Chapter 3 : The world stopped [2]

In a gymnasium, a man with long black hair and a thick beard was kneeling on the floor surrounded by several hundred books looking at the number 3689 inscribed on the wall of the gym before laughing hysterically.

"Ha-ha...ten years it's been over ten years ha-ha."

He laughed louder and louder as tears fell from his eyes.

"I can't take it anymore... I can't take it anymore... Someone... anyone... talk to me... God if this is your work talk to me... kill me!"

He fell to the ground in tears, snot running down his beard, so he continued for several hours before going to sleep.

When he woke up, he slowly got up from the floor and slowly left the gym, stumbling over and over again, finally sitting on the floor and looking at the building in front of him for several minutes.

Finally he sighed loudly and threw the bottle of whisky violently to the floor.

"I can't give up! There must be a way somewhere in this world!"

"I'll search everywhere, all over the Confederate states from the west to the farthest reaches Nippon of the east."

. . . .

It's been almost 11 years since my suicide attempt.

I seem to be the only one who can move in this world.

The first day I saw my children frozen, I hoped to find a solution to leave this frozen world but after more than 50 years I have not found any solution.

After so many years, I am already starting to lose my mind, sometimes I hear voices in my head, sometimes I talk to myself for hours on end.

Only reading and in my desire to see my children one last time prevented me from plunging into total madness.

But despite all my efforts, I haven't found the slightest clue to my situation.

In the last few years I have been experimenting and testing, I can't suffer physical damage, I can't drown, I can't burn, I can't die from poisoning, even if I hold my breath, I simply pass out from lack of oxygen.

I have tried to die and end my life many times without success in every possible way.

"Maybe I'm dead?"

This thought has crossed my mind a thousand times, but a kind of intuition told me otherwise.

In recent years, I have traveled to all the countries of the Western Confederate States.

By car, I have visited all the great libraries of the country, I have read countless books, essays.

But none of them seemed to fit my situation.

I came to see the children at least once a month to make sure that nothing had happened to them, but the frequency of my visits diminished more and more as I went further on my expeditions.

After traveling all over the country, I realized that there was nothing left for me to do.

I tried everything , although I had not aged in recent years, I was tired, my heart gradually became indifferent about my current situation.

I went back to Old-York, but I stopped going to see my children.

Every time I saw their faces, I felt unbearable guilt and sadness.

Time passed, it had already been sixty-five years.

Sometimes I fell into fits of dementia, I had hallucinations, the voices in my head became louder and louder making me feel more and more like madman, but after years of meditation practice that I learned from a Buddhist book, I gradually began to get used to solitude.

My dementia gradually diminished until it completely disappeared.

I started to learn painting and cooking, I also did sports when I was not meditating or reading.

Time went by more and more quickly.

. . . . .

One hundred years, it had been a century.

Looking at the incredible 36500 days inscribed on the wall in front of him, he had no emotional fluctuations.

"Will time ever run its course again?"

Thinking about it, he sighed and finally left the villa in which he had lived for several years.

He looked calmly for a short moment at the sun shining in the sky, sat down on the grass on the ground and closed his eyes before taking a deep breath.

James lived like this for another hundred years, after 137 years he stopped counting the days that passed.

He spent his time meditating, exercising his body, he learned 78 languages and he was tried at many hobby including aikido, cooking, karate, judo, jujutsu, kravmaga, kenpo, painting, knife throwing, alcohol brewing, writing, calligraphy, muay Thai and even classical dance.

He became an extremely muscular man, with a strong and robust body.

After all these years he started to lose his emotions, he probably didn't notice it but he had even forgotten his children.

And after several more decades, having reached an extreme level of mastery in all his hobbies, he decided to travel.

With his bare chest, revealing incredible muscles, he looked at the sea in front of him with indifference and calm.

The sea was not agitated, there were no waves, no movement in the water, everything was frightening calm.

He took a deep breath, then without hesitation jumped into the water and began to swim at full speed through the sea.

His goal, the Central United States across the sea at 7500 miles!