To Sisyphus's Stone

My eyelids were heavy, a downward pull, but the car was shaking, a continuous rocking that finally dragged me out, dragged me into this greyish-white fog. I was sitting, and I could feel the leather seat beneath me breathing with the rise and fall of the vehicle. Around me were the blurred silhouettes of people in school uniforms, their voices a buzzing drone, as if coming through a layer of water. But my world was silent. There was only me. I took out my phone, the white light of the screen illuminating a small patch of air in front of my face. I wanted to find someone, anyone, to say something, just to prove I existed, but the names slid past, and not one of them made me stop. I opened a chat window, my fingers stiffly tapping out the letters, H-E-L-L-O. But on the screen, autocorrect twisted it into "Hollow." I deleted it, tried again. "Helium." Even worse. It was as if the phone itself was mocking me, as if language was refusing to obey. Frustrated, I stuffed the phone back into my pocket. And in that vacuum of disconnection from the world, I heard your voice.

“Hey.”

I looked up, and then the whole world was nothing but you. You were just sitting there, next to me, as if you’d been there from the very beginning. I looked into your eyes, and at that moment, there was only one thought in my head, an absurd, baseless thought: I know you. I must have seen you somewhere before. A current of heat started from my heart, burning its way through my veins to the tips of my ears. I could feel the scalding heat on my cheeks. You looked at me, your gaze so direct it seemed to pierce through my awkwardness and see the lonely child inside me, the one who was about to grow moldy from solitude. The corners of your lips curved up. “The way you were looking at your phone,” you said, “it was like you were trying to burn a hole through it.”

I couldn’t answer. My throat felt like it was being squeezed by an invisible hand; all words became meaningless syllables. And you, you were simply amused by how silly I looked.

So you started talking. You talked about the fog, about this road, about all sorts of fantastical nonsense I’d never imagined I could talk about with someone else. You told me about all the dreams you had from one night to the next, told me how in your dreams you became a butterfly and found every single flower. You showed me the horses of mist and the path of whales from your journal. You described to me the golden sunsets you had seen, washing over the beaches again and again, the endless streets lined with plane trees, and the alleys where irises bloomed only in your memory. You said your greatest wish was to board a galactic train that journeyed past all things but never stopped. And somehow, I could effortlessly keep up. The thoughts coiled in my mind, the ones I considered garbage, once they came out of my mouth, you would catch them, toss them back, and they would become sparkling things. The feeling was too good, so good it was unreal, like walking on clouds—every step was joyful, and with every step, I was afraid I would fall.

When you asked me my name, my heart tightened. A stubborn, self-protective cunning made me turn my head to the vacant, greyish-white outside the window and say, “I’m Sisyphus.” I waited for your confusion, but you answered almost without a second’s pause, smiling, “Then I’m your stone.” Stone. The word dropped into my brain, heavy, stunning me. I whipped my head back to look at you, and you just winked at me, a look of triumphant understanding that made all my defenses melt away. We started playing this foolish, perfect game. You eagerly told me to ask who you were.

I asked with a helpless sigh. You put your hands on your hips, lifted your chin, and declared, “I am a Roman captain!”

“I’m the slave who rows your oars,” I answered without hesitation.

“Then what if I’m an evil robot who destroys the world?” you asked, pouting, unwilling to give up.

“I’m the mad scientist who created you.”

It felt as though in countless parallel worlds and timelines, we were impatiently entangled with each other. We laughed until we were doubled over, until tears streamed down our faces. How long had it been since I had laughed like that? The feeling of expelling all the heavy, dull air from my chest at once left me dizzy. But at the very peak of that laughter, a sudden chill shot up my spine, without any warning. I looked at your cheeks, flushed from laughing, at your eyes, shining like stars, and a thought suddenly seized me: This happiness is stolen. It doesn’t belong to me. In the next second, it will vanish.

