The city breathed, but he could no longer catch his breath. The streets, those endless arteries, stretched like scars on a body too large. Every step echoed, amplified by the buildings that stood indifferent on either side of the sidewalk. There was no sky here, only a gray canvas stretched between the rooftops, where the daylight faded before reaching the ground.
 
The faces he passed were moving shadows, hurried silhouettes sliding past one another without ever meeting. No one stopped. No one looked back. He felt transparent, like a breath in the wind—present and already erased.
 
The flickering signs, the muffled laughter behind café windows, the distant honking—all of it formed a dissonant symphony, a melody that reminded him he was there, but without knowing why. He sat on a bench, his hands clenched around a lukewarm coffee cup, as if he could draw warmth from it to bring himself back. But the liquid tasted of absence.
 
A tram rattled past, carrying away the last shreds of his thoughts. He closed his eyes. Behind his lids, he didn’t see darkness but a torn map, a subway diagram with intertwined lines, no beginning, no end. He was a lost point on that network, a point that belonged to no line.
 
When he opened his eyes again, night had fallen. The streetlights cast circles of light on the asphalt, fleeting islands where he might have anchored himself—if only he’d known how. But the shadows stretched, hungry, and the city kept breathing, indifferent to those who drowned in it.
 
He stood up. Maybe walking further, turning at random, would lead him somewhere. Maybe the city, in its vastness, had a place for him, a corner where he would stop feeling like a stranger to himself.
 
Or maybe he would simply learn to be lost, until it became second nature.