The afternoon light was slowly fading, swallowed up by an increasingly heavy sky. A gray mist creeped between the roofs, filtering the sun like a hand placed in front of a flame. The air had changed: it bore that metallic, damp smell which precedes heavy showers. G walked alone, her footsteps resounding faintly on the cobblestones of a narrow alley. She looked up, instinctively. The clouds were the hue of a raging sea. She quickened her pace, her breath slightly short, not knowing if it was because of the imminence of the storm or because of an older, more intimate concern. The rain fell, without warning. Large, cold drops, which hit his shoulders violently, then his whole body. She clutched her bag to her, almost slipped on the cobblestones, and ran towards a recess.
In the alley, water trickled between the cobblestones, drawing shining veins on the ground. A shutter slammed suddenly, snatched from sleep by a gust of wind, then fell back into silence. A gutter was leaking, punctuating the time with its regular drops, like a sad metronome. This humid and vibrant world seemed suspended, ready to topple over.
The wind blew in jerks, carrying with it the damp smell of bitumen and crushed leaves. G shivered slightly, looking up at the heavy sky. It wasn't so much the rain that troubled her, but the feeling that a cycle was ending, like the air itself held a promise that something was going to change. She then saw a small storefront with fogged windows. A bookstore. Without hesitation, she pushed open the door.
A discreet bell rang out, and the world changed.
The air was warm, perfumed with waxed wood and old paper. A hanging lamp diffused a soft, almost twilight yellow light. Silence reigned, disturbed only by the slight crackling of the rain against the windows and, somewhere, the distant rustling of a page being turned. G moved forward slowly. Her clothes were still dripping, but she thought no more of them. She felt herself pulled inwards, caught up in an old, almost forgotten tranquility.
At the bend of a shelf, an ancient globe rested, tilted, the ocean erased by dint of curious fingers. A wooden step sat near a wall, a witness to solitary explorations. Further on, a book with dog-eared pages was placed upside down, as if abandoned by a reading that had been interrupted for a long time.
The dust suspended in the light formed a light, almost golden veil, giving the objects an ancient dreamlike texture. Every shelf seemed to house an era, every corner a waiting story. The discreet creaking of the floor under his feet underlined the thickness of the silence.
She walked along the shelves, her fingers brushing the edges of the books. Then, in a corner of the room, his gaze met that of a man; standing still. He seemed absorbed in a book, but his gaze did not move, fixed on an invisible point in front of him. He was wearing a dark, slightly wrinkled jacket and a scarf carelessly wrapped around his neck. There was something rigid about her figure, as it contained a tension ready to burst.
G hesitated. She wasn't sure what had attracted her to this stranger. Maybe it was his melancholy look, or the way he held the book, his fingers clenched on the cover, as if afraid to let it go. She looked away, pretending to be interested in a nearby shelf, but she still felt his presence, heavy and magnetic.
A noise broke the silence: a book fell to the ground. G instinctively bent down to pick it up, but B was faster. Their hands did not touch, but a suspended moment settled between them. G looked up.
"His eyes were of a singular brilliance, like a flickering light in the darkness. They carried an almost childlike vivacity, but behind this brightness was a shadow, a fragility that she did not seem to want to show. B, surprised by this unexpected depth, remained frozen for a moment, as if he were reading in those eyes fragments of memories he had forgotten."
There he was, standing, frozen between two shelves. Their eyes met—just a blink of an eye, nothing more—but something passed. Not a precise emotion, not a definite thought, but an echo. A strange resonance. Then everyone lowered their eyes. G pretended to be interested in a book, B gently closed a collection. They had become two strangers in the same sanctuary, connected by a thread that neither had consciously stretched.
G, feeling the weight of this look, turned her head away slightly, her cheeks tinged with an imperceptible red, she straightened up, holding the book she had picked up. His fingers slid over the blanket as if to give themselves a countenance. Without a word, she put it back on the next shelf. But even as she resumed her movements, she still felt B's gaze, discreet but present, like a shadow on her back, a strange warmth in her neck, as the air behind her had become denser.
His breath had become irregular, and his fingers trembled imperceptibly when they landed on the edge of a book. Everything about her stiffened, refusing to name the emotion that was rising. The rustling of a cloak against the wood, the creaking of a heel against the waxed floor, all became louder, sharper, as the whole world had held its breath around them. In the stillness of their bodies, an invisible quivering connected them.
B, on the other hand, had not moved. His immobility contrasted with the imperceptible agitation that inhabited him. This moment had awakened something in him, a confused mixture of intrigue and apprehension. G's youth, the life that seemed to emanate from her, contrasted brutally with her own existence, marked by silences and absences. Yet he did not try to hold her back or to continue this fragile moment.