So I didn’t dare to speak anymore. I lowered my head, avoiding your gaze, pretending to be deeply interested in my own shoelaces. You said a few more things, but I just mumbled in response. The flowing, happy particles in the air seemed to freeze, becoming cold and heavy. I heard you humph softly and say, “So boring.” Then there was silence. A silence that pricked me like needles. I knew it. Once again, I had personally pushed away the warmth I had finally found. The bus stopped. We got off. You walked ahead, and I followed a few paces behind, like an abandoned shadow. I stared at the back of your head, your hair like a distant, unextinguishable flame in the fog. I wanted so badly to call out to you. Just when I thought everything would end in my usual, clumsy way, you stopped, turned around, and looked straight at me. For a few seconds of silence, your face was expressionless, and it almost made me suffocate. Then, the corners of your lips began to lift, slowly, slowly, and that bright, all-melting smile returned to your face. You raised your eyebrows and said to me, “Tomorrow, want to sit together again?”

In that instant, I felt like a prisoner sentenced to death who had suddenly been pardoned. An immense joy made it impossible for me to think. I could only nod vigorously, again and again, like an idiot. You smiled, satisfied, turned, and walked away, leaving me standing there alone, my heart thumping wildly in my chest, filled with the relief of a survivor, and a deeper fear of the “tomorrow” that had been promised.

The next day, we really did sit together, in a corner of the last row of the classroom, a corner blessed by both sunlight and dust. For that entire day, my world shrank to the confines of the single desk between us. The teacher droned on at the front, the syllables a meaningless lullaby. The clouds drifted past the window, the leaves swayed, the other students whispered—everything else became a blurry backdrop, like the out-of-focus background in an old film, and the only point of focus was you. The way you listened to the lecture with your chin in your hand, the way you secretly drew strange little figures in your notebook out of boredom, the way you turned your head to wink at me—every action, every subtle expression, I greedily, almost desperately, took in and committed to memory. I traced your outline in my mind, from the tips of your hair to the slight curve of your lips, to the light that danced in your eyes. I tried to use all my concentration to construct an absolutely real you, one who wouldn't disappear just because I blinked. Your happiness was so real, so infectious, like an effervescent vitamin C tablet dropped into water, fizzing with delightful bubbles, making me temporarily forget where I was, forget the black vortex of “loss” that was ever-present in my heart.

In the afternoon, when the sunlight was at its best, we skipped the most boring class and sat side by side at the top of the bleachers. You suddenly grew quiet, no longer talking, just looking at the soccer field in the distance. The wind lifted a few strands of your hair, brushing them against your cheek. After a long time, you turned to look at me. Your gaze was no longer its usual playful and nimble self, but like a calm, deep sea dyed by the sunset. “Sisyphus,” you asked, “is something on your mind? Since yesterday, I feel like you’re always afraid of something.” Your voice was soft, yet like a scalpel, it cut through my avoidance and pretense. I wanted to deny it, to laugh it off as I usually would, but looking into your eyes, I couldn’t tell a single lie. So I began to speak. I don’t know what gave me the courage. Maybe your gaze was too sincere, or maybe my subconscious felt that if I didn’t say it now, I might never get another chance. I began to talk, to talk about the corners of my heart I had buried so deep I was ashamed to even touch them myself, the feelings that, had others heard them, would have been met with pity or disdain, followed by some polite, meaningless platitudes—memories of loneliness, of being misunderstood, of reaching out time and again only to grasp at cold air. I spoke incoherently, tumbling over my words, like I was dumping out a pile of moldy garbage that couldn't see the light of day. But you just listened quietly, without interrupting, without judging. There was no pity in your eyes, only a pure, gentle understanding, as if you understood every word I said—as if you had lived it too, as if you were me.

When I finally stopped, I felt completely hollowed out, as if all the bones that supported and disguised me had been removed, leaving only a puddle of mud. I slumped against the cold steps, not daring to look at you, just staring at the dust being stirred by the wind on the ground. Then, I heard you sigh softly. The sigh was long and light, yet it landed on my heart with weight. I looked up and saw that you had turned your gaze to the empty sky in the distance.

“I…” you began, your voice lower than ever before, laced with a drifting, hollow quality, as if from the depths of memory, “also used to feel… like the whole world couldn’t understand what I was saying. Not that they couldn’t hear, but that they couldn’t understand.” You seemed to be choosing your words carefully, each one spoken slowly. “That feeling… do you know it? It’s like you’re not actually living in this world, but in a giant, transparent glass dome pressed right up against it.”

