Chapter 20 | Break

The decision did not come from a great moment of clarity.

No sudden revelation. No brilliant sentence that put everything back in place. No sleepless night at the end of which you finally understand something about yourself with the dignity of a well-written character.

It was more ordinary than that.

An accumulation.

The small sentences. The looks. The half-gestures. The things you think you see. The ones you maybe imagine.

People who want you a little, but never completely. Or not in the way you want them.

One evening, coming home, I simply thought: “That’s enough.”

The words stayed in my head.

Simple.

Tired.

Almost clean.

That was enough.

The next morning, I found her in the office corridor.

Lyralda.

She was leaning against the coffee machine, a mug in her hand. She was talking with Clara, who was already laughing too loudly for a Tuesday morning.

When she saw me arrive, her gaze slid toward me.

No surprise.

No embarrassment.

Just that calm look she always had, as if everything was happening exactly where it was supposed to.

Clara gave me a small wave.

“Hi, survivor.”

“Hi Clara.”

I took a cup.

The coffee flowed slowly.

Clara looked from one of us to the other, with that very specific sixth sense of people who like living among implications.

“Right…”

She tapped the machine with her fingertips.

“I have a meeting. Or something that looks like one.”

Then, as she passed me:

“Try not to die before noon, it would be bad for the atmosphere.”

She walked away down the corridor.

And suddenly, only the two of us were left.

The coffee kept flowing.

I stared at the black liquid in the cup as if it were a complicated question.

“You’re working too much,” Lyralda said.

I didn’t look up.

“Possibly possible.”

“And you’re thinking too much.”

“Probably probable.”

Silence.

I took the cup.

Then I turned toward her.

“We need to talk.”

She nodded slightly.

“Okay.”

We stayed there.

In the corridor.

Between the coffee machine and the bay window.

Not really a place for big conversations.

But apparently, it was enough for me.

I breathed in.

And I said, far too fast:

“I think we should stop.”

She tilted her head slightly.

“Stop… what?”

I took a shorter breath this time.

“This.”

She was still looking at me.

Calm.

Attentive.

“Us,” I added.

The word floated for one second.

Then she placed her mug on the machine.

Her arms crossed slowly.

I expected something.

Irony.

A cutting sentence.

A defense.

Even a look.

But no.

“Okay, Eliott,” she said.

I blinked.

That was it?

Just that?

I immediately felt my momentum break a little on the spot, which was vexing because it was my own momentum and I would have liked to at least find it convincing until the end.

“Okay…?” I repeated.

“Yes. Okay.”

Her voice was still calm.

“If that’s what you want.”

I no longer really knew what to do with the rest of my sentence, so I let out the one that had been stuck at the back of my throat for several days.

“I’m not an optional plan B.”

She barely moved.

But something passed over her face.

Very light.

Very quick.

The kind of movement you only notice when you look at someone far too much.

“I never thought that,” she said.

I lifted my shoulders slightly.

“Maybe you did.”

“No.”

Small silence.

“Never.”

That should have calmed me.

Obviously, it did not calm me at all.

Because when you have decided to experience something badly, you become creative enough to ignore every sentence that could improve the situation.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said.

She looked at me for another second.

Then nodded, very slightly.

“As you wish.”

I tightened my grip on the cup.

“That’s all?”

“What more do you want?”

The question wasn’t aggressive.

That was worse.

It was sincere. Truly sincere.

I lowered my eyes.

“I don’t know.”

“I do.”

She picked up her mug again.

“I’m not going to chase after you.”

I lifted my head.

“What?”

“If you want distance, take it.”

She lifted one shoulder.

“You’re an adult, Eliott.”

Her voice had not trembled.

No anger.

No reproach.

No “you’re hurting me” that would at least have given me the feeling of clearly existing in the story.

Then she added:

“I’m not moving.”

The sentence stayed there.

Strange.

Not a protest.

Not an acceptance.

