The fourth staircase felt different. The previous three had been descents into others' truths, immersions in the pain I had inflicted. This one, however, felt like a descent into myself. The sadness for Valeria hadn't dissipated; it had settled at the bottom of my being like heavy, dark sediment. I was no longer a detached observer of my own life, coldly analyzing my mistakes. I was a mourner. Every step I took on the cold stone was a beat of a heart that had finally broken, and the echo of that beat was the name Valeria, over and over and over again.
The physical exertion of the climb was almost a relief, a welcome distraction from the torment of my own mind. The memory of her face in the final recollection—the sad calm of her goodbye—was seared into my eyelids. I relived that conversation with every step, but this time I rewrote my own lines. I asked for forgiveness. I asked about her day. I told her I saw her, that I finally saw her. They were the useless pleas of a ghost, echoes in an empty hallway. The feeling of sinking, more pronounced than ever, was no longer terrifying. It felt right. It was the punishment I deserved, to sink into the darkness until my weight equaled the pain I had caused.
When I crossed the archway at the end of the staircase, the change was of a desolate stillness. The opulent silence of the banquet hall was gone, replaced by a silence of abandonment.
I found myself in an endless landscape under a white, sunless sky, like a crumpled sheet of paper stretched to the horizon. It wasn't a sand desert or a grassy plain. It was a landfill. A landfill of objects.
As far as the eye could see, the gray ground was covered by a layer of broken, forgotten, discarded things. Millions of disparate objects formed an uneven terrain. I saw a mobile phone with a shattered screen, a child's shoe missing its pair, a paperback book with the cover torn off, a chipped coffee mug, a pile of letters tied with fraying twine. The air smelled of dust, old paper, and the faint, metallic scent of rust. It was the smell of an attic, of the back of a closet, of a box of memories no one had opened in thirty years.
My first thought, born of the pervasive sadness, was that this was a place for lost things. A purgatory for objects that once had a purpose. Perhaps this was the level of forgetting.
I began to walk, my feet making a depressing crunch over the rubbish of memory. There was no path, no direction. Just an infinite sea of discarded remnants. What was the goal here? To find something? To organize the chaos? The apathy I had felt after the school level returned, but tinged with my new grief. None of this mattered. None of this could compare to the open wound I carried within.
Then, I saw something familiar. Partially buried under a pile of yellowed newspapers, there was a manga volume, one from the Vagabond series. The cover, with Musashi's face, was worn. I recognized it instantly. It was volume 21. The one I had lent to Takeda in sophomore year of high school and he never returned.
A flicker of old, petty anger flared within me, a feeling almost comforting in its simplicity. Takeda. Always playing dumb. I knew he'd kept it on purpose. I knelt down and, purely by instinct, picked it up.
The moment my fingers touched the book's spine, two things happened simultaneously.
First, the memory didn't play like a film. Instead, I felt a pure surge of the emotion I had harbored for years. I felt the teenage indignation, the sense of injustice over a 90-peso possession. I felt the countless times I had replayed the incident in my head, nursing the grudge. I felt the dark, bitter pleasure of having a concrete reason to dislike Takeda, to label him a "thief" in my mind. It wasn't the memory of the event; it was the memory of the grudge.
Second, the book, which should have weighed a few hundred grams, became heavy as lead. A dense, dead weight that pulled my arm down. I gasped in surprise and tried to let go, but I couldn't. It was glued to the palm of my hand, as if an invisible force had fused it with my skin.
I looked at my hand, the book hanging from it like a shackle. And I understood.
This wasn't the landfill of forgotten things. It was my personal museum of scars. Every object here wasn't random trash; it was a grudge I had held. A resentment I had refused to let go of.
With growing dread, I began to walk again, dragging the hand weighed down by the manga. My gaze now scrutinized the debris with a new, terrible intent. And I started to see them everywhere.
There it was. A torn movie ticket for a horror film. The grudge I held against my friend Carlos for canceling at the last minute because his girlfriend was angry with him. A small resentment, the feeling of being a second choice. I walked closer, mesmerized. I didn't want to touch it, but a part of me, the part that still felt wronged, did. The scrap of paper adhered to my other hand, and with it, a similar weight, pulling my other arm down.
Now I walked like an ape, both arms heavy and dangling. The landscape of junk had become a minefield. Every step was a risk of finding another piece of my bitterness.
A rusty chain appeared out of nowhere and hooked onto my ankle. At the end of the chain, dragging on the ground, was a referee's whistle. The final of the high school soccer tournament. The referee who didn't call a clear penalty in the last minute. I lost the game. I held a grudge against a complete stranger for years, replaying the image of his impassive face in my mind. The chain pulled at my leg, forcing me to drag it.
