Arthur was not a person. He was a function housed in a flawless exoskeleton. His title — “Senior Partner” — was a cuirass. His measured, emotionless speech — a sealed visor. His daily commute from sterile suburb to glass office tower — greaves that kept him from straying.

Deep inside that armor didn’t sit Arthur at all, but a small, frightened boy. Beside him, tireless, stood an inner armorer. Day and night he tapped his hammer, tightening straps, polishing steel, sealing the tiniest scratches: “The Senior Partner does not doubt. The Senior Partner does not tire. The Senior Partner does not feel.”

The crack appeared not from an outside strike. It appeared from within.

At high-stakes negotiations, in the very moment Arthur coldly and methodically dismantled the opposing side, his left eyelid twitched. Once. A tiny, barely visible spasm. A traitorous glitch in the flawless mechanism.

For anyone else, it would have been nothing. For Arthur it was the first drop of molten metal leaking through the armor.

The armorer rang the alarm. Arthur launched a war. He dripped calming drops into the eye. He applied cold compresses. He tried to “rationalize” the spasm, herd it back into the stable of logic. But the eyelid lived a life of its own. Each twitch was not just a tic. It was rust blooming on the shining cuirass — proof that under the metal was living, vulnerable, imperfect flesh.

The end arrived in the silence of his fortieth-floor office. Late at night, after another immaculate day, he was alone. The city beneath him lay like a perfect luminous grid — the embodiment of order. But in the dark windowpane Arthur saw not the city; he saw his reflection.

And the eyelid twitched again. Fierce, angry, like a bird trapped in a snare.

Against the city’s perfect geometry he finally saw not the “Senior Partner.” He saw a small, scared man in an expensive suit, desperate to impersonate someone. He saw the terror that forced that man to clench his fists until the knuckles whitened. He saw the strain he had carried for years.

He didn’t fight. He didn’t analyze. He simply watched.

And in that instant, a miracle happened. The very moment he stopped battling and allowed the spasm to exist, allowed the frightened man to exist — the eyelid stilled.

The sudden quiet inside his body was deafening. And in that quiet he finally realized — not with his head, but with his whole being. He felt the physical weight of the armor he’d worn all his life. He saw what he had paid for invulnerability: the ability to breathe.

And he let go.

He didn’t rip the armor off. It simply ceased to exist because he no longer believed in it. He opened the window. Cool evening air brushed his face. It wasn’t warm, it wasn’t gentle. It simply was. And it touched Arthur.

The wind moved through him. It built nothing. It simply blew.

How much does a breath weigh when there is no cuirass on your chest?

What does the dust you’re made of smell like?