Morning arrived without making the room brighter, and Fiab opened his eyes before the alarm rang.
For a few seconds he remained completely still, staring at the crack in the upper left corner of the ceiling. It was there, thin and irregular, the same familiar mark he had seen every morning for years; only now it looked different, not because it had changed, but because during the night he had looked at that same ceiling from outside his own body.
The memory returned slowly at first, then all at once: his room seen from the wrong side of sleep, his body under the blanket, his mother's hand passing through him, the street without temperature, the faceless elderly figures, the comic shop, the books he couldn't touch, and finally the pull that had dragged him back toward home, toward fear, toward his body.
He sat up. The mattress moved beneath him, the springs giving a faint sound, and when his feet touched the floor he focused only on that sensation: the cold surface, the pressure of his own weight, the certainty that something solid was holding him. He pressed his toes harder against the floor. It was stupid, but it helped.
The alarm rang at 7:00 a.m., and this time the sound startled him. He turned it off quickly and stayed seated on the edge of the bed, breathing through his nose. The room was dim; outside the window, rain slid down the glass in uneven lines, and the sky was no longer black, though it was not truly day either. A dirty gray light filled the street, weak and insufficient.
He got dressed slowly, noticing every small physical thing he usually ignored: the fabric of his shirt against his skin, the buttons under his fingers, the weight of his trousers, the friction of his socks against his feet. They were ordinary sensations, almost meaningless, but during the night all of them had disappeared.
When he entered the kitchen, his mother was already there. The television was on with the volume low, and the news anchor was talking about traffic, delays, public transport and flooded underpasses in the lower parts of the city. The images showed cars moving slowly under the rain, their headlights blurred by water on the camera lens.
His mother turned toward him. She did not ask immediately; that was her way. She looked first.
Fiab sat down at the table. Warm milk, dry biscuits, a slice of bread. Everything was in its usual place.
"You woke up badly during the night," she said, her voice calm.
He nodded.
"Do you feel sick?"
"No."
She studied him for another moment. "You were shaking."
"I don't remember very well."
It was a lie. He remembered too much.
His mother picked up her cup, but didn't drink. "You shouted in English."
Fiab lowered his eyes. Enough. He remembered that too.
"I must have dreamed something," he said.
"Must have?"
"I mean… yes. A nightmare."
His mother remained silent while the rain tapped against the kitchen window, not loudly but constantly, a thin and nervous sound.
"You can stay home if you don't feel well," she said.
He looked up, surprised. She almost never offered that, not for school, not unless there was fever, vomiting, something measurable.
"I'm fine."
"Are you sure?"
He nodded again. For a moment, she seemed about to say something else; then she stood, took his empty cup and placed it in the sink.
"Take the umbrella," she said. "It's raining hard."
At 7:28, Fiab put on his jacket. At 7:30, he left the apartment.
The landing smelled faintly of damp concrete and detergent. Somewhere below, a door closed, and the sound echoed through the stairwell, ordinary and solid. He went down the stairs without looking at the handrail.
Outside, the city had no edges. Rain fell in a dense, uninterrupted curtain, softening the buildings, blurring the shop signs and turning the asphalt into a dark reflective surface. The few cars already moving along the street had their headlights on, even though it was morning; the light was minimal, a pale residue trapped behind clouds.
It was 7:30 a.m., but the day had not truly begun.
Fiab opened the umbrella and started walking. Water struck the fabric above his head with a steady rhythm, while the sidewalks remained almost empty. People moved quickly, heads lowered and shoulders raised, disappearing beneath dark coats and umbrellas. Buses hissed at the stops, scooters passed carefully through the rain, and thin sprays rose behind their wheels.
The city looked as if the night had not completely withdrawn. Usually, mornings made everything clearer: windows lit up, shops opened, voices returned, and the city became functional again, almost reassuring. Not that morning. The rain kept it suspended.
Fiab walked the same route as always. The bar on the corner had its windows fogged from inside, the newsstand was open but had pulled the magazines back from the edge to avoid the water, and the traffic light reflected red on the wet pavement, then green, then red again.
At the crossing, he looked down at his shoes and watched water gather around them. Last night he had crossed streets without thinking about traffic, without feeling distance, without leaving anything behind. Now every step had weight, and every step made him late, wet and real.
He reached the school with his hair damp at the temples and the bottom of his trousers darkened by rain. The entrance was already crowded, and, as always, the cars were there.
