Overnight••√•• a foreign omega”

chapitre : 3

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Julien's car sped through the night, swallowing the miles of asphalt gleaming under the streetlights. Every turn, every red light felt to Smith like a countdown to his own judgment. The silence inside the vehicle was heavy, thick as poisoned honey. He watched the world scroll past the window, this world that was not his. The hand-holding couples, the laughter spilling from a bar, the simple normality of existence suddenly seemed unbearably violent. It was a cruel demonstration of everything he had ever desired and everything he was about to flee.

Julien had tried once or twice to break the ice with nervous jokes, but Smith's vacant gaze, fixed on his own reflection in the glass, had defeated his efforts. He now contented himself with driving, his fingers tight on the wheel, stealing worried glances at his substitute friend.

They left the city's vibrant heart and plunged into increasingly narrow, dark alleys, where modern light seemed hesitant to penetrate. The air changed, shifting from the scent of the city to the damper, earthier smell of the old quarters. Julien finally parked in front of a low house, almost hidden between two newer buildings. It seemed to absorb the light around it. A discreet sign, barely visible, depicted an ouroboros, the serpent biting its own tail.

"We're here," Julien announced, cutting the engine. His voice was oddly muffled, as if the place imposed silence. He turned to Smith, his face grave. "Prepare yourself. Mrs. Kim is not... conventional."

They got out of the car. The air was still, and a strange odor, both sweet and metallic, hung around them. The smell of ozone after a storm, and of old, wet books, Smith thought, his heart pounding. Julien pushed a heavy wooden door that creaked ominously, as if it hadn't been opened in decades.

The interior was an organized chaos. Shelves sagged under the weight of jars containing herbs, roots with unsettling shapes, and liquids of improbable colors. Beeswax candles burned, casting dancing shadows on walls covered with tapestries of intricate patterns. In the center of the room, sitting on a thick cushion, a woman waited for them. She could have been sixty or five hundred. Her salt-and-pepper hair fell in loose strands over her shoulders, and her eyes, of an intense black, seemed to see through them, beyond flesh and bone.

"Julien," she rasped in a voice worn rough by whispers to spirits. "You bring me a bird whose wings belong to another cage."

It wasn't a question, but a statement. Julien bowed slightly, sincere respect in his demeanor.

"Good evening, Mrs. Kim. We need your help. My friend... he is not in his right place."

The shaman, Mrs. Kim, gestured for Smith to approach. Her movements were slow, deliberate, as if she moved through denser water. He obeyed, his legs wobbling, feeling the weight of her gaze probing him, exploring every dark corner of his soul.

"Sit, lost child," she ordered.

He complied, cross-legged on the cold floor, facing her. She then produced a small copper bowl filled with very dark water and threw in a pinch of powder that sizzled and released acrid smoke.

"Look into the water," she murmured. "And hide nothing from me."

He plunged his gaze into the dark liquid. At first, he saw only his own reflection, distorted and anxious. Then the images came, blurry at first, then sharper and sharper. He saw the rain again, the car, the despair twisting his gut. He saw his mother's message again, the words "The Chois are good people" shining like blades on the screen. He felt the bitter taste of surrender once more.

"I... I had to go," he sobbed without even realizing it, speaking to the water, to the shaman, to himself. "Otherwise, she would have hated me. They all would have hated me."

"And here?" growled Mrs. Kim's voice. "Here, do they hate you?"

The question hit him with full force. He looked up, meeting her piercing gaze.

"No," he whispered. "Here... they love me."

The images in the water changed. He saw Julien's smile, so frank and joyful. He saw his mother's eyes, shining with pride, not disappointment. He saw Day, his fiancé, smiling at him with a tenderness that brought tears to his eyes.

"Then why do you weep, child?" the shaman continued, her voice a little softer. "Why does your soul tear itself apart? You prayed for a refuge, and a refuge was offered to you. But you still cling to the chains of your old prison."

"This is not my refuge!" Smith cried, his voice broken. "It's a lie! This happiness doesn't belong to me! It belongs to another! To a real Smith!"

