I am being, or rather being someone like me, means carrying a heavy burden on your shoulders. I carried the aspirations of a vast nation in my mind, and this burden bent my spine. I can still feel the pains of the passion I had for exploration in my feet. The stories of the companions I traveled with and the fresh friendships I formed in my explorations still resonate in my mind. In fact, some of these stories have been immortalized on the yet unblemished pages of history. By my own hand.
People dream of taking their passion with them to the grave when they are deeply devoted to their work. However, I must sadly admit that no matter how strong your passion for your work is, it will not be enough to continue when the time comes. After fifty-two years of journeys and adventures, I faced this inevitable end. My legs struggled to take steps, and my breath was labored even in the shortest walks. I was no longer the man I used to be. I could no longer squeeze water out of a stone. I could not travel from sunrise to sunset, nor could I climb mountains and rocks. There were even times, and I say this with great shame, when I stumbled on a straight road. I couldn't shine like the sun; I resembled more a fading star.
My companions still showed me respect, but everything was different from what it used to be. I no longer saw that old admiration in their eyes. All they saw was an elderly man who had fallen from his former glory.
When I finally accepted and concluded everything, I was seventy-three years old. Until that day, I had written twenty-two books, traveled to seventeen different kingdoms outside of Lotus, dined with kings, and ultimately took the position of the leader of Chair of History at Rowalan Academy. Between us, I even had conversations with a Goddess. However, something was missing. A tremendously immense void that tormented me spread throughout my entire being. Almost everyone is familiar with this void. It is called regret, and it is unlike any ordinary emptiness. It fills the space it carves with indescribable pain-inflicting poison, which directly attacks your heart and mind. It is a fight to the death.
Regret follows you like your shadow. The only difference is that you can see it even in the darkness. Its breath is always on the back of your neck.
I, too, saw it around me. It was constantly chasing me every day, every hour, and every second. It confronted me everywhere I looked. I saw it in the lovers cuddling under the apple trees scattered throughout Rowalan, in the modest gardens of married couples happily helping each other. However, there was a moment when my heart ached like never before. When I watched children running around, giggling with joy, I felt my heart shattering into pieces.
While building a captivating career, the thought of starting a family had never crossed my mind. As I stacked brick upon brick, I overlooked the mortar that would bind those bricks together, namely, the family. I had designated my spouse as the ledger and my children as the carriers of my research. In the end, I found myself standing naked behind the crumbling wall that I had meticulously constructed, inch by inch. I was utterly alone. Throughout my life, while pursuing the hunger for knowledge, I failed to realize that I was being pursued by another force. I had never been alone, and this belief had always reassured me that I would never be alone.
There were always people by my side in every moment. My companions in my explorations, my colleagues and students at the academy, an anonymous person with whom I would engage in conversations at any tavern in any city. However, when I made the decision to place that famous final period, everyone scattered away like ashes left behind by a fire.
Of course, loneliness didn't reveal itself immediately. Like any malevolent feeling, we agree that loneliness is also one to take its time. It has its own insidious methods. It dislikes sudden and harsh attacks like regret; it prefers to decay over time. It moves so slowly that by the time you realize its presence, it has been living within you for a long time. That was precisely what it did to me.
It successfully hid from me for a considerable period. My first few weeks were spent in the three-story stone house embraced by the inner walls of Rowalan, as I went through the process of moving to a small but charming town called Bivo. Bivo was the smallest settlement in Rowalan, with just a little over two thousand inhabitants within its borders. Considering that Lotus Island was home to two million people, you can understand how small Bivo's population was. I had visited Bivo thirty years ago when I was writing Lotus and Lotus Journeys. I had stayed in a quaint little inn named Daylight, which added meaning and character to Bivo with its warm and inviting atmosphere. The thought of seeing it again filled me with childlike impatience.
During the moving process, I was surrounded by people burning with eagerness to help me. I would call them helpers in this part, but you will see how dramatically this term changes in the subsequent sections. The helpers consisted of my colleagues and students at the academy, as well as a few important individuals in Rowalan with whom I had a considerable rapport. These people, aflame with the spirit of assistance, bustled around me, transferring items from hand to hand and loading them onto the car parked in front of the house. However, this activity was often interrupted by my outbursts. You see, my new home in Bivo was much smaller than the house from which my belongings were being removed. This contradiction frequently compelled me to intervene in the removal process.
"No, let it stay!" I would often say, "It won't fit in my new home."
I had naturally accepted the smallness of my new home. However, there is a significant difference between accepting and experiencing that moment firsthand. The experience of moving into my new home with only a load that could be carried by a single cart was more of a disappointment than an acceptance. I cannot put into words how immense this disappointment was and how much it harmed my spirit.
To expect someone in my position to be foolish is outright foolishness. Please don't interpret this as aggression. These sentences belong to an old man who defends himself and fights against injustice. The event that led me to utter these words is of understandable simplicity.
You see, when I moved into my new home—let's call it a hut, so I will refer to it as such throughout the rest of the story—the helpful people who left no stone unturned in Rowalan were nowhere to be found. With my settlement in Bivo, the surrounding superficial crowd dispersed, leaving me all alone. Nevertheless, being alone with myself didn't bother me in the early days. On the contrary, I was filled with a kind of tranquility I had never experienced before. I would sit on my small veranda, watching the peaceful flow of life in Bivo, and reminisce about the old days with gentle smiles. I was resting.
The insidious enemy I mentioned, loneliness, had not yet arrived at my doorstep. On the contrary, during those days, it behaved more like a friend than a merciless adversary. I had long lost hope in the charlatans of Rowalan, and therefore, I no longer yearned for the familiar voice behind the door. They had realized that I was not a professor or adventurer worth chasing after but merely a distant memory, and I had accepted it.
As for Bivo... The small village remained just as I had left it. Quiet, peaceful, and filled with serenity. I had described it as a "quaint village" in my book Lotus and My Travels to Lotus, and that was its most striking characteristic. It pleased me to see that it still retained that quality. It was a place far removed from the whirlwind chaos and artificial relationships of the big cities, where people acted solely on genuine emotions. It was a place where sheep, goats, and various farm animals roamed the streets, emanating a natural scent. When I refer to "nature" here, I don't think it's necessary to specify that I mean manure, not in a negative sense, of course.
The uneven dirt roads that meandered asymmetricaly in all directions, redolent of manure, may not have resembled the wide, clean stone streets drawn by a pen in Rowalan, but they were devoid of artifice. Although my plan to lead a peaceful life away from the chaos of the big cities seemed to be going smoothly, the reality was bitter. Because after a while, this stagnant existence I was breathing in failed to satisfy my aging body, which was accustomed to a ceaseless life. Thus, my notorious enemy, loneliness — whom I didn't quite know at the time — began its cruel moves.
Towards the end of my first year in Bivo, the presence of my books in the library and the time spent on the veranda no longer provided me solace. The sudden longing I started to feel for my former life pained my heart. I wanted to escape and hide from the loneliness that was corroding me from within.