You weren’t looking at me, still gazing into the distance, as if speaking to me, and at the same time, to another soul inside you. “You can see everything outside. People are walking, talking, hugging, laughing. The sun shines on them, the rain falls on them. Everything is so vivid, the colors so bright. You’re just a wall away, and you think you’re with them. But you’re not.” Your voice grew softer. “The sound doesn’t get in, or rather, it’s distorted by the time it does, becoming a vague drone. You try to talk to them, you even scream inside, scream until your lungs are empty, you see your palms beating against the dome wall, turning red, but the people outside just walk past you. Maybe someone glances at you, but their gaze passes right through you. They can’t see you, can’t hear you. They can only see a blurry figure, a strange, quiet shadow.”

I felt myself being pulled back into countless moments just like that—the bone-deep loneliness I felt in bustling crowds, the urge to scream amidst peals of laughter, the desperation of reaching out only to grasp at nothing. I felt the invisible, cold glass that had encased me my whole life begin to crack because of your words.

“You can only watch them,” a barely perceptible tremble entered your voice, “watch them laugh. Sometimes, just so you don’t seem so out of place, you learn to copy them, to pull your lips into a smile. But you know it’s fake. It’s plastered on your face, but it can’t warm your heart. You’re just an outsider, a superfluous, pale shadow, futilely imitating the traces of life in someone else’s world.”

I felt the surprise and desolation of having my soul peeled open and precisely identified by another. The glass dome that encased me shattered with a “crack” at your words. For the first time, the first time in my entire life, the wind from the outside world truly blew against my naked soul. The feeling was both the ecstasy of rebirth and the sharp pain of being seen, of having nowhere left to hide. I shot upright, like a drowning man taking his first breath of air. I looked at you, wanting to say something, wanting to tell you “me too,” wanting to tell you I understood every word you said, but I found I had lost my voice. My choked throat couldn't utter a single word.

You finally brought your gaze back from the distance and turned to look at me. There was a thin film of moisture in your eyes, making your usually bright smile seem especially soft and fragile now. That smile held both the relief of a sky after a storm and the sorrow of two of a kind recognizing each other. You slowly reached out your hand and with your cool fingertips, gently touched the back of my hand.

I was almost convinced that you were real, that this connection was real. It was no longer an ethereal dream, but the resonance of two broken souls in the wilderness of the universe, identifying the very same scars on each other—a resonance so real it brought tears to my eyes. And precisely because of this, if this truly was reality, then the possibility of losing it would become more unbearable than death, more unbearable than eternal loneliness.

It was from that very moment, from the fleeting touch of your fingertips that was yet seared onto the back of my hand like an eternity, that the world around me began to fray at the edges, like an old television with a bad signal. The outlines of all things started to tremble slightly. The edges of the desks, the blurred faces of the students in the distance, the swaying of the leaves outside the window—everything began to lose its solid, physical properties, becoming like reflections in water, ready to disperse with the slightest touch. Sounds, too, seemed to come from underwater, muffled and indistinct, carrying a dizzying echo. I looked at you in fear, a fear that gripped my heart like a cold hand. I was terrified that your outline would also begin to blur, terrified that in the next second you would be blown away by a gust of wind, just like these trembling phantoms.

I needed an anchor. I couldn't rely on questions anymore, not on that foolish logic. I needed physical proof, something I could hold in my hand to prove that you, that this moment, was real. My gaze fell on your hand, the very one that had just touched mine. Its shape, the texture of the skin, the curve of the nails—in that instant, it was the only real thing in my entire crumbling world. I practically fumbled as I rummaged through my backpack, pulling out a pen and a small notebook, and held them out to you.

“Can… can you… write something for me?” I said, my words broken.

You took the notebook, puzzled, but you still nodded, looking at me gently, waiting for me to continue.

“Write my name,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

This name, which seemed to hold a kind of magic when you spoke it. I watched you, watched you lower your head, hold the pen, and carefully, stroke by stroke, write on the fresh page. In that moment, the entire trembling world seemed to stabilize because of your focused action. You finished and handed the notebook back to me. I took a deep breath, like a prisoner awaiting his sentence, and accepted it.