Mrs. Kim looked at him for a long time, and in her black eyes, he thought he saw a glimmer of pity.

"There is no 'true' or 'false,' child. Only paths that cross and realities that collide. You did not steal another's place. You simply took a different path. Your despair was so deep, your surrender so absolute, that it created a fissure. And you slipped through to the other side."

She waved a hand over the smoke.

"You are an empty vessel, Smith. You emptied your own inner sea of all hope and filled it with the salt of surrender. Nature abhors a vacuum. So, this reality, where your heart could be filled, drew in the shell you had become."

The shaman's words resonated within him like a gong. An empty vessel. A shell. Wasn't that exactly what he had always believed himself to be? An empty envelope, playing a part to satisfy others.

"And... the other one?" asked Julien, who had been watching the scene, pale and silent. "My real Smith? Where is he?"

Mrs. Kim turned her piercing gaze to Julien.

"There is no exchange, Julien. There is no theft. In this reality, the Smith who was meant to exist... never was. The energy meant to form his joy, his strength, has always been waiting. It was waiting for someone to come and fill it. And it found him."

Her long, slender index finger pointed at Smith's chest.

"This happiness belongs to you, because it was meant for you. It was the latent energy of this world. You did not take another's place. You came to occupy the place that was empty, because it was reserved for you. Your other self, in this universe, is a ghost that never saw the light of day."

Smith's world swayed. It wasn't an exchange? It wasn't theft? This happiness... was his? The idea was so revolutionary, so terrifying and liberating at once, that it made him dizzy.

"But... can I go back?" he asked, his voice trembling. "To my old life? My mother... my real mother... she's waiting for me for dinner."

Mrs. Kim looked into the bowl again. Her face closed off.

"The fissure is closing, child. It is only kept open by your own attachment to the pain. If you wish to return, you can. Focus on that sadness, on that surrender. Immerse yourself again in that ocean of bitterness, and it will spit you back onto the shore of your hell."

She looked up, her gaze relentless.

"But know this: if you leave, the fissure will seal for good. There will be no turning back. No second chance. You will marry that woman, you will bury your soul, and you will live the life you chose by denying who you are."

The choice. It was there, raw and terrible. On one side, the certainty of suffering and duty fulfilled. On the other, the frightening possibility of a happiness he did not believe he deserved.

"And if I stay?" he whispered.

"Then you must learn," said Julien, breaking his silence, his voice charged with intense emotion. "You must learn to be happy. You must learn to accept that you are worthy of this love. And you must... face the fear that it could all disappear."

Mrs. Kim nodded.

"Fear is the ultimate chain. It binds you to your old prison, even though the door is wide open. You must break it yourself."

She gestured that the audience was over. As they rose to leave, she added, as a final warning:

"Beware of the echoes, lost child. Your old world will try to call you back. It will try to convince you that you are dreaming. Do not listen. Otherwise, the dream will become a nightmare, and the nightmare will become your only reality."

The journey back was even more silent than the way there. The shaman's words looped in Smith's mind. "An empty vessel." "The place that was empty." "Beware of the echoes." He looked at Julien, focused on the road, and for the first time, he dared to contemplate the possibility of staying. Of letting himself be loved. Of loving in return.

As they turned onto his street, his phone vibrated in his pocket. A familiar, haunting vibration. A wave of cold shot through him. He pulled out the device with fingers numb with dread.

It wasn't the colorful, sticker-covered phone of this world.

It was his phone. The sober model, the black case, identical to the one he had in his old life.

The screen lit up, illuminating the gloom of the car.

1 New Message - Mom (18:45):

"Smith we are waiting for you.The Chois are eager to meet you. Be reasonable."

Smith's heart stopped dead. The message was from the very hour he was with the shaman. An icy shiver ran down his spine. This wasn't a memory. It was a summons. An echo.

The old world hadn't let go. It was demanding him back. And the choice, which he thought he had the luxury to ponder, had just transformed into a tearing urgency. He gripped the phone so hard his knuckles turned white, staring at the message as one stares at a venomous snake, as the car came to a gentle stop in front of the house bathed in light the house that could be his salvation or the sweetest of tortures.