II
I began to write, my gaze wandering beyond the dusty window, my mind lulled by the dreary monotony of this city. Adjusting my posture on the small, rickety chair, I scratched my pen against the paper, recording the lifeless hum of Violdigrev. And yet, as my eyes idly traced the outlines of the world outside, they landed upon a man—a vendor of leather jackets—offering his wares for a mere 50 Pfennig.
I watched him for some time. His expression bore the weight of unspoken despair; his lips were parched, his face seems red and sick, and his fingers clutched the very coat draped over his own shoulders. Was he cold? A shudder passed through me—not from the chill, but from the thought that I, too, was staring at my own reflection. Should I write of him? Conceal his name in my report and make him a faceless symbol of our time? The idea struck me as absurd, the kind of sentimentality that has no place in print. Who, after all, would care for such a trivial tale? And yet, beneath that practical reasoning, a deep and gnawing sympathy clawed at my chest.
To see another man suffer as I did—it was unbearable.
With slow deliberation, I placed my quill upon the wooden desk, sliding back my chair. A restless impulse seized me, and before I could rationalize it, I had already risen to my feet, making my way toward the small table near the entrance. There, gleaming in the dim light, stood two metal cups of steaming coffee. They belonged to Herr Wilhelm Aldorick and me. The woman who had greeted me so kindly this morning—Miss Bertha—had prepared them for us.
I reached for my cup. The handle seared my palm, the heat sinking deep into my flesh, yet I did not recoil. I bit my tongue, stifling the sting, determined. And yet, as I stood near the exit, hesitation flickered in the room. A familiar voice, tinged with curiosity, called out behind me.
"Mr. Zaramov? Where are you going?"
It was Ms Bertha, her arms laden with books, her expression inquisitive.
I turned to her, the cup burning through my grasp, beads of sweat forming above my brow. Slowly, I loosened my bite on my tongue, forcing my voice into something steady, though it quivered against my will.
"I thought… I'd drink my coffee outside. I wouldn't want to disturb you and Mr. Herr Wilhelm by making you listen to me savor something so delicious! I wouldn't be able to drink it in peace knowing how good it tastes!"
She smiled, nudging my shoulder playfully. It was a lie—of course, it was. But it was a harmless one, and she saw no reason to object.
"Very well, Mr. Zaramov. Enjoy your break."
With that, I stepped outside, the door closing behind me with a soft click. I descended the worn steps, my boots pressing into the grimy, slick pavement. The cold gnawed at me, the heat of the coffee barely soothing the raw sting in my palm. I bit down harder on my tongue, welcoming the pain as I moved toward the leather vendor.
A weak smile touched my lips—one of exhaustion, of warmth, of understanding.
"Mister, you seem cold, so..."
Without hesitation, I tore a piece of my threadbare coat, wrapping it around the handle of the burning cup. Then, offering it to the man, I forced a feeble, almost foolish smile.
"Here, I hope this makes you feel a little better."
The man took my cup of coffee with trembling hands, saying nothing. He clutched the torn fabric of my jacket wrapped around the handle, his grip tightening as he brought it to his lips. In a hurried, desperate motion, he drank.
"Hah—!"
A hoarse sigh escaped him, as though warmth itself had seeped into his bones.
My eyes widened—I was startled. He had swallowed the scalding liquid in a single, reckless gulp. Yet, amidst my shock, a quiet relief settled over me. At least he had been spared the sting of the cup's burning handle. When he had finished, he handed the empty cup back to me, his rough fingers lingering for a moment against the metal.
"Thank you," he muttered at last. "But tell me… why would you care about me? You don't even know who I am."
A faint smile crossed my lips. The moment he expressed gratitude, something light and weightless stirred within me. A peculiar warmth—no, not warmth, but something akin to ease, as if for the first time in a long while, the world had acknowledged me.
"You're welcome," I said simply. "I saw you from the window of that office over there."
I gestured toward the towering, crumbling building behind me. Then, turning back to him, I spoke with a rare, unguarded enthusiasm:
"I don't know you, that's true. But you looked like you needed something warm. And so, I gave it to you."
The man smiled, then—an unrestrained, easy expression that lit up his weary face. Without warning, he rose, clapping me on the shoulders with a force that nearly knocked the breath from my lungs. His grip was firm, insistent, as if demanding something from me without words. Before I could react, he guided me to a wooden bench nearby, pressing me down onto the aged planks. I had no choice but to sit.
He lowered himself beside me, still grinning, the quiet morning pressing against us. The bench was old, covered in worn cotton fabric that had long since lost its softness. He barely seemed to notice me anymore. Instead, his gaze fixed upon one of the jackets from his stall, his fingers running absently over the coarse material. There was something strangely childlike in his fascination, in the way he examined it as though it held all the meaning in the world. And then, without turning to look at me, he began to speak.
