.
Deeper and deeper into the lightless abyss of the ocean, yet strangely… I felt a peace I had never known in the world above. The crushing pressure of the water didn't feel like a weight; it felt like a familiar hand wrapping around my tired body. It wasn't suffocating; it was comforting. For the first time in my twenty years of existence, I wasn't resisting. I wasn't running from the shadows of my mind, and for once, I didn't have to pretend that I was okay.
She held me tighter.
Her arms closed around me with a strength that felt ancient, like the pull of the tides themselves. The moment our skin touched in that freezing darkness, something inside me began to unravel. It wasn't my physical body breaking apart, but the very essence of who I thought I was. My emotions leaked out first—bitterness, exhaustion, and a hollow longing that I had buried under layers of indifference.
Then came the memories.
Fragments of my childhood surfaced in the dark water, glowing with a ghostly, distorted light. I saw myself at six years old, standing alone in a crowded room, realization dawning that I was invisible even to those who were supposed to see me. I saw the faces of friends who turned into strangers the moment I was no longer useful. I realized then that I had never truly wanted to remember. Every memory I carried was a stone, each one heavy with the same crushing weight: loss, disappointment, and the quiet, agonizing suffering I had learned to camouflage behind a practiced smile.
I never hated the world, despite everything. But I never loved it either.
Love and hatred were expensive emotions—they both required attachment, a tether to the living. I had learned long ago that every tether was eventually cut, and every attachment led to a predictable betrayal. Everyone had left me behind, or so it felt. Or maybe—and this thought stung more than the salt in the water—maybe I had betrayed myself. I had spent so much time guarding my heart that I never tried to see the world through anyone else's eyes. I had become the architect of my own isolation.
To survive, I had built my own world. A silent, internal dreamscape where things moved according to my will. It wasn't that I sought happiness; I had given up on that long ago. I simply wanted control. In the real world, I lived only for the abstract concept of 'Tomorrow.' I was a hunter chasing a horizon that never drew closer, always believing—foolishly, desperately—that tomorrow would be the day the void inside me would finally fill up.
A lie. A beautiful, cruel, and necessary lie.
Tears slipped from my eyes, warm against the freezing sea, before dissolving into the vast salt of the ocean. I didn't even realize I was weeping until she pulled me closer, her hold tightening as if she could feel the literal fractures in my soul. And in that moment of absolute vulnerability, I smiled.
This is it, I thought. This is the end of the chase. If death was this warm embrace, if it was this final release from the burden of hope, then maybe this was the only happiness I was ever meant to find. It felt as if Death itself had grown tired of watching me suffer and had finally opened its arms to welcome me home. I didn't want to escape. I didn't want to pray for a miracle. I was done lying to myself.
But even as I surrendered, a small, stubborn spark deep within my chest refused to go out. That fragile, human instinct to keep going. That foolish, irrational desire to try one more time, even if I knew the outcome would be the same.
Suddenly—a jolt.
The absolute silence was shattered. Sound returned in a violent rush. Moments ago, there had been only the void; now, I could hear the shifting of the currents like a million silk ribbons tearing. I heard the distant, haunting songs of whales and the frantic movement of life. Fish swam past me in shimmering silver streaks—no, they swam through me. Their small, cold bodies brushed through my chest as if I were a ghost, a mere echo of a man that the ocean was slowly erasing.
The darkness around me began to bleed.
Colors I had no names for began to seep into the water—molten gold, bruised crimson, soft ethereal pink, and a blue so deep it felt like looking into the eyes of God. The light gathered, thickening into misty shapes. Figures emerged from the gloom. Dozens of them. They didn't have faces, but they had presence. Each one felt different, yet all were strangely familiar, like people I had met in dreams I had forgotten upon waking.
They touched me. Not with hands, but with emotions.
Every contact stirred a different storm inside my chest. Longing. Regret. A sudden, piercing hunger for the truth. A question echoed through the water, vibrating in my bones:
Does the world betray us… or do we betray ourselves first?
I didn't know the answer. But for the first time, the "Exhausted Ayaan" was replaced by a "Curious Ayaan." I wanted to know. I wanted the answer even if it meant traversing the Underworld to find it.
Then—the light began to dim.
The vibrant colors turned to grey. The figures retreated into the shadows. The warmth that had kept me alive in the freezing depths began to loosen.
She released me.
Her arms, once an unbreakable cage of comfort, slipped away. She began to drift backward, her form becoming translucent. She was smiling—a gentle, sad, and knowing smile that broke my heart all over again. I tried to reach for her. I wanted to scream, to ask why. Why was she leaving? Why, even in the afterlife, was I being abandoned?
But my lips were sealed by the weight of the sea. Only my thoughts screamed into the abyss.
Why? Why are you leaving me too?
She didn't answer with words. Her smile remained as she faded, a final flicker of light in the encroaching dark. One last brush of her fingers against my cheek, and then she was gone, swallowed by the infinite depths.
And as the darkness closed in once more, cold and absolute, a single thought echoed inside the empty hall of my mind:
Why does everyone leave me behind?
[Chapter 2 End]