1.18. Parallel World – Part 3
Silence fell where words were no longer needed. Memories were trampled, petals crushed. I fell through parallel worlds, a man who never bowed fell beside me. Here, dignity stopped the fall.
If you’d like to begin from the first chapter, 1.18. Parallel World – Part 1
and Parallel World - Part 2 are here.
I. The Room Where Words Were No Longer Needed
Silence settled over the meeting room.
It was not the kind of silence created by people choosing not to speak,
but the kind in which words themselves were no longer required.
On the table lay a pale-blue notebook.
At its centre, a bluebird.
Beneath it, white hydrangeas.
I moved my left hand slowly, the ring finger lighter than before,
and traced the petal of a hydrangea with my index finger.
There was no softness beneath my touch.
It felt like the notebook's surface itself.
I had returned to reality.
It was my husband who had taken the beer from the refrigerator,
gripped the opener and cracked it open.
It was I who had earned the money to buy that beer,
and who had washed the glass.
Something hot rose inside me.
The white hydrangeas blurred.
The elderly mediator stood up and left the room
to speak with my daughter in the adjoining space.
II. What Had Been Trampled
From far away, I could hear the interpreter and my former husband speaking Czech.
Once again, I was standing among withered petals.
I could no longer feel my feet.
I remembered the final scene of a film I had once seen, Kama Sutra.
A tragedy where love and power collide.
A beautifully adorned elephant steps forward,
crushing the man the heroine loves beneath its feet.
At the moment, her love is destroyed,
she removes the red mark painted on her forehead,
quietly wiping it away with the edge of her Sárí.
The withered hydrangea petals around me
looked as though they, too, had been trampled.
I could almost see the elephant’s back disappearing into the distance.
Beneath the crushed petals lay memories.
A first kiss beneath cherry blossoms.
The exhilaration of the wedding.
The happiness of raising our daughter together.
As the heroine had done,
I lifted my left hand and wiped away the mark
that must once have existed on my own forehead.
The moment I did, the ground gave way.
I began to fall,
carrying the memories of my marriage with me into the earth.
III. Free Fall
The elderly mediator returned.
He told us that, in the other room,
our daughter had said she wanted to live with her father.
Her choice pressed down on the accelerator of my fall.
I dropped rapidly.
Memories, elephants, petals—everything receded into the distance.
We had been living in different parallel worlds.
Some worlds overlapped more easily than mine.
For a brief instant, I thought:
perhaps I should endure everything.
If it meant not living apart from my daughter,
perhaps I should return to that marriage once more.
IV. The Transaction
My dog’s face appeared in my mind.
About a month earlier,
when I had gone back to the house to collect what I needed,
the subject had come up by chance.
He said that if I wanted to return,
I should get rid of the dog that dirtied the floors.
My blood rushed to my head.
We had two cats as well.
He liked cats.
I answered immediately.
That was impossible.
As we parted, he said,
“You care more about the dog than your family.”
The words fell from above, collapsing around me.
Now, as I fell,
I found myself weighing my daughter against my dog.
Which one was heavier?
Which one fell faster?
As I descended, I watched
my daughter, my dog, and his words
fall at different speeds.
What would I have to let go of
to slow my fall, even slightly?
V. The One Who Fell at the Same Speed
That was when an elderly man appeared.
He was about the same age as the mediator,
wearing a subdued kimono steeped in quiet restraint.
He was falling beside me,
at exactly the same speed.
Though he was falling,
his movements were perfectly composed.
Still.
Unshaken.
Simply there.
It was Sen no Rikyū.
He was not a hero who defied power.
Nor a man who shouted righteousness aloud.
He was someone who never bent
his sense of beauty or his way of being.
In his later years, his relationship with his lord had deteriorated,
and he was ultimately ordered to commit ritual suicide.
As we fell, Rikyū spoke.
“There are things that can be protected by bowing one’s head,
and things that cannot.”
It was one of his well-known words.
He did not refuse to apologise.
Nor was he unable to do so.
Because he understood bowing better than anyone,
he knew the moment when one must not bow.
Power is reassured when others lower their heads.
But beauty cannot survive inside a bowed head.
He did not fight.
He made no claims.
He simply left his way of being exactly as it was.
The path of lowering one’s head
would have meant trampling oneself.
So he did not take that path.
Beside me, Rikyū continued to fall—
quiet, unresisting,
and dignified.
VI. A Single Drop of Dew
Then, the falling petals formed his death poem.
きょう落つる 露ひとしづく 和泉の津 わたのはらにて 一人遊ばむ
Today I fall,
like a single drop of dew.
At Izumi’s shore,
upon the vast sea,
I will play alone.
He did not resist falling.
Izumi’s shore.
The presence of vast water
Only the words to play alone
fell slowly,
strangely light.
I met Rikyū’s gaze as we fell together.
“Pursue beauty.
Keep your dignity.
And play alone.”
At that moment, the fall stopped.
It was not defeat,
but the point beyond which
one must not lower one’s head any further.
And then, the meeting ended.
I turned the pale-blue notebook.
There, I wrote down Rikyū’s words.
To be continued to 1.19.Between Falling and Landing
Afterword
This chapter was written from a place where my feet had not yet touched the ground.
I was no longer falling, but I had not learned how to land.
Writing it again now, years later, I can see how much of it was about waiting
for a different kind of gravity to appear.
In the next chapter, the story moves forward not through answers,
but through companionship, slowness, and the quiet work of learning
how to stand without a ring.
Thank you for staying with me here, and….
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year 2026
It’s a little late, but still heartfelt.
Thank you for reading and for staying with this story until here.
I hope your Christmas holidays bring you rest, quiet moments,
and whatever kind of light you need right now.
With gratitude,
and warm wishes for the year ahead.
yukocoolsummer