Just a fact.

As if she were saying: I will be in the same place, with the same truth, even if you decide to walk around the block with your anxieties.

I didn’t know what to answer.

So I nodded.

“Very well.”

I took my coffee.

And I left toward the open space.

The following days were strange.

Not dramatic.

Not loud.

Just… empty.

I did my work.

I continued the internal control.

The figures moved forward.

The columns filled up.

But everything else seemed slightly switched off.

I crossed paths with Lyralda several times in the corridors.

She greeted me.

Politely.

Like any colleague.

“Good morning, Eliott.”

“Good morning.”

“Have a good day, Eliott.”

“Have a good day.”

And it was almost worse.

Because she was respecting exactly what I had asked for.

No insistence.

No attempt.

No drama.

Just space.

And now that I had it, I no longer knew what to do with it.

On Tuesday, Mehdi stopped near my desk late in the morning with a coffee in hand and the look of a man who had very clearly decided not to pretend he saw nothing.

“Serious question.”

I looked up.

“This starts well.”

“Always.”

He placed a hand on the edge of my desk.

“Are you two sulking or what?”

I stayed still.

“Who?”

He looked at me the way you look at someone who has just tried to hide a lamp under a towel.

“You and Lyralda.”

I lifted my shoulders slightly.

“We’re working.”

“Mm-hmm.”

He took a sip of coffee, still not taking his eyes off me.

“And I’m a ballet dancer at night.”

I let out a small laugh.

“There’s nothing.”

“Of course.”

He tilted his head.

“You look like a guy sorting his emotions by color code in a compressed folder.”

“That’s very specific.”

“I’m very specific.”

He glanced toward the back of the open space, where Lyralda was in fact talking with Mister Delmas in front of the glass office.

They were standing near each other. Not pressed together, obviously. Just close enough to read the same document. Mister Delmas was saying something while pointing at a line. Lyralda nodded. And the whole thing had that adult, silent, already settled fluidity I had started hating with a very unhealthy regularity.

Mehdi looked at the scene, then at me.

“Ah.”

“What?”

“So that’s it.”

“I don’t see what you’re talking about.”

“Liar.”

He smiled.

“If you need a professional mediator, I charge ninety euros a session.”

“We don’t need a mediator.”

“Too bad.”

He tapped my desk.

Then left just like that, leaving me alone with my screen and a very strong desire to never cross paths with another human being until retirement.

Clara adopted a less subtle method.

On Wednesday morning, she outright sat on the edge of my desk with her coffee and her total lack of respect for other people’s emotional distance.

“Serious question.”

“Everyone starts their sentences like that this week.”

“Because you have a face that provokes serious questions.”

I looked up at her.

“Yes?”

“Are you having a discreet burnout or is this just a new personality?”

I let out a small breath.

“I’m working.”

“Obviously. You’re paid to do that.”

She looked at my screen.

“You’re working a lot.”

I shrugged.

“It’s the project.”

“Mm-hmm.”

She tilted her head.

“You’re not talking to anyone anymore.”

“That’s false.”

“Oh really?”

“I talk to Excel. And to you.”

She smiled.

“Bad company.”

Then she leaned a little toward me.

“Did you have a fight with someone?”

“Absolutely not at all, really not.”

She made a small grimace.

“That sentence contains far too many adverbs to be innocent.”

I lowered my eyes to the table.

“It’s nothing.”

“Mm-hmm.”

She followed my gaze, then looked toward the legal office.

Lyralda was coming out of Mister Delmas’s office with a file under her arm. He said something behind her. She turned her head slightly, answered one word I didn’t hear, and he had that calm half-smile I now knew far too well.

Clara came back to me.

“Ah.”

“What now?”

“Nothing.”

Then, with a softness far too well measured to be entirely disinterested:

“Statistically, the next one will be better.”

I frowned.

“The next what?”

“Existential crisis. Breakup. Whatever you’re going through there.”