He spoke with a cheerful tone, his mouth widening as he uttered the words, yet his gaze never once wavered from the jackets he peddled.
"I saw you tear a piece from your jacket to wrap around the scorching handle of my coffee cup. Tell me, do you always do that—surrender a part of yourself for the sake of others?"
I fell into silence, uncertain of how to respond to such a question. A strange hesitation gripped me, for I, too, wondered—why did I so easily surrender parts of myself for the sake of others? What was it that I truly sought? A mere flicker of recognition? The fleeting warmth of being noticed? An invisible weight stirred within me, rising like a tide, pressing against my ribs with a quiet, suffocating intensity.
And yet, rather than answer him, I merely offered a faint smile and nodded, firm yet wordless. My throat tightened, constricted by an unnamed guilt, a deep unease at my own reluctance to speak the truth. How wretched it was—this cowardice of mine, this inability to express what festered within me. I had never known warmth, nor had I been adorned with affection. And because of that, my emotions had become fragmented, irreconcilable. I could not grasp them, could not define them. I was a stranger even to myself.
At last, the man tore his gaze away from the garments before him and turned to me. With a firm yet not unkind grip, he seized my shoulder. His fingers pressed with a roughness that betrayed his nature, yet in his eyes, there flickered something—an ember of concern, a fleeting recognition of something unspoken.
"If you are truly like that, then I am certain—you will not endure the torments of this world with ease."
I was struck silent by the weight of his words. A smile, wider than before, stretched across my lips as I waved a hand dismissively—an attempt at nonchalance, as if I were someone well-acquainted with hardship, someone who had mastered the art of navigating life's perpetual turbulence, like a river that never knows stillness.
"It's nothing, Mister. I understand well… I know full well the suffering and tribulations of this world."
But the moment those words left my lips, disgust coiled within me. "Understand well?" What nonsense. What was I even saying? My mouth had betrayed me, uttering something my mind had not fully grasped. It felt as though my thoughts were no longer my own, hijacked by the ebb and flow of the moment, by the suffocating presence of everything around me.
And then, beneath me, I felt something—soft yet coarse, like fabric that had endured the long, weary travels of its owner. When I finally looked down, I realized what it was: a jacket. A worn, weathered thing, yet imbued with warmth, with the lingering traces of a life lived in hardship. I turned to the man, a quiet worry seeping into my gaze.
"What is this, Mister? You cannot simply give this to me. It belongs to you… Don't you fear the loss? Won't you regret this?"
But the man only smiled—that same impenetrable, knowing smile, as if the matter had long been decided. Then, with calm precision, he turned my own question back upon me, as though plunging a knife deep into my own words.
"And why did you give me a cup of coffee simply because I seemed cold? Did you not fear its absence? Did you not feel empty, hollow, without that black liquid warming your veins?"
My eyes widened. A cold grip clenched my chest, constricting the very breath from my lungs. His words struck something raw, something I had tried to ignore. I swallowed hard, desperately searching for an answer, but my tongue felt leaden, useless.
And in the end, when I did finally speak, my voice faltered—wavering, trembling with confusion, as though I were drowning in emotions I could neither name nor understand. The words spilled forth, disjointed and fragile, like a man reaching blindly for a lifeline in the darkness.
"To be honest, I don't know."
My voice, all at once, turned rigid—dry, as if my own tongue refused to grant me speech. Faced with such a question, I hesitated. Should I answer with honesty, lay myself bare like a man stripped of his coat in the dead of winter? Or should I, instead, shroud the truth in falsehoods, the way one wraps themselves in a tattered mantle to ward off the cold?
In the end, I said nothing. My expression froze, lips curving into a forced smile—a hollow, insincere thing. As if, somehow, the best response to his question was not words, but a feigned smile—one that concealed, rather than revealed, the emptiness within.
"If you continue to act this way—if you let such a way of thinking take root even deeper—you will become an easy target, ripe for exploitation by those around you."
The sudden remark shattered the uneasy silence between us, and for a moment, I faltered. His advice, blunt and unpolished, struck my ears as strange, yet it carried a weight I could not easily ignore. Without responding, I stood, gripping the gifted jacket tightly in one hand and the empty coffee cup in the other.
A faint smile crossed my lips—not of joy, nor of mockery, but of relief. A relief that, at the very least, there was still someone in this world willing to offer me counsel. I cast one last glance at the man, then turned on my heels, walking away toward the place where my existence was both sustained and devoured.
"Very well, Mister. Thank you for being my spokesman today."
The man merely nodded, offering a thin smile—a reaction so eerily similar to Herr Wilhelm Aldorick's that, for a fleeting second, I was taken aback. Both of them—so different, yet alike in this: their farewells were never spoken, only expressed in silent gestures.
And so, I walked away, toward the space where I struggled to keep both my family and myself alive. Yet as I did, something within me felt lighter, as if a burden had quietly lifted without my noticing.