"I'm not sure I still have the right to interrupt the silence of others." – "And if I spoke..." What could I say that would not ring false? " – "She deserves a brighter world than the one in which I still stand, half erased."
For his part, G was moving through the rays, but his mind was elsewhere. Every step seemed hesitant, as she waited for another sign to appear. The bookshop had regained its calm, only disturbed by the creaking of the boards under his feet and the murmur of the rain outside. She stopped in front of a window, her eyes resting absentmindedly on a collection of poetry.
She opened it at random. A line caught his eye, half erased by time: "What touches us, transforms us." The words floated for a moment, then were lost in the fog of his thoughts. She closed the book as one closes a wound.
She wandered around for a while longer, brushing over the books without reading them, her gaze lost in thoughts that were too big. A ray of light filtering through a slit between two curtains traced a pale line on the floor, like a common thread that she could not follow.
A shiver ran down his spine. Was it the freshness of her still damp clothes or the presence of this man she knew was still there? She clutched her bag to her, as if to protect herself from what she did not yet understand.
Finally, she turned away. A deep, almost imperceptible breath accompanied him to the door. G left the bookstore when the downpour became milder. His body was still numb, but it was his mind that was struggling to get back on its feet. She walked slowly, as if to catch something she had left there, between the shelves. B, on the other hand, stayed a moment longer. He observed the trace that the young woman had left on the ground: drops, an aura. He didn't understand why, but he felt empty.
"What I left behind weighs more on me than what I carry." – "That look... I may never see him again. And yet, it is already with me. "I walk, but a part of me has remained frozen, there, between two shelves and a suspended breath."
He hadn't moved, but in his hand, the book he was holding slowly closed. It wasn't the end. This shared moment, as fleeting as it was, had marked something irreversible.
G walked slowly, away from the lighted window of the bookshop. The rain had stopped, but the air was laden with moisture, and every breath seemed to carry an invisible heaviness. She paused under an old stone arch, looking up at the gray sky that, despite the lull, remained threatening.
She took a notebook out of her bag, an old notebook with worn corners, and wrote a few words on it quickly. It had always been his refuge, a way of capturing the elusive, of organizing chaos. But this time, the sentences escaped him. How to transcribe what she had just experienced? That look, those shared silences, that strange impression that a part of herself had remained behind, somewhere between the shelves of the bookstore.
"I feel out but I left something there. Or was it me who remained locked up? "It was just a look. Nothing more. And yet... I would like to retrace my steps. Find an excuse to go back. But what can I say? This silence weighs on me differently now..."
At the same time, behind the fogged glass of the bookstore, B had not moved. He looked out, his blurred gaze vaguely following G's silhouette, which had become an indistinct point in the mist. He was still there, in this frozen space, as if held back by a force he could not name.
He returned to his book, but the words no longer made sense, and the lines, which he read and re-read, seemed to be slipping away from his distracted mind. He gently closed the collection and placed it back on the shelf. Before leaving the place, his eyes scanned the bookstore one last time, as if to look for a trace of this stranger's passage. But there was only the usual calm and familiar smells.
Outside, the damp streets reflected a hazy reflection from the street lamps. B walked slowly, his step echoing in the deserted alleys. Every drop of water that fell from the rooftops seemed to mark the rhythm of a thought that refused to be extinguished: her.
"Every step in this empty night seems to be looking for an answer I don't know." – "I feel like I'm chasing an invisible trace, like someone was calling me without speaking." – "What if this moment is just the beginning? A thrill of existence in a life that no longer trembled."
An invisible link: G in his thoughts
At the bend of a square, G had stopped in front of a small fountain. The stagnant water, slightly agitated by the last drops of rain, seemed to reflect his own thoughts: fragmented, elusive. She leaned over, watching her reflection as it distorted beneath the moving surface every moment. Was it herself she was seeing, or a version of herself that she no longer recognized?
Around the fountain, the benches were empty, drowned under dead leaves. A branch trembled above, shaken by a light wind. In the distance, the sound of a tram glided like an urban murmur. The world went on, indifferent to its silent pause.
Beneath the undulating surface, his reflection broke, recomposed, became another. She tried to read a direction, a meaning, but there were only fragments, fragments of distorted faces, as she tried to recognize herself in the water of a dream.
She thought of this man. Not by his appearance, but by what he seemed to carry within him: an absence, a shadow that she had not been able to name. G felt a curious desire to understand, how this stranger held a key, not for him, but for herself.
"Who am I becoming? This face looks at me as I should have answered it. But I don't have the words. "Why am I upset by such a brief encounter? There was something in his eyes. A wound that I recognize. Mine? I look for myself in the eyes of others. Maybe because I can't stand myself alone anymore. Am I as blurry as my reflection in the water?" – "I have to go home. I have to flee. I have to understand. Nothing makes sense."
