Some object fallen between the bathroom door and its frame had kept it ajar, but he did not hear me approach. I froze. He was standing naked beside a heap of clothes, running his hands over his arms and shoulders, his fingertips pausing to examine more closely. His back and arms were a mass of ugly welts, livid flesh that had been flailed again and again until the veins beneath the skin had broken. His arms dropped to his sides and I thought I saw him shudder. Suddenly he seemed to grow, to swell, to fill the bathroom with his great mass. Then he threw his head back, shaking his black mane, smiled, stepped into the bathtub, and immersed himself in the water. Without knowing why, I waited a moment before timidly entering; even as I have paused all these years, and pause still, in full knowledge now, before entering that distant Saturday. From “Distillation,” slightly adapted from The Last Laugh and Other Stories by Hugo Martinez-Serros.

How has the narrator changed at the end of this story? How did the story’s main conflict impact that change?