The light wasn't aimed at her alone,
yet she was the only thing anyone could see.
Crisita stood before the microphone, her red hair glowing like an old wound that never healed, her black dress holding her the way secrets do—tight and unspoken. She didn't start singing right away.
She laughed.
A short laugh. Soft.
A laugh that made some people smile, and others feel uneasy for no clear reason.
She said lightly,
"You know what makes me laugh the most??
That you actually believe the person on stage is always stronger than you."
The audience laughed.
She laughed too—but her left eye didn't join.
When she finally began to sing, her voice was warm in an unsettling way. As if she wasn't singing to be heard, but to empty something that had been lodged in her chest for years. The lyrics weren't sad—on the contrary, they were filled with sharp humor, wordplay, gentle mockery of love and heartbreak.
The audience applauded. Some laughed out loud.
But Crisita…
was counting her breaths.
One.
Two.
Three.
If she missed the count, she knew the episode was close.
Between verses, she leaned toward the microphone and whispered,
"If I laugh too much, it doesn't mean I'm happy…
sometimes it just means I survived today."
No one understood the sentence.
That was intentional.
At the end of the song, she bowed with perfect discipline. The applause was warm, long, sincere.
But when she lifted her head, she didn't look for the crowd—
she searched for an empty seat in the third row.
She was always looking for it.
And no one knew why.
Backstage, she removed her smile first, then her heels, then her voice. She sat in front of the mirror, stared at her reflection, raised an eyebrow and said to herself with dry sarcasm,
"Well done, Crisita. They still love you… and no one noticed how scared you are."
She laughed again.
A more beautiful laugh than before.
But this time, there was no one to applaud.
On the table beside her lay a small notebook, filled with jokes never told, crossed-out sentences, and names she could no longer remember when they entered her life—or when they left it.
On the last page, a single line was written in a trembling hand:
"Do I laugh because its funny?… or because I'm sick?"
She closed the notebook.
Turned off the light.
And left the stage behind her, as she did every night,
not knowing whether she would return tomorrow to sing…
or to disappear.