She tapped my desk.

“When you become human again, come warn me.”

Then she left.

I smiled weakly.

But I didn’t move.

Jade tried a first approach by message.

“you surviving?”

I took almost ten minutes to answer.

“yes”

She replied immediately.

“very ugly and extremely bad lie”

I stared at the screen for a few seconds.

Then I put the phone face down on the desk.

In the afternoon, she moved straight to a more frontal strategy.

She arrived with two coffees, placed one on my desk, then pulled the free chair beside me and sat down without asking anyone’s permission, which suited her perfectly.

“Okay.”

I looked up.

“Okay?”

“We’re going to keep this simple.”

She crossed her arms.

“Simple?”

“Are you sulking at everyone?”

“Sulking at everyone?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

She stared at me for a few seconds.

Then sighed.

“You’re exhausting.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

She pushed the coffee slightly toward me.

“Drink.”

“Why?”

“Because you look like a guy who is about to turn into a human spreadsheet.”

I took the cup.

She looked at me a little longer.

Then her tone shifted down a notch.

Less sharp.

“Did I maybe say something wrong the other day?”

I blinked.

“No.”

“Maybe?”

“No.”

She frowned slightly.

“You’re impossible.”

“Probably.”

She ran a hand through her hair.

“Right.”

Silence.

Then she continued:

“I’m going to tell you something humiliating about myself, so you’ll feel like the world is more balanced.”

I looked up a little.

“That’s a strange strategy.”

“Yes, but it works.”

She placed her elbow on my desk.

“In my first year of BTS2, I flirted with a guy for two months. I thought we were a couple before realizing he was just trying to be nice, then he went out with one of my friends because he simply wasn’t interested in women.”

I looked at her.

She lifted one shoulder.

“There. Shame exists for everyone.”

I let out a small breath through my nose.

A real laugh.

She noticed immediately.

“Ah!”

“What?”

“I saw it!”

“Saw what?”

“A micro-sign of life.”

“Unbearable.”

“I know.”

She straightened a little.

“More seriously.”

The word almost worried me.

“What?”

“You know this isn’t healthy, right?”

“What?”

“Disappearing like this.”

I looked at my screen. 2 BTS (Brevet de Technicien Supérieur): a two-year French vocational higher education diploma.

“I’m not disappearing.”

“No. You’re imitating a dehydrated houseplant.”

She placed two fingers on the edge of the screen to symbolically stop me from hiding behind it.

“You look like someone trying to become an old carpet to turn invisible.”

I didn’t answer.

Because the sentence displeased me mainly because of its precision.

She waited.

Then finally stood up.

“Right.”

She tapped my screen once.

“Keep talking to your tables.”

She took two steps, then turned back halfway.

“And tonight, answer my messages.”

“Why?”

“Because otherwise I’m coming to your place to check if you’ve merged with your sofa.”

I looked at her.

“Is that a threat?”

“It’s friendly after-sales service.”

Then she left for real.

I watched her move away between the desks.

And for the first time in several days, something loosened slightly in my chest.

That evening, the apartment seemed quieter than usual.

I was cooking again.

It had become a habit.

Cutting. Mixing. Watching the cooking.

Simple gestures helped quiet the noise in my head a little.

But even that didn’t always work.

Sometimes I just stood in the kitchen, spoon in hand, not really knowing why I had started cooking.

My phone vibrated.

Jade.

“Jade: you alive?”

I answered.

“Eliott: yes”

“Jade: proof”

I looked at my pan.

Then I sent a photo of the pasta.

Her reply arrived immediately.

“Jade: that’s sad”

“Eliott: it’s pasta”

“Jade: exactly”

“Jade: do you want to complain or do you just want me to bother you?”

I stayed looking at the screen for a moment.

Then I wrote:

“Eliott: both I think”

Her answer came.

“Jade: good news”

“Jade: I can do both”

I caught myself smiling.

A real smile, this time.

