There is something I am ashamed to admit.
It is not obedience.
It is not fascination.
It is not even memory.
It is something worse.
It is realizing that I need fewer and fewer reasons to think about the Master.
At first it happened during specific moments.
Now it happens in places where it should not happen at all.
This morning I opened my eyes a few seconds before the alarm went off.
I thought about nothing.
Not work.
Not breakfast.
Not the time.
For a moment my mind was completely empty.
And yet he appeared.
Not as an image.
Not as a fantasy.
Simply as a presence.
As if someone had left a chair occupied inside my head overnight.
He remained there.
Waiting.
The worst part is that he did nothing.
If he had done something I could explain it.
But he did nothing.
He was simply there.
And that stillness occupied more space than any thought.
While brushing my teeth I tried to focus on the foam.
I counted movements.
Left.
Right.
Up.
Down.
And suddenly I found myself wondering what the Master would think of something as insignificant as this routine.
The question appeared on its own.
I did not invite it.
I did not construct it.
It simply emerged.
I felt embarrassed immediately.
A small embarrassment.
A domestic embarrassment.
Difficult to explain.
Like catching yourself making a strange gesture when you thought nobody was watching.
Later, outside, I saw a man waiting at a traffic light.
He was carrying a yellow shopping bag.
Nothing special.
I do not even remember his face.
But I remember the way he kept tapping the bag against his leg every few seconds.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
For a while I watched the movement with ridiculous attention.
Because it reminded me of something.
I do not know what.
Or perhaps I do.
And there he was again.
The Master.
Not as a person.
As an association.
As a tiny crack through which everything eventually leaks.
It happens too often now.
Sometimes I am watching completely irrelevant videos.
A documentary about trains.
Someone repairing a lamp.
A pointless tutorial about coffee machines.
And suddenly I realize I have not been paying attention for several minutes.
The narrator is still speaking.
The images are still changing.
But something more important is happening underneath.
Something silent.
Something occupying space.
The Master remains.
The more I try to ignore it, the more obvious it becomes.
The more obvious it becomes, the more embarrassed I feel.
And the more embarrassed I feel, the longer I spend observing it.
It is a miserable mechanism.
It does not feel like desire.
It does not feel like sadness.
It does not feel like happiness.
It does not feel like dependence.
It feels like something else.
A mental substance for which I still do not have a name.
Sometimes I think it is nostalgia.
But it is not.
Nostalgia looks backward.
This does not.
This sits in the present.
Waiting.
Sometimes I think it is anxiety.
But it is not that either.
Anxiety wants to escape.
This does not want to escape.
This wants to stay.
And that is far more unsettling.
Because time does not help.
Time makes it worse.
It makes everything deeper.
Quieter.
Harder to locate.
Less visible.
More present.
Like water slowly leaking beneath a closed door.
I am beginning to suspect that true obsession is not thinking about someone all the time.
It is discovering that thinking is no longer required for them to remain.
And that idea.
That specific idea.
Is the one that frightens me most.
The neck I am not moving it the neck has locked I should…
