Nick awakened after a long, sleepless night. Haunting memories—always the same ones—kept infecting his mind. The sun rose, and so did Nick.

He had already spent too much time sidetracking. Letting himself float in his own river of pain wouldn’t help anybody.

There were no men’s clothes in his old house, so he remained in the dirty ones from yesterday. He didn’t have breakfast either, nor any water to drink.

“It’s going to be a long day,” Nick thought to himself.

He stepped outside into the sunlight. The combination of morning light and older buildings made the sleepy red-light district seem almost melancholic.

The beautiful glass windows reflected the sunlight. The bushes glowed a vibrant green. Even the narrow alleys with their cobblestone floors seemed pleasant.

If you didn’t know what a soulless place this would become at night, you could mistake it for just another part of the city.

“Dabeidu, Laleilu, Swingiligy…”

It was the drunk guy whose shadow resembled a blobfish. He sang while stumbling down the street—still drunk, or drunk again.

“Got any cash?” the man asked.

“No,” Nick answered honestly.

In the next moment, the man spit on Nick’s shoes and carried on, singing his way down the street.

“A looooooong day,” Nick muttered to himself.

Nick walked for about ten minutes until he reached the city center. There stood the gothic cathedral, beautiful and imposing. It was nearly 100 meters tall, with two massive towers reaching toward the sky. The central structure housed the largest church in the land.

“Religion,”Nick thought to himself. “They always call themselves pure, but most of the time, they’re no better than the rest.”

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His mentor had searched far and wide, explored every religion, and had been disappointed. He’d held high hopes, especially for the Buddhists, but even they hadn’t reached the level he sought.

Most religious people, Nick thought, only acted “good” because of their faith—faking every deed to feel righteous. They wanted to ease their minds when they did something bad. Others did good simply for the reward of a better rebirth. In trying to become someone else, they lost their own identity.

Meditating all day, hoping to become better than everyone else—it wasn’t real. Of course, not every religious person was that extreme; most used faith as a way to feel better, which was harmless. But sadly, it still wasn’t what his mentor had been looking for.

Nick sat on a bench near the cathedral, watching the shadows move by.

Shadow after shadow. Nothing changed, except for how much essence each person still had left.

And then he saw her. She was about 1.75 meters tall, with shoulder-length brown hair and glasses perched on her small nose. She wore a white coat and a black bonnet, black trousers, and white boots—like a walking checkerboard.

Nick didn’t have time to rant about her fashion choices. The fact that he could see her so clearly, so purely, could only mean one thing:

She hadn’t lost a bit. Not a single shred of her humanity.

She was still human, surrounded by a world full of shadows.

Nick jumped up, startling a nearby pigeon into flight.

He needed to know her. He needed her. But when he looked again—she was gone.

“What?” Nick looked around in panic. He had just seen a light in the middle of all this darkness, and he’d lost it.

How could someone be so incompetent as to lose light in complete darkness?

He ran in the direction she had gone. Nothing. He climbed onto a bench, hoping to see her again. Was he seeing things? Were his eyes playing tricks on him?

His heartbeat sped up, losing its natural rhythm. He was nervous. He was freaking out.

That might have been my only chance, he thought. And I missed it.

His breathing grew shallow, his mind went blank.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing!

“Is everything all right, mister?” a small girl asked him.

Nick snapped out of his trance, slowly pulling himself back to reality.

“Yes, thanks for asking,” he muttered, while the girl’s mother pulled her away from the strange, scary man.

The unpaved roads of his journey were always hard to walk. But maybe—just maybe—in this town lay the answer to his question. Or perhaps this was yet another wrong path, and he would have to keep traveling further.

All Nick knew right now was that he had to survive. He had to find that girl. At least, that’s what he thought until a pair of hazel eyes stared into his soul. The face as clear as a summer day smiling at him.