Large, polished, expensive.
They looked almost wrong under the rain, too clean and too silent. Their windows were dark, their bodies shining beneath the gray morning. Doors opened one after another, and students stepped out without hurry, as if the rain had less right to touch them than everyone else.
Fiab slowed down. The elite group. He still didn't know why he called them that in his head; no one had taught him the name, and no one had explained the rule. But it was obvious. There were people in the school who arrived as students, and there were people who arrived as something else. They wore the same youth, the same jackets, carried the same books, but not in the same way.
Two of them were already near the entrance, a boy and a girl. The boy had dark blond hair, carefully combed, and a long coat that looked too elegant for school. He was laughing at something another student had said, but the laugh was brief, controlled, almost polite. The girl stood beside him under a black umbrella held by someone else; her hair was straight and dark, falling neatly past her shoulders. She did not laugh. She only watched the entrance with a detached expression.
Fiab had seen them before. Everyone had.
Gianni and Elena Rosha.
Their family name moved through the school without ever needing to be explained. Rosha. It appeared in conversations, then vanished. Teachers pronounced it differently, softer and more carefully.
Fiab entered the building. The warmth inside struck him immediately: wet jackets, damp wool, detergent, paper and old radiators. The corridor was louder than outside, full of students shaking umbrellas, complaining about the rain and pushing toward classrooms.
He reached his classroom and sat at his desk. Marco arrived less than a minute later, hair wet, backpack hanging from one shoulder.
"Terrible morning," Marco muttered, dropping into the chair beside him.
Fiab nodded.
Marco rubbed his hands together, then leaned slightly toward him and lowered his voice. "Look at those two."
Fiab followed his gaze. Gianni and Elena Rosha had entered the classroom, and that was the thing he never liked. It was one thing to see the elite group outside the school, near the cars, where they seemed almost part of the street scene; it was different when they were inside the classroom, under the same neon lights, sitting only a few rows away. They made the room feel smaller.
Gianni removed his coat and placed it carefully over the back of his chair. Elena sat beside him without speaking. She took out a notebook, a fountain pen and a thin book with a dark cover Fiab couldn't read from where he was sitting.
Marco leaned closer. "Gianni and Elena Rosha," he whispered. "They're really strange. And they act like they own the place."
Fiab looked at them again. Gianni was speaking quietly to another student, smiling as if the conversation amused him without involving him. Elena had not looked up from her notebook.
"They don't even need to do anything," Marco continued. "That's the worst part. They just sit there and everyone behaves differently."
Fiab said nothing, because he had noticed it too. The class became slightly more careful around them: voices lowered, jokes stopped before becoming too loud, and even the students who pretended not to care seemed aware of where Gianni and Elena were sitting.
"They're in our year," Marco said, "but it's like they're already adults."
Second year. Fiab sometimes forgot that they were all supposed to be the same age, or almost. Sixteen, most of them. Still students, still being called to the blackboard, still pretending to have done homework, still hiding bad marks from parents. But Gianni and Elena Rosha did not look like they were waiting to become something. They looked like they had already inherited it.
Marco turned toward him. "You're quiet."
"I slept badly."
"You look awful."
"Thanks."
"I mean it."
Fiab almost smiled, but didn't. Marco waited a moment, then lowered his voice again.
"What happened?"
Fiab looked toward the teacher's desk. The professor wasn't there yet, and around them the room was noisy enough to cover a quiet conversation.
"I had a dream," he said.
Marco raised an eyebrow. "A dream?"
"I think so."
"You think so?"
Fiab rubbed his thumb against the edge of his desk. The wood was scratched, solid and familiar. Someone had carved initials into the surface years before, and he pressed his nail into one of the marks.
"I was in my room," he said slowly. "But I wasn't in bed."
Marco stared at him.
Fiab continued before he could stop himself. "I could see myself sleeping."
Marco's expression changed, not much, just enough. "What do you mean?"
"I mean exactly that. I was standing there, and my body was still in the bed."
Marco looked at him for a second too long, then gave a nervous little laugh. "That's disgusting."
"It didn't feel like a normal dream."
"What did it feel like?"
Fiab opened his mouth, but the classroom door opened first.
The professor entered carrying a stack of books and a folder pressed against her chest, and the room adjusted instantly. Chairs scraped, conversations died, and Marco straightened in his seat.