Soon, I was a walking monstrosity, a golem made of resentment. A broken TV remote adhered to my back: the grudge against my sister for changing the channel during my favorite show. A cracked fountain pen stuck to my chest: the grudge against a teacher who accused me of cheating on a test. Small grudges. Big grudges. Justified and unjustified grudges. Grudges against friends, family, strangers, against the world. Each one added weight, shackled me, sank me deeper into the dust.
My stride became a painful shuffle. My back hunched under the load. I could barely lift my feet. I was being literally buried by the weight of my own unresolved anger. The sadness for Valeria was drowned out by this new physical and mental torment.
And then I saw the largest object. About twenty meters away, half-buried, was a bicycle frame. It was twisted, the blue metal dented and rusty, like the skeleton of a prehistoric animal. It radiated a bitter energy that eclipsed all other objects. This was a foundational grudge. A pillar in the museum of my bitterness.
I dragged myself towards it, the chains clanking, the objects stuck to me clashing against each other. It was a lifetime's work just to move. Finally, I reached it and extended a trembling hand to touch the cold, twisted metal.
The memory that hit me was so powerful it threw me to my knees.
I was seven years old. I was in a park in Mexico City, not the cherry blossom one, but one with dry earth and eucalyptus trees. My father, Haruki, was running behind me, holding the seat of my new bicycle as I pedaled in a panic.
"Don't let go, Dad!" I yelled.
"I won't let go. Keep pedaling. Look ahead," his voice said, firm, almost stern.
But then, I felt the wobble. I felt the exact moment his hands left the seat. Panic froze me. I swerved the handlebars frantically, lost my balance, and fell hard onto the asphalt. The pain in my knee was sharp and white. Blood welled up, mixing with the gravel.
I began to cry, more from humiliation and betrayal than from pain. My father approached, his face an unreadable mask.
"Get up," he said. Not "are you okay?" Not "poor thing." Just "get up."
"You let go!" I screamed at him, tears and snot streaming down my face. "You said you wouldn't! I hate you!"
In my memory, that had been the memory. Of a cold, almost cruel father who didn't care about my pain. A memory I used as a brick to build the wall between us during my adolescence.
But now, with the knowledge gained in the storm, I saw the scene again, overlaid. I felt his frustration, yes, but beneath it, I felt his fear. The fear that his son was too scared, too dependent. His push wasn't cruelty; it was a clumsy, desperate attempt to teach me to be strong, to force me to find my own balance because he wouldn't always be there to hold the seat. His "get up" wasn't an insensitive command; it was the only way he knew how to say "pain is temporary, the strength you gain from overcoming it is forever."
The bicycle frame adhered to my torso with a dull thud, and its weight was cataclysmic. It crushed me to the ground, knocking the air from my lungs, immobilized under the accumulated burden of a lifetime of bitterness.
Lying there, face against the dust of grudges, I understood. Grudges were a shield. A heavy, toxic shield. I held a grudge against my father because it was easier to be angry with him than to admit the truth: that I was afraid of falling, that I felt weak and humiliated, and that I blamed his "betrayal" so I wouldn't have to face my own fragility.
Every grudge was a story I told myself where I was the victim. Takeda wasn't a clueless teenager; he was a thief. Carlos wasn't a kid caught in a complicated relationship; he was a bad friend. The teacher wasn't stressed and overworked; she was out to get me. These stories protected me from more complex, painful truths about myself and about the world. They were a poison I drank, hoping it would hurt others.
The goal of this level wasn't to carry the weight. It was to let it go.
I looked at the hand glued to the manga. I thought of Takeda. I forced my mind to imagine his life, his own problems, his own teenage indifference. The book was just a book. My anger meant nothing to him; it had only corroded me.
"It doesn't matter anymore," I whispered into the stale air. "I forgive you."
There was no flash of light. But I felt the book's weight lessen. And with an effort, I could peel my fingers away. The manga fell to the ground and, as it touched, dissolved into fine gray dust.
A shackle had broken.
I looked at the mountain of junk still clinging to my body. Each object was a story I had to rewrite. Each chain was a forgiveness I had to offer, not just to others, but to myself. I had to forgive the scared child on the bicycle, the teenager who felt betrayed, the young man who felt invisible.
The task was monumental. I was on my knees, barely able to breathe, chained to my own past. I had to dismantle my museum of scars, and the heaviest piece, the grudge against my father, was still firmly adhered to me, waiting.