It was a winter evening, the kind that wraps the world in quietness and light as if every sound has been softened by the snow. I found myself in an old bookstore, the kind with shelves that sag under the weight of forgotten stories. And there, among the dust and the faded covers, I spotted a book—a thin, unremarkable volume with frayed edges and no title on the spine. But something compelled me to pick it up.
Inside, it held only a few lines, scribbled in shaky handwriting. A story, half-finished, as if the writer had simply run out of words or courage. The tale was of a man who had lost his way in a city that no longer remembered him. He wandered its streets, slipping between alleyways and crowded squares, searching for something he couldn’t name. But each person he passed looked through him, as if he were made of mist.
One day, he found a café by the water’s edge, and for reasons he didn’t understand, he sat down. There, in the reflection of the water, he caught a glimpse of someone else—a figure with a face he almost recognized. It was himself, but with different eyes, eyes that held a calmness he had never known. And in that moment, he understood that he was looking at the person he could have become if he hadn’t been lost for so long.