The parallel: B facing his past
In another alley, B had stopped in front of a lighted window of a café. Inside, customers were laughing, their joy echoing faintly through the half-open door. This ordinary spectacle, which might have reassured him in the past, only created a void in him. He looked away, his thoughts returning in spite of himself to this strange encounter.
"I watch them, like a ghost stuck to the window. Their laughter assaults me, not because they are happy, but because I am not."
He imagined that he was going back, finding an excuse to stop her, to talk to her. But what would he have said? He was a stranger to himself, so how could he have been anything else to her?
He lowered his eyes, then resumed his walk. He saw himself again in the bookshop, his eyes crossed by those of this woman, like a fracture in his walled daily life.
"I no longer have a place in this world, or I left it without realizing it." – "She saw me. And I fled from that gaze as one flees from light. Should I go back? But for what? I feel old, worn out, much more than my age. There is something that has remained there. Maybe a part of me."
Return to solitude
Night was slowly falling. G, back in his room, put his notebook on the desk without even opening it. His thoughts were too confused to make clear sense. She watched through the window as the light of the street lamps reflected on the wet asphalt.
In the room, the lampshade projected moving shapes onto the wall. A candle was slowly melting, drawing a fragile line on the table. The ticking of an old clock beat like a discreet heart, recalling the passage of a time that nothing hurried.
The smell of paper, of dried ink, filled the space, mingled with the distant scent of a tea forgotten on the corner of the desk. G approached the notebook, hesitated to open it, then stepped back, as drawing a line would break the tenuous balance she maintained.
"I wish this perfume would calm me down, but it only wakes up what I'm trying to keep quiet." "The silence here is sweet, but it pushes me to listen to what I never wanted to hear."
She lit the little lamp in a slow, almost mechanical movement. The warm light settled on the shelves. His fingers slid over the familiar bindings until they came to rest on a book with a slightly worn spine. She opened it, turned a few pages, then stopped abruptly. A sentence, isolated in the centre, had just seized her like an invisible hand:
"Encounters are like mirrors. They do not reveal to us others, but what we are looking for in ourselves."
She froze. A discreet shiver went up his back. His throat tightened. She read the sentence again, then let her gaze escape through the half-open window. The outside was dark and peaceful, but she felt within her a contrary agitation.
She put the book down quietly, the lid barely shaking under her fingers. Then she approached her desk, hesitated, took a notebook and a pencil. His hand hung over the blank page. She wanted to draw. But nothing came. Not for lack of ideas — out of fear. She stepped back slightly, as if the paper was going to betray her.
She rose abruptly, walked a few steps into the room, stopped, turned round. Her breath had quickened without her realizing it. She relived the scene, the look of the other, his silence, the trace left. Why did that moment refuse to fade away? She looked for an explanation, a logic, but everything escaped her. Doubt gnawed at her: was it all just an invention of her tired mind? Yet, it was there. Alive. Insistent.
She returned to the bed, put down the notebook without opening it. She sat down, her head in her hands. A spectator, yes, that's what she had become. Witness to his own excesses.
She looked up at the ceiling, then slowly lay down, as if sleep could be a refuge. But she knew: he would be there too. That look. This presence. This impression. She closed her eyes without conviction. Darkness enveloped him at once. And with it, the fear of finding the inexplicable.
For his part, B entered his dark apartment. The room, half empty, was lit only by a small lamp at the corner of the table. He dropped on the couch, his hands trembling slightly. It was not because of fatigue or cold, but because of a restlessness that he did not yet understand.
On the coffee table, an old photo was placed next to an open book. He took it, watched it for a moment, and then put it down abruptly, as the memory had become unbearable.
One night, two troubled souls
The night set in full. G, lying in bed, looked at the ceiling, searching in the darkness for answers she couldn't find. The images of the day came back in waves: the rain, the books, that look.
B, on the other hand, sat down by the open window, an extinguished cigarette between his fingers. The cool night wind seemed to carry with it a strange mixture of calm and torment.
"Can you fall in love with a look? Or is it an illusion of lack? If I see him again, what should I do? Flee or stay? "I want to believe that there is a meaning to all this. But I'm afraid I'm lying to myself. I didn't choose this link. It has imposed itself, like an invisible evidence. Maybe we'll never see each other again. And it's up to me to carry this trace."
At the same moment, a gust of wind made a leaf dance in front of B's window, the same one that crashed a little further in front of G's door. A black cat crossed the street, indifferent to the world, unknowingly linking two solitudes that were still unaware of each other.
In a building further away, a radio station was playing an old Congolese song whose lyrics spoke of crossed glances and missed appointments. Neither G nor B heard it, but the notes seemed to seep into their respective silences.
Where everything seemed to have stopped for everyone, something had begun. An invisible, fragile, but inevitable connection had formed.