Adam did not choose sadness, nor did he choose indifference. His state was more like a heavy destiny that closed in on him from the inside.He could not distinguish what he was feeling. Sometimes he thought he was sad, then realized his sadness was just a habit, not a true sensation. He would get up in the morning, and it made no difference to him whether the sun was shining or hidden. Every day was like the other. Nothing mattered.When he remembered his mother's face, nothing stirred in his chest. As if it were an old picture seen by a stranger. He tried to force himself to cry, hoping that a single tear would make him feel he was still human. No tear came.He would spend hours sitting, not speaking, not moving. Watching his hands open and close as if they didn't belong to him.Sometimes he tried to think: What should I do? Should I take revenge? Should I kill myself? Then the thought would extinguish before it could form.Everything had lost its taste for him. If he died today, he wouldn't feel anything. If he lived a thousand years like this, he wouldn't feel anything.Even anger became a theoretical idea he no longer knew how to summon. Even his memories with her had turned into silent images that stirred no emotion inside him.He thought he would grieve until collapse, but he found himself unable to be sad, just as he was unable to feel joy.People told him: Be patient; time will heal you. But inside, he felt: With time, I will disappear even more.He began to feel that his very existence was a mistake. That he had no right to speak or move.His life before her death had been full of struggle, but at least it carried some meaning. Now there was no struggle, no meaning, not even hatred. Just a vast internal silence, like a black abyss swallowing everything.If someone asked him: What do you want? He wouldn't have an answer. Because he didn't want anything at all.He did not choose indifference. Nor did he choose this emptiness. It was a curse that had befallen him. Something that did not ask his permission to enter his heart. But today, it lived there, refusing to leave.He felt as if everything was happening to someone else named Adam, while he sat far away in a seat inside his mind, watching it all without any real connection.He would see his body move, see it get up to drink water, see it sit on the bed, see it touch his mother's remaining clothes... but he did not feel that this was himself.As if there was a transparent wall separating him from everything.Even his self no longer belonged to him.He was just a floating awareness, a silent observer unable to intervene.If someone came to hug him, he would watch the scene from behind this wall, as if the hug were meant for someone else.If he tried to get angry or scream, he would see himself open his mouth and move his hands, but inside he remained completely still, feeling nothing.He started to wonder: Am I still here? Or has my body remained while I am stuck in a place no one can see?This state made him wish he could feel anything... even pain. But he couldn't.He began to remember simple old days when he would get angry or happy over trivial things, and he felt as if that life belonged to someone who had lived before him and only left him the memories.He would look at his hands and wonder whether he had the ability to move them, or whether he was just watching them act on their own.Eating, drinking, sleeping... all became automatic rituals his body performed without any participation from his consciousness.Even when he thought about suicide, the thought was just an event he watched pass across a screen inside his head. It wasn't a real desire. He no longer knew whether he had any desire at all.He began to feel that even his own name had become strange. The word "Adam" had lost its meaning. As if it were a title for someone who had left long ago.If someone asked him: Where are you? He would not know how to answer.Because the truth that repeated in his head without end was:"I am not here. What is happening is not happening to me. I am just an eye watching."And with each passing day, this distance between him and himself grew larger... swallowing whatever was left of his sense that he was alive.At some point, he no longer even knew what depression was.He was not sad. He was not angry.Sometimes he would laugh... a hysterical laugh that resembled no known feeling.A laugh without any specific reason, as if something inside him exploded and he did not care to explain it.Sometimes he thought he hated everyone, then discovered he did not really hate them, because simply, he did not care.He would say to himself: If I hated them, that would mean I felt something, but I feel nothing.And here he began to realize he was stuck in an impossible equation:If he laughed, he did not know why he laughed.If he hated, he did not know whether he truly hated.If he felt emptiness, he did not know whether it was real or just a mask.He could no longer tell the difference between being emotional and being completely empty.In some moments, he was convinced he loved his hatred for people.In other moments, he was convinced that even this hatred was not real.His mind kept turning in a closed circle without end:Do I laugh because I am broken?Do I hate because I am afraid?Am I dead inside, or alive in a distorted way?He kept repeating the question in his head: Why don't I feel anything clear?And he had no answer.And with each new cycle of this thinking, he became more convinced that what he had reached was not depression... but something beyond it, something without a name or description.Something like absolute emptiness.He no longer slept well.He no longer woke up expecting anything.Every morning was like night.Time stopped being a series of hours and minutes, becoming merely a meaningless repetition.Sometimes he would sit on the chair for half a day, not moving, not thinking, not focusing his eyes on anything in particular.Then suddenly his lips would let out a short, sarcastic laugh, and then go quiet again.If you asked him why he laughed, he would not know.He felt that his mind had lost the ability to take a clear stance toward anything.If he tried to hate himself, he found no heat of hatred inside him.If he tried to love his memories, he felt no connection.If he tried to get angry, he found the anger would not come out.All he had was a state like a play in which he did not know whether he was the actor or the spectator.And sometimes he would whisper to himself in a low voice:"This is not sadness... not even despair... it is nothing. Nothing at all."He knew that this "nothing" was more dangerous than any other feeling because it gave him no chance to heal, not even to truly hurt.He had become just an existence that could not define itself.An existence that passed through the days like a shadow whose owner had vanished.A soft knock at the door.He slowly lifted his head, looking without curiosity.Carla Brown entered carrying a tray of food. She tried to smile, but she looked worried.She set the food in front of him and said in a calm tone:"Adam... why don't you come to school? Tomorrow... you will come. Okay?"He looked at her with eyes empty of any glimmer.He nodded slightly and said in a very low voice:"Okay."She looked at his face for a few moments, as if trying to read it, then sighed and left.
