn’t co from yesterday or today — they ca from an in-between, a silent place hidden within , a grey zone where I had pushed everything I hadn’t been able to face. They were made of stray fragnts of my own breath, stifled confessions cut short, repressed judgnts before they even took shape, unfinished words stopped mid-way — fragnts held in my throat on the previous floors, or perhaps long before, at thresholds I had never known how to na. And now... they ca back through her. Through that mute mouth offering them to without pronouncing them.
She didn’t speak. No sound ca from her mouth. But her lips, yes, continued to move slowly, forming words I couldn’t hear but could nonetheless understand — or sense, with that strange lucidity one can’t explain, as if my body itself recognized what it read without passing through thought. It wasn’t a voice. It was an intention. A presence. Sothing in the rhythm of the gestures, in the way each silent syllable ford on that other version of , transmitted the ssage directly. And what she said, I felt it. Viscerally.
— You don’t want to be seen...
— You refuse to exist in another’s gaze...
— You hate the idea that soone could love you despite what you carry...
These phrases weren’t spoken. But they still resonated, where the things we thought we had forgotten resonate. They didn’t co from her. They ca from .
It wasn’t her whispering them. It was , once, in another silence, one I hadn’t known how to hear.
I stepped back, an uncertain step, moved less by fear than by that deep reflex of rupture, that need to create distance in the face of sothing I recognized too well. And she stepped back too. Without delay. Without hesitation. Perfectly synchronized. Like a perfect double, not copied from my movents, but rooted in their very intention, as if she wasn’t imitating — no — but acting at the exact sa mont, because she was made of the sa impulse, the sa retreat. It wasn’t a copy. It was an embodied echo.
I took a sidestep, almost to defy her, to break the axis, shatter the mirror — and so did she. Exactly at the sa instant. Without the slightest delay. As if she wasn’t following , but already knew. As if she wasn’t imitating anything, but responding to sothing internal, buried, invisible — a twin movent inscribed in the sa flesh.
I tried to flee to the left — but the wall, instantly, beca smooth, uniform, as if it understood, as if the world itself refused that direction, cancelling the idea of passage before it could take form. So I turned to the right, ready to force the montum, but she... she followed. Without sound. Without surprise. Without the slightest lag. As an inevitability. As a consciousness resting on my back, determined never to leave , no matter which direction I pretended to choose.
She was .
Not my image. Not a frozen copy of my body nor an imitation of my gestures. No. She was the inside. The reverse. What I was still trying to bury beneath the silence, beneath the control, beneath that mute restraint that had accompanied since the early floors. She was made of what I repressed. And the more I kept silent, the more I hid behind that impassive facade I thought protective, the more she, slowly, quietly, spoke in my place. Not with words. But with her simple presence. With her lips moving soundlessly. With her synchronized gestures. With that gaze without eyes that knew better than I did. And it was unbearable. Unbearable because she didn’t destroy . She revealed. And that revelation — soft, slow, intimate — burned more than any attack ever could.
I struck the wall, breathless, nerves frayed, not even knowing whether I wanted to shake it or prove to myself that I was still there. And she, opposite, struck too. At the exact sa mont. Sa angle. Sa force. As if my rage flowed through her veins. As if she had been made to reflect it, contain it, extend it. I scread within, a soundless cry, a rage held in for far too long, a dull tear clawing at my chest — but she, she whispered aloud. Her lips moved slowly, almost tenderly, as if she were naming a truth I had always refused to hear. Words I had never dared to speak aloud. Sentences that had waited within , lurking for years, and now ca out... through her.
In that confrontation... I felt a fault line.
Not in her. No.
In .
A fine but deep fracture, like a forgotten crack resurfacing without noise. Because what she imposed on , that face-to-face without screams, without blows, without apparent violence... it wasn’t a punishnt. Nothing in her judged. Nothing punished. It was a restitution. A placing back in my hands of what I had placed too far away, too soon. She was giving back what I had fled, what I had silenced, what I had cast aside like a burden too hot to carry. She wasn’t breaking . She was stitching back to what I was.
What she was nding... wasn’t an identity. It was a wound.
It was a mirror, yes — but not one that returns an image.
A mirror of the unspoken.
A body made of my refusals.
A wall woven from my silences, patiently, layer after layer, over years, through floors, through fears, until it ford that smooth and mute surface now facing . She wasn’t there to stop . She was there to show . And if I wanted to continue... if I truly wanted to move forward, to cross that blurred threshold, to slip further into this world that now demanded more than just my presence... I would have to go through it. That wall. That body. That mory. I would have to pass through what I had fled.
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