With slow, almost reluctant movements, I opened the door and stepped inside once more. The air felt heavier than before, as if the walls themselves were witnessing my return, whispering in silence. And yet, here I was—back again, drawn by some invisible force, though whether by necessity or habit I couldn't say.
After i reached my desk, I placed the jacket I just got on its surface and sat down on my chair. I never thought that talking to someone—actually talking—could be so… relieving. When I reached for my quill, I saw that the ink on the tip had dried, lying dormant and left to stiffen in the open air, like an unspoken thought.
I dipped it into the ink once more and allowed my fingers to move. The first lines I wrote concerned the recent child abduction case—the one from last week. I sketched a crude portrait of the missing child beside the details, though my efforts resulted in a face with a crooked jaw, unbalanced and strange. Nevertheless, I was satisfied.
Moving on, I wrote about the weather—about the damp, melancholic atmosphere that wrapped itself around Violdigrev like an old, grieving widow. And beside the factual report, almost without thinking, I penned a small observation of my own:
"The skies over Violdigrev weep without end, as if the city itself mourns the weight of its own existence."
I sat there for what felt like hours, watching, listening, absorbing. My eyes drank in the world, and my hands poured it out onto the yellowed paper before me, shaping it into words, into images, into something tangible.
Then, at last, the clock struck seven. My work was done.
Carefully, I gathered the pages—each one an account of today's world, as if, by writing it down, I could preserve it, or perhaps, make sense of it. I placed my quill back into my bag, stacked the papers neatly, then held them firmly in my grasp as I pushed back my chair. The simple act of standing felt unfamiliar after so long spent sitting.
I made my way toward Ms. Bertha's desk, setting the documents upon its surface. For a moment, my gaze lingered on the empty chair she usually occupied. And for some inexplicable reason, I felt a heat rise to my face. Embarrassment? No… something else.
"Mr. Zaramov."
A voice—firm, clear—broke through my thoughts, snapping me back into the present. And there, standing before me, was none other than Herr Wilhelm Aldorick. The man of unwavering dedication, the master of precision and discipline, had chosen, for once, to address me directly.
I stared at him, momentarily at a loss. He never greeted me. Not like this. The unfamiliarity of it unsettled me, and yet, it stirred my curiosity. So, I answered swiftly, lest the moment slip away.
"Yes? What is it, Mr.Herr Wilhelm?"
Without hesitation, he turned his back to me, stepping toward the exit with measured confidence. And then, his voice rang out once more, steady and deliberate.
"Would you care to join me for
How tempting it was to accept. How simple it would be to follow, to indulge in something sweet, to momentarily forget. But the weight of duty—the thought of my brother, of my ailing grandmother—dragged me back down to reality. And so, despite the yearning that clung to my chest, I forced my voice into a gentle refusal.
"My apologies, Mr.Herr Wilhelm. There is something I must tend to at home. But… thank you, truly, for the offer."
And with that, he opened the door and departed without so much as a word of farewell. I hardly expected otherwise. By now, I was accustomed to his indifference, to that cold and effortless dismissal of my presence. Yet, as I watched him leave, a thought crept into my mind—had our roles been reversed, had I been in his place and met a man exactly like myself, would I have acknowledged him at all? No, I would have ignored him just the same, brushed him aside like a stray gust of wind—insignificant, fleeting, not worth a second thought.
I turned my gaze toward the scattered papers on Ms. Bertha's desk, letting my fingers graze their surface one last time before moving to my own desk to retrieve my bag and my new jacket.
And then, once more, an unexpected sound pierced the silence—a voice, sharp and unmistakable. I glanced at the fogged-up window, its glass thin enough to reveal the silhouettes beyond. Outside, a woman stood in conversation with Herr Wilhelm Aldorick.
"You look even more handsome, Mr. Wilhelm! That beard suits you well!" the woman praised.
I let out a quiet sigh, relieved. For a moment, I had thought something might be wrong.
I made my way toward the door, careful, deliberate, hoping its creak would not disturb them. When I finally stepped outside, I saw them up close, their faces alight with warmth, their words flowing effortlessly between them.
They did not look at me. Not even for a moment.
And though I should not have cared, something inside me faltered. I had no place in their world, no presence strong enough to warrant even a glance. It was as though I were nothing—some invisible specter, some meaningless speck of dust drifting in the cold night air.
I walked past them, slowly, deliberately.
And at that exact moment, as though the universe itself sought to confirm my irrelevance, they too turned and departed in the opposite direction, their figures moving away in perfect synchronicity, their hands clasped together in quiet intimacy.
"They suit each other well," I murmured to no one, casting my gaze downward to the uneven stones beneath my feet.
I walked on, down the familiar road that led home, beneath a sky so dark it swallowed the path ahead. And with each step, a thought lingered in the air around me—tonight, the night felt colder, crueler, heavier than it had ever been before.