✧ Stigma — Chapter XIV: “The Call” ✧

(Victorian Prose Translation)

The image of Masa running from him lingered in Eiji’s mind like the fading trail of a comet—brilliant for a moment, then swallowed by the night. What Masa had abandoned was not merely the great burden Eiji had hoped he might help him bear, but Eiji himself—left behind, unable to follow.

And yet Louis remained at his side, steadfast in his quiet loyalty. It only deepened Eiji’s shame. To expose all his frailty before another man, and then to be pitied for it— there was no humiliation more complete.

He wished to vanish, to dissolve into the night sky that stretched above the stadium roof.

It was over. Masa despised him now. He had lost his place in the world.

Night fell, and the festival roared with renewed fervour, but Eiji could not bring himself to join the revelry. He was a ghost among the living.

The vibration of his phone dragged him back into the realm of the present.

A call—from Masa.

He could not answer. He dared not.

Again and again the phone trembled in his hand.

He feared Masa’s anger, yet he longed—desperately—to speak, to apologise, to confess that he had been grateful for Masa’s help, but had felt somehow forbidden to say so.

For I am a man, he thought, and if I show weakness, I shall never again be able to lift my head. Before him—before Masa—I wished to be perfect. For if I ceased to shine…

He would leave me too.

The phone rang once more— and then, abruptly, the call ended.

He has grown weary of me. He has cast me aside.

In a surge of panic, Eiji blocked Masa’s number. If he could no longer remain by Masa’s side, then what use was such a connection? Better to sever it himself than to be abandoned.

But the moment he acted, terror seized him.

There was no return. His thoughts scattered like shattered glass.

The world collapsed with a deafening roar inside his skull.

“Let’s go! Come on!!”

The distant voice of the vocalist echoed across the grounds, the crowd’s thunderous cries rising like a storm tide that battered Eiji’s ears.

Stop… please… I cannot join them… Silence… I need silence… My head… it will break…

A violent wind tore through the hollow in his chest. His vision dimmed. Nausea surged. Pain cleaved his skull.

He retched, overcome.

In that moment, he stepped across the threshold of an unforgivable mistake.

Looking back now, he wondered if he should have let Masa sleep— let him believe it was still the third day, never waking him, never calling him forth.

But it was far too late.

He had awakened Masa. He had summoned him. And that single act had been the root of all calamity.

The wheel of fate had begun to turn, a vast whirlpool drawing them both toward its centre.

The distant thunder of the bass drum, the dancing riff of the bass guitar, all receded into nothingness.

Someone held him upright. Someone called his name.

The staircase warped beneath him. Why?

Was he being led? By whom?

By whom?

He no longer knew.

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