I saw it. My name, lying quietly on the paper. It was unmistakable, your handwriting, clear, with a touch of adorable innocence. I let out a long sigh of relief, a massive wave of post-disaster warmth enveloping me. It was real. The handwriting was real, the feel of the paper was real, and you were real. I almost wanted to tear out the page and swallow it, to make it a part of my body. I greedily stared at the two words, wanting to engrave their image into my mind forever.

But just then, I noticed something was wrong. The strokes of my name… they seemed to be moving. They wriggled on the paper like a living, black insect trying to escape. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. I blinked hard and brought the notebook closer, trying to see more clearly. However, the harder I tried to look, the faster the words dissolved. They were like a drop of thick ink falling into clear water, the edges rapidly beginning to bleed, to blur, to twist, until they had completely transformed into a meaningless, wet, blackish-grey smudge. Time seemed to stop. Sound vanished. Color faded. I slowly closed the notebook and put it away, my movements slow and stiff.

I slowly lifted my head and looked at you. You were still sitting there, looking at me with concern, completely unaware of the catastrophic dissolution that had just occurred before my eyes. You were still so real, so beautiful, like an illusion that could never be broken. I looked into your eyes, saw the worry, the confusion, and, unwilling to give up, I asked a question, a question I myself found cruel. My voice was calm, as calm as a frozen lake. “Before… before we first met on the school bus, where did we come from?”

The moment the question left my lips, I saw the smile on your face freeze. You tilted your head slightly, as if trying to understand a sentence made of an alien language you’d never heard before. The light in your eyes flickered and grew hazy. You didn’t answer, just looked at me, and your gaze seemed to ask me, is that a question that needs an answer? “Where we come from?”… what does that mean? Haven’t we… always just been here?

You didn’t speak those words, but I read it all clearly in your growing confusion. You had no past. Neither of us had any history prior to this meeting. We were like two characters who had appeared out of thin air in the seats of a school bus, programmed to meet, to talk, to be drawn to each other. Your silence was more convincing than any absurd answer. It told me, gently yet with immense cruelty, that the backdrop of this dream ended at the windows of the school bus. Beyond that lay only a void.

I watched your brow furrow as you tried to find an answer for me, and a huge, unspeakable sorrow welled up inside me. This sorrow wasn’t for myself, but for you. I bit my lip, hard, until the metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. I couldn’t ask anymore. I absolutely could not. To keep asking would be like forcing a person with no legs to stand up and walk; it would only make you, by being unable to answer my question, realize your own… incompleteness, and then, like the vanished ink on the paper, dissolve before my very eyes. I couldn’t let you disappear. It felt as if I’d been thrown into a vacuum of ice, surrounded by an absolute, suffocating silence. I didn't need to ask any more questions. This world couldn't even bear the simplest mark of my own identity. It was telling me in a gentle and absolute way: I am fake, and you are fake—nothing more than a projection of my subconscious—and this self-important resonance between us is nothing but a glitch in some electrical signals. This is a dream. The thought was no longer a guess, no longer a fear, but a fact that had already happened, irrefutable and searingly hot, like a branding iron.

I don’t know how we left the school, or how we walked the road to your house. That part of my memory is a blank, like a burnt-out film reel, because all of my mind, all of my energy, was focused on just one thing—pretending. I pretended I still reacted to your jokes, pretended I was curious about your questions. I pretended I was still the clumsy, happy Sisyphus who met you on the school bus. And you, you also acted as if nothing had happened, trying your best to cheer me up. The more you did, the grander and more desolate the funeral in my heart became. I even felt myself growing lighter, my consciousness like a leaking balloon, wobbling upwards, about to detach from this dream. I could feel the weight of my own body in the real world, feel the light from another world seeping through the cracks in my bedroom curtains. No. I screamed in my heart. I can’t wake up. I used all my strength to drive the anchor of my consciousness firmly into you—into your smile, into the vivid life in the corners of your eyes when you spoke. And then, the feeling of being pulled upwards disappeared. I had succeeded. I had stayed. The price was a deeper exhaustion, a complete depletion. You couldn’t sense any of this. You just naturally took my hand and said, “Come home with me.”