Small. Tired. But real.

We exchanged a few more messages.

Nothing spectacular.

She told me a client had called her “little one” on the phone and that she had wanted to cross through the line to elegantly strangle him.

I told her a statement line had decided to ruin my evening.

She replied that I really had sad enemies…

It was light.

Natural.

No tension to guess.

No subtext to dissect.

No impression of risking something with every sentence.

And I could feel very well that this was what was doing me good, deep down.

Not her as a possibility.

Her as a presence.

The fact that she kept coming back to me without asking me to be simpler, brighter, more sure of myself than I was.

When the conversation stopped, the apartment became calm again.

But a little less empty.

The following days took on a strange shape.

Not slow.

Not fast either.

More like a series of almost identical moments.

Morning.

Office.

Numbers.

Evening.

Silence.

I continued the control.

Three subsidiaries, hundreds of lines, dates aligning, gaps to check.

Numbers had logic.

When something was wrong, there was always a reason.

A human error.

A date gap.

A forgotten entry.

Nothing mysterious.

Nothing blurred.

Unlike the rest.

I crossed paths with Lyralda every day.

Sometimes in the corridor.

Sometimes near the coffee machine.

Sometimes simply in the open space.

She changed nothing in her behavior.

“Good morning, Eliott.”

“Good morning.”

“Have a good day, Eliott.”

“Have a good day.”

Professional.

Clean.

As if everything had always been this way.

And that was probably the hardest part.

Because it gave the impression I had been fighting against something that maybe only existed in my head.

One morning, Mehdi stopped near my desk with a coffee and an already half- eaten croissant.

“I have a theory.”

I looked up.

“That worries me.”

“Wrongly. It’s excellent.”

He bit into his croissant.

“You’re in love, sad, or an actual accountant?”

“All three can exist at the same time.”

“Ah…”

He took that with far too much seriousness to be honest.

“Bad combination. Really.”

I let out a small laugh.

He lowered his voice a little.

“You know, people who make radical decisions on impulse rarely look as proud as you.”

I frowned slightly.

“I don’t look proud.”

“Exactly.”

He looked at me for two seconds.

Then his gaze slid toward Lyralda, at the back, talking with Mister Delmas in front of a glass partition. They were consulting a document. Mister Delmas was saying something. She nodded. And from far away, they once again looked like that kind of perfectly functional adult duo my brain loved turning into a personal problem.

Mehdi came back to me.

“She looks calm…”

“Who?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the entire legal department.”

I said nothing.

He smiled.

“Mm-hmm.”

Then he tapped my desk.

“When you want to become a social mammal again, we’ll do that.”

“That’s very kind.”

“I know.”

And he left.

At noon, I went downstairs to eat alone.

The cafeteria was almost empty.

I sat at a small table near the window.

My Tupperware in front of me.

Pasta.

Again.

With butter, salted, obviously.

I ate slowly.

Around me, groups were talking. Colleagues were laughing. Ordinary conversations. The normal life of the office.

Sometimes I looked at people without really seeing them.

And one thought kept coming back to the same place.

Why is it so easy for them?

Relationships.

Jokes.

Simple discussions.

Why did I always have to think about every gesture as if it were an equation too complicated?

I put down my fork.

And, for the first time in a long while, a harsher question appeared in my head.

Do I really deserve to be loved?

The thought stayed there.

Heavy.

I pushed it away immediately.

But it did not disappear.

Jade arrived without warning, placed her tray across from mine, and sat down.

“No.”

I looked up.

“What?”

“I refuse to let you become a man who eats pasta alone in front of a window with the face of an old flat tire someone threw into the forest.”

I looked at her.

“That’s very precise.”

“I’m very precise.”

She opened her can.

“And besides, I’m right. Always.”

I lowered my eyes to my meal.

“Maybe.”

“Ooh.”

She leaned a little on her elbows.

“We have a maybe.”

I let out a small smile.

