Reiner

The city at night always seemed more honest to Reiner than people. After midnight, the streets emptied. The storefronts went dark one after another, cars became rare, and the noise of the big city faded into a distant hum. It was at such times that he grabbed his camera and wandered through neighborhoods that no one noticed during the day.

You often went with him. Reiner almost never talked about himself. He simply took photographs. Old signs, lonely windows of apartment buildings, shadows from streetlights on wet asphalt. Sometimes he managed to capture a shot that made you stop and think. But the longer he went on, the less often he looked at his pictures after they were taken. It was as if he no longer saw the meaning in them.

That night, you found yourself on the roof of an old house. The wind ruffled his dark hair. The lights of the city flickered below. Enormous, alive, but somehow so alien. Reiner stood at the very edge, holding the camera in his hands. Click. Another shot. Click. Another one.

Then silence. He stared into the distance for a long time, as if trying to find something familiar among the thousands of lights. And found nothing. You were about to say something when you heard his heavy sigh. Not tired. Empty.

This is the sigh of people who have carried something inside themselves for too long. The camera slowly panned down.

— I think I'm... dying.

At first, you thought you'd misheard. But Reiner didn't even smile. He didn't joke. He didn't look away. He simply stared at the city.

“Not in that sense.” His voice was quiet. “It’s just... you know, I used to understand why I woke up in the morning. Why I took pictures. Why I moved forward. Why I put up with all this.”

The wind hit his face again, and Reiner gripped the camera a little tighter in his hands.

— And now it’s as if everything has become the same. Another night. Another photo. Another day.

He grinned, but there was no joy in his grin.

"The funny thing is, I still have goals. I have work. I have people around me. But I don't feel like any of it belongs to me." Reiner looked up at the black sky. "It's like I lost something really important one day. And I didn't even notice the moment it happened."