Your home, like you, carried an unreal, perfectly calibrated warmth. You said you needed to change and asked me to wait for you in the bathroom. The reason was strange, but I didn’t think too much about it, just nodded. When you disappeared behind the door, I stood alone in that small space, and a strange sense of relief seized me. I could finally stop pretending. I began, like a detective—no, like a drowning man—to frantically search for evidence that could prove all of this was real. The tiles on the wall; I reached out to touch them. The cold, rough texture was so real it made me tremble. I even pressed my face against it, trying to feel its hardness with my cheek. I closed my eyes and told myself, this is real, the wall is real. The rinsing cup on the sink, with a silly-looking cartoon duck printed on it, a trace of toothpaste residue on the rim. I picked it up and sniffed it; a faint minty smell. My hope, like a seedling stubbornly pushing its way out of the ruins, began to grow wildly. I took out my phone, my fingers trembling as I opened the notepad. I could type. The words appeared clearly on the screen, “You are real.” I was ecstatic. I switched to the chat window and sent you a message: “Are you almost ready?” It sent successfully. In that moment, I almost wept with joy. This was reality. This had to be reality.

But that seedling of hope needed one final, and most cruel, watering to see if it could grow into a towering tree. I looked at the clean, white toilet, and an absurd, hysterical thought popped into my head. If touch is real, and smell is real, and sight is real, then what about taste? Taste is the most primitive, the most honest of the senses. I knelt down, like a devout believer, like a desperate gambler, lifted the toilet seat, stuck out my tongue, and licked it. Time seemed to freeze. My tongue touched the ceramic surface, but what it reported back to me was a pure, terrifying void. No taste. There was no taste at all. Not the coldness and slight astringency of ceramic, not the faint metallic taste of water, not the possible residue of cleaning fluid. Nothing. It was as if my tongue had lost all function, licking a piece of non-existent data. I licked it again and again, like a madman, but the result was the same. The hope that was about to grow into a towering tree was instantly corroded by this acid rain of nothingness, rotted all the way to the roots.

Just as I knelt on the floor, my body trembling uncontrollably from despair, my phone rang. It was you. I answered, and your voice came through, asking me to stick my head out of the bathroom window. I did as you said and saw you, also leaning out of your room’s window. You were wearing a simple white shirt, smiling at me, the sun shining on your face. Your smile was as bright as ever. But, from behind that bright smile, I saw it clearly—a trace of sorrow you’d never shown before, a sorrow so deep it could almost drown me. I knew. You knew everything. Maybe you knew from the beginning, or maybe you realized it at the same moment I did. My brain began to race, the fears about existence I had suppressed in my deepest corners now breaking free like caged beasts. How could you know you were living in someone else’s dream? Could there be a crueler truth—for a self-aware individual, a soul, to discover they are merely a projection in another’s dream? I couldn’t accept it. I don’t know how you could digest that fact and still manage to smile at me.

I looked at you, at the smile you were struggling to maintain, and my heart was seized by an immense emotion, a mixture of pity and fear. Is this how it ends? What was it all, then? An elaborate illusion? A random firing of synapses? A self-generated placebo to ease the pain of loneliness? No. I refuse to accept it. That resonance was real. The shiver of having one’s soul precisely identified by another was real. The unprecedented joy of being truly seen was also real. If the feelings are real, why must their source be false? It’s not fair. It’s the most malicious, cosmic joke.

Is it true that a self can only grasp itself in the reflection of another self? Does a person truly need the gaze of another to confirm they are not just a blurry shadow, to anchor their own existence? If so, the price for that gaze is far too high. For someone like me, the appearance of such a gaze is a one-in-a-million luxury, a miracle I would only dare to wish for in a dream. And now, that miracle was telling me in the cruelest way possible that it was fabricated from my own longing.