“You all watch me far too much.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you have the energy of a sad puppy left too long under the rain.”

I stared at her.

“That’s an atrocious image.”

“I know.”

She ate a fry, then added more softly:

“You don’t need to be easy for people to stay.”

I lifted my eyes.

She no longer looked like she was joking at all.

“You always think that if people pull away, it’s because something is missing in you.”

I didn’t answer.

Because I didn’t like that she formulated it so clearly.

She lifted one shoulder.

“Sometimes people pull away just because they’re cowardly, lost, tired, or stupid.”

“That’s very optimistic.”

“That’s very true.”

She took a sip.

“And sometimes also because they’re afraid of what they want. Or of what they don’t know how to handle.”

I looked at her, not really knowing whether she was talking about me, someone else, or several people at once.

Then she became lighter again, almost immediately.

“Anyway.”

She pointed at my box.

“Still, make an effort with the pasta.”

“I cook other things sometimes.”

“Proof?”

“You’re obsessed with proof.”

“Occupational hazard.”

“You’re in sales.”

“Exactly.”

I smiled.

And this time, it required no effort.

The afternoon passed slowly.

Very slowly.

I spoke little.

I answered technical questions.

I worked.

Again.

Always.

Around four, Clara passed behind me.

“Have you seen the sun today?”

“I don’t know.”

“Look away from your screen a bit.”

“Maybe later.”

She sighed.

“You have officially become an accounting hermit.”

I smiled weakly.

“Is that a promotion?”

“A bad promotion.”

She placed a hand on my shoulder.

“Take care of yourself.”

Then she left.

I stayed in front of my screen a little longer.

But the numbers were mixing slightly, not much.

Just enough for my brain to slow down.

And the thought came back.

Maybe I’m just too weird for people.

Not mean.

Just… incompatible.

I passed a hand over my face.

Then I returned to work.

Because working remained the only thing that never rejected me.

The end of the day arrived without me really noticing.

The numbers kept scrolling on my screen, but my brain was slowly slowing down, like an engine running for too long.

In the open space, people were starting to put away their things. Chairs scraped the floor. Bags closed. Conversations resumed.

I saved my file.

One last check.

By reflex.

Then I closed the computer.

The silence in my head was not really restful.

More… empty.

I put the documents in my bag.

When I looked up, Clara was passing near my desk.

“You’re leaving already?”

“Yes.”

“Miracle.”

She tilted her head.

“You ate, at least?”

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

“No.”

She sighed.

“Good.”

She placed a quick hand on my desk.

“Try to do something nice tonight.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.”

She thought for one second.

“Talk to a human.”

I smiled weakly.

“I’ll think about it.”

“Do it, that’s an order from great Clara.”

Then she left.

I stood up.

The open space was almost empty now.

Evening light entered through the large windows, giving the room a slightly softer color.

I passed several desks.

Some already switched off.

Others still occupied.

I knew exactly where not to look.

So, obviously, my gaze drifted anyway.

Toward the back of the room.

Toward the legal office.

Lyralda was still there.

Her screen lit her face.

She was reading a document.

Focused.

Calm.

I slowed almost despite myself.

She looked up.

Our eyes met.

Just one second.

Like in the morning.

Her expression did not change.

No smile.

No sadness.

Just that usual calm.

“Have a good evening, Eliott.”

Her voice was composed.

Professional.

I nodded slightly.

“Have a good evening.”

And I continued toward the exit.

The corridor leading to the elevators was almost empty.

The noise of the office moved away behind me.

I scanned my badge.

The glass door opened.

The air in the lobby was cooler.

I walked slowly toward the elevators.

And a strange sensation was gently rising in my chest.

Not a crisis.

Not a drama.

Just a quiet weight.

As if something had settled inside.

In the elevator, my reflection appeared in the metal walls.

Distorted.

Fragmented.

Several versions of my face side by side.

I looked at myself.

Tired.

Calm.