He remained sitting where he was.He did not move his hand toward the food.He kept staring at a spot on the table, waiting for something inside to wake up, any simple motive, any spark.But nothing came.Then he began thinking about himself:Am I really normal? Why did she think I was okay?Is this a real personality... or just a shell?Maybe I have a personality... but no one knows it.Maybe I am just a collection of empty faces.A face for people. A face for home. A face for the void.All faces that do not belong to me.And for the first time, a thought crossed his mind:Maybe what he was feeling was not depression, but something deeper...Something he could not even name or explain.Something that made him unable to know whether he wanted life or not.He closed his eyes and said to himself without a sound:"I am waiting... for something... anything... to move me."Adam sat in the silence, his head still lowered, his voice choking in his chest.A long moment passed before a new window opened in his mind... the idea of revenge.
Should I take revenge?Revenge on whom?The masked man?That mysterious being who suddenly appeared and swallowed my mother's life?
He slowly lifted his eyes toward the ceiling, as if searching for his mother's image in the darkness.He felt no warmth in his chest, no pain blazing in his heart.Even the thought of revenge seemed colorless.And yet...He began to wonder:
If I killed him... would I recover something?Would I feel something?Would I be able to say I did what I had to do?
He tried to imagine the masked man before him, but he saw only a featureless shadow.A shadow without a soul.A shadow that looked like himself... a void disguised as a human.
Then a sentence echoed in his mind, and he didn't know where it came from:"If I can't even feel sadness... do I have the right to dream of revenge?"
He sank deeper into his chair, his hands clenched on his knees, and his voice came out in a whisper:"But... if I do nothing... then there will be nothing at all."
And in that moment, he realized he didn't know if he wanted revenge... or just to feel something, anything... even if it was an illusion.His voice kept echoing in the empty room:"...Anything... even if it's an illusion."
Then, amid the emptiness, another thought crossed his mind...Mila.
His sister who had been kidnapped.Mila whom he had never understood.Mila whom he had only seen as a vague burden... and who had suddenly become the last thread tying him to his family.
Did he love her?He didn't know.Did he miss her?He didn't know.
But the idea that she too might remain captive in the hands of those...That he would leave her there, in the same shadows that had devoured his mother...That thought slipped into his chest like a cold thorn.
Maybe if he saved Mila, something would happen.Maybe he would see something in her eyes he didn't know.Maybe she would hate him...Maybe she would blame him...And maybe, just maybe, he would feel something resembling life.The day was heavy, and the light seeping through the windows seemed hesitant to touch his face.Adam Ethan, for the first time since the incident, put on his clothes and left the house.Not because he felt better.But because he did not want to remain in the same place where his soul had burned.
He reached the school without feeling the steps, as if the streets themselves had forgotten to greet him.He walked quietly through the corridors, carrying his bag like a burden with no purpose, and opened the classroom door.
Eyes turned toward him, some hesitant, some shocked, and some pretending not to care.But Neil was not there.The empty seat beside him looked strange... ominous.As if the world was whispering to him that Neil, in his own way, had not survived that night either.
Carla Brown was the first to move.
She smiled faintly, that smile that always seemed to know more than it said.She spoke in a warm voice that nevertheless carried firmness:
"Welcome back, Adam."
He slowly raised his eyes, then nodded silently, and went to his seat.
He sat down.He placed his hand on the desk.Carla looked at him for a few seconds before resuming the lesson.
But inside him, nothing resumed.There was only one voice echoing in his depths:
Maybe she would hate him...Maybe she would blame him...And maybe, just maybe, he would feel something resembling life.