So, must I give up? Must I admit this was all self-deception, then return to the suffocating reality that envelops me, and endure an eternal loneliness magnified countless times by this encounter? If all of this was false, then what about the love, the joy, the sorrow, the pain, the happiness I thought I had… all the feelings stirred up by this encounter that made me feel truly alive, what were they? Your warm tears, the breath from your nose, your soft sighs—would they too dissolve without a sound, like snowflakes, when I wake up? No, maybe they aren't even snowflakes. Maybe they were just my own delusion, maybe they never existed at all. Just a self-amusing chemical reaction between my own nerve cells. Like the toilet I licked—it only had a shell, no taste, no properties, empty inside. Are my feelings, my connection, my sleepless nights, my heartache, also just a gorgeous, empty shell?!

I looked at you. You were still smiling at me, but your eyes grew sadder and sadder, as if you could hear the silent, hysterical roar inside my head. You looked at me, struggling to hold that smile, and then you finally spoke, your voice drifting across the air. You said, “I have to move house.”

Move house. I listened to the words, chewing on them in my mind. This was the closing of a world. How do people in dreams make their exit? They don’t die, they just “move house,” move to a “new home” made of nothingness, a place I can never find again. You saw my silence, and tried to make your tone sound lighter. “But let’s get something to eat first, I’m hungry,” you said. We went downstairs together, walking through the familiar, yet now incredibly strange, hallway. The air was cool, and it was so quiet we could hear each other’s heartbeats.

At a turn in the stairs, you suddenly stopped, then slowly turned to look at me. Your gaze was quiet and silent. A few steps separated us, as did a world that was about to be closed forever. You wanted to say something, I knew, but how could you say it? How does a dream say goodbye to its dreamer? You just furrowed your brow slightly, turned back, but after taking just one step, you stopped again, and slowly turned back around. I watched you silently, watched this futile, lingering hesitation. You turned to go once more, took two steps down, and stopped again. With an almost imperceptible motion, you turned sideways, the corner of your eye casting a quiet gaze into mine. The immense sorrow in my heart settled into an almost serene tenderness. I understood.

You had turned back three times, and my face was already streaked with tears. I couldn’t imagine that your sorrow and reluctance were fabricated illusions. A puppet? No, you were not. A pure puppet, a philosophical zombie, would not show such knowing, mirrored sadness when I pierced the rules of the dream. That sadness was your own, not something I made you feel. So what were you? Was it possible that my consciousness, that my subconscious soil, made overly fertile, even starting to rot from loneliness, had unintentionally given rise to a new consciousness? Had my brain become a chaotic petri dish, where in some unknown corner, a brand new, independent, albeit temporary, “you” was born? Like a singularity after the Big Bang, like an unexpected intelligence emerging from a piece of code after billions of runs? I am not your master. I am only your universe, your vessel, and you are the only one in this universe who has come alive, who would look up at the stars, who would contemplate your own fate.

You stood sideways, silent. It felt like I knew the answer, and yet I knew nothing at all. I felt like I only existed when you looked at me. I needed you to look at me to feel my own heartbeat. Your expression was confused, and also sad. Was I sad for you, or for myself? I didn't know. I knew nothing. I just felt tired, and cold. The whole world was receding from me. Only you were still here, standing clearly before me, but I also knew that you were about to leave.

“Can you…” I heard my voice, faint and drifting in the narrow hallway, “write my name.”

You didn’t answer, just nodded silently. You turned your back, took out a small piece of paper, a pen, and in the dim light, stroke by stroke, with immense care and slowness, you wrote. After you finished, you looked down at it for a long time, your fingers gently twisting the corner of the paper. Finally, you turned around and handed it to me. I took it, clutching it tightly in my hand. It was the only thing I had left to hold onto.

You looked at me one last time. All the sorrow in your eyes had dissolved, leaving only a pure clarity. Then, you turned, and step by step, you disappeared at the end of the stairs. I stood there for a long, long time, until I could no longer feel any trace of you. Only then did I slowly unfold the paper in my hand. My name wasn't on it. There were only three words, and next to them, a crudely drawn smiley face.

“Don’t forget.”

Will I forget? I don't know. I only remember that you are my stone, and I am your Sisyphus. This I must believe. This I must imagine. I looked at the three words and smiled without a sound. Then the tears fell, drop after drop, hitting the paper, slowly smudging the crudely drawn smile.