"Enough talking," she said, placing the books on the desk. "Open your notebooks."
Fiab closed his mouth. Marco glanced at him once, quickly, as if to say they would continue later. But they didn't.
The lesson began. The professor wrote the date on the blackboard, and chalk moved across the surface with a dry, uneven sound. Outside the windows, rain continued to fall, blurring the glass until the city beyond became only a gray shape.
Fiab opened his notebook and tried to follow the lesson. He wrote the title, then the first line, and then nothing. A few rows ahead, Elena Rosha turned a page in her dark-covered book. For a moment, only for a moment, Fiab thought she was looking at him; but when he raised his eyes, her face was already turned toward the blackboard.
The lesson ended without ever becoming real to him. The professor's voice had filled the room for nearly an hour, moving from one sentence to the next with the patient rhythm of someone used to not being listened to. Chalk against blackboard, pages turning, chairs shifting, rain pressing softly against the windows. Fiab had written down almost everything, or at least his hand had, but the words in his notebook felt disconnected from him. Dates, definitions, underlined phrases: they were all properly arranged on the page, yet he could not remember deciding to write them.
When the bell rang, the classroom reacted before he did. Students closed books, pushed chairs back and raised their voices all at once, and the room became ordinary again. Too ordinary. Marco stretched beside him and leaned back in his chair.
"So," Marco said quietly, "about that dream."
Fiab closed his notebook. Not now. He felt the refusal before he thought it, a sudden sense that speaking about it inside that room, with Gianni and Elena Rosha only a few rows away, would be a mistake.
"I'll tell you later," he said.
Marco looked at him. "You always say that when something is actually interesting."
"I don't know if it's interesting."
"You saw yourself sleeping. That's at least a little interesting."
Fiab put the notebook into his backpack without answering. Across the room, Gianni Rosha was standing beside his desk, buttoning his coat slowly while speaking to another boy, smiling in that controlled way of his. Elena was already near the door, the dark-covered book under one arm. She did not look at anyone directly, but the students around her still moved aside.
Marco followed Fiab's gaze. "See?" he murmured. "Strange."
Fiab didn't answer. For a second, Elena's eyes passed over him. They did not stop. They only passed, and still Fiab felt as if something cold had touched the back of his neck. Then she left the classroom.
Marco grabbed his backpack. "Are you going home?"
"Yes."
"Under this rain?"
"It's not that far."
Marco gave him a look that meant he disagreed but didn't care enough to insist. "Fine. Tell me tomorrow, then."
"Maybe."
"That means no."
Fiab almost smiled.
They went down the stairs together, then separated at the entrance. Marco crossed toward the bus stop, already raising one hand to protect his face from the rain, while Fiab opened his umbrella and stepped outside.
The day had not improved. If anything, the light had become worse. It was past noon, but the sky remained the same dirty gray as the morning, and rain fell without violence and without pause, a steady curtain that seemed determined to erase the edges of the city. Cars moved slowly along the street, tires cutting through shallow water, while neon signs reflected on the pavement even though most shops were still open.
Fiab started walking home. At first he tried to think about the lesson, then about Marco, then about nothing, but the thought returned anyway: his body on the bed, his mother's face when she had asked if he was sick, the two faceless figures, the comic shop silent and perfect.
He tightened his grip on the umbrella handle. During the day, everything had weight again. The backpack pulled on his shoulder, his shoes struck the pavement, rain collected on the edge of the umbrella and dripped down in cold lines. A car passed too close to the curb and splashed water near his trousers. Real things. Annoying things. Almost comforting things.
He turned into the street where he had met the elderly woman the evening before, though he did not realize he had chosen that route until he was already there. The buildings looked different under the rain: pale facades washed out by water, closed shutters, narrow balconies, a pharmacy sign blinking green in the distance, a bakery window fogged from within. Everything ordinary.
Then he saw her.
She was standing beneath the entrance canopy of a building on the opposite side of the street. The same elderly woman. White hair carefully arranged, long black coat, sunglasses even in the rain and in the gray midday light. She held no umbrella, though she stood just beyond the rain's reach.
Fiab slowed down. For a moment he considered pretending not to see her, but then she turned her head toward him, not suddenly, as if she had already known he was there.
"Hello," she said, her voice crossing the rain clearly.
Fiab stopped near the curb. "Hello."
"How