Chapter 6: The Burden of Silence
The weight of silence was becoming unbearable.
Ainz sat at the worn dining table, staring at the plate of food in front of him, his appetite long lost.
His mother was humming softly in the kitchen, the rhythmic clink of pots and pans filling the background, but it felt distant, detached.
His father was reading a newspaper, his glasses perched at the end of his nose. A faint crease between his brows betrayed a concern Ainz knew he would never speak aloud. It wasn't just the fading lines of the world they had built. It was him, sitting there, like an empty shell.
"Eat, Ainz," his mother said gently, her voice a soft reminder of the care she'd always shown him. She hadn't seen the way his shoulders had slumped in recent weeks, how he had withdrawn further into himself with each passing day. He wanted to say something to her, something real, but the words caught in his throat.
Instead, he picked up his fork, mechanically moving it through the food.
It wasn't that he wasn't grateful for their sacrifices; it wasn't that he didn't love them. It was just that, in the silence of their home, there was a growing distance.
A space between them that Ainz could never seem to cross. His parents, despite all they had been through, still believed in a future.
They still had dreams for him, expectations. He saw the hope in their eyes when they looked at him—the hope that he would rise above the circumstances they had once struggled through.
But Ainz felt like a ghost, just drifting in the motions, pretending to be a son, pretending to be part of something when he had already felt so separate for so long.
He realized that the weight of their love was becoming heavier, not because they demanded anything from him, but because he couldn't fulfill their expectations. He had promised them a better life, but all he had done was survive.
His mother glanced over at him. "Are you alright, Ainz? You seem quiet tonight."
Ainz looked up, meeting her gaze, and for a moment, he felt the weight of everything pressing on him. But the words didn't come. Instead, he just nodded, offering a smile that felt like a lie.
"I'm fine, Mom," he said, his voice empty.
It wasn't a lie, exactly.
But it wasn't the truth either.
He had been "fine" for years, but being fine had become a facade. His emotions were muted, like an unspoken agreement between him and the world around him that he would stay silent, stay invisible.
It had always been easier to endure than to confront the gnawing emptiness inside.
He returned to his plate, pushing the food around without tasting it. His mind wandered back to the events that had caused this hollow feeling—the growing distance between him and Narcy, the betrayal that had shattered the fragile hope he'd allowed himself to believe in. And in the quiet space between the walls of this small house, the emptiness seemed to grow, swallowing the few moments of solace he had left.
"Are you sure you're okay?" his father asked again, his voice tinged with concern. "You haven't been yourself lately."
Ainz felt the unspoken question hanging in the air: What's wrong with you?
He knew his parents loved him. They wanted the best for him, had worked tirelessly to give him a better life. But he felt like he was drifting farther from them with each passing day.
There was a part of him—an unspoken, shameful part—that wanted to tell them the truth: that he didn't feel like he belonged in this world.
That he felt like a failure, like the life he had worked so hard to create for them had come at the expense of his own happiness.
But that part of him remained buried. He would never voice it. He couldn't.
"Just tired," Ainz muttered, his words hollow even to himself.
His father didn't press further, but Ainz could see the subtle furrow of concern in his father's eyes.
He didn't want to worry them, didn't want to drag them into his mess. They had already sacrificed so much for him. He couldn't bear to make them feel like they had failed.
They hadn't failed.
It was him.
He had failed them.
The night dragged on in the same suffocating silence. Ainz excused himself from the table, retreating to his small bedroom.
It was the one place where he could be truly alone with his thoughts, though, more often than not, those thoughts had become unbearable.
He sat at his desk, the dim light casting long shadows across the room. His books lay scattered across the surface, remnants of his ongoing attempts to push forward in his studies, to honor the commitment he had made to his parents.
But studying had become a chore—an endless cycle of pages he couldn't focus on, words he couldn't absorb.
In the stillness of the room, his mind wandered back to Narcy. It had been weeks since he last saw her, since he last spoke to her.
She had left him with nothing but a hollow ache in his chest. Her absence in his life was more painful than her betrayal.
He wanted to hate her, but he couldn't. She had been the first person to make him feel something, to make him believe that maybe he could have more than just a life of duty.
Yet, in the end, she had proven that even that small flicker of hope was just another illusion.
Why did I even allow myself to feel something for her? He thought bitterly.
Narcy had shown him that even the people he allowed himself to care about would eventually leave him, emotionally if not physically. He wasn't worth holding onto.
He leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling.
His parents, his friends, Narcy—they all had something to live for. They had futures, dreams, desires. And then there was him.
The constant reminder of what it meant to give everything and still feel empty inside. He wasn't even sure what his own future held. The idea of "moving forward" felt like a lie, an impossible dream he would never attain.
The days blurred together, one indistinguishable from the next. Ainz continued to work hard, to live for his parents, to smile when he needed to. He helped his mother with the housework, carrying out the endless chores with the same mechanical precision that had become his life.
He went to his classes, pretending to engage, pretending to care. But inside, he was dying.
He was withering away under the weight of his own silence.
Every day was a cycle of quiet despair. He no longer knew how to talk about the things that mattered to him. He no longer knew how to ask for help. He had become so used to being the one who carried the burdens of others that he had forgotten how to share his own.
At night, he lay in bed, staring into the darkness, wondering if this was all there was.
If life was meant to be this constant struggle, this constant effort to hold on to something that was slipping away with every passing day.
Was this really all he had left?
A life of quiet suffering, of living for others and never living for himself?
It was hard to see the point anymore. It was hard to care.
The next day, as Ainz walked home from school, he couldn't shake the feeling that everything he had done, everything he had endured, was for nothing. He was just a shadow, walking through the motions of a life that wasn't his own.
He glanced up at the sky, a dull, overcast gray hanging above the city. For a moment, he wished he could just disappear into the clouds, let the weight of his existence dissolve into nothingness.
He didn't want to live for anyone else anymore. He didn't want to be the person who kept sacrificing his happiness, his future, for the sake of others.
And yet, there was that voice in the back of his mind, reminding him of his parents.
Their tired eyes, their constant hope that he would be something more. They were still depending on him. He couldn't just leave them behind. He couldn't abandon them. He couldn't be selfish, not when they had given him everything.
And so, he continued. Just like always. The silent burden of his life pressing down on him. But now, with the weight of that burden, Ainz couldn't help but wonder: How much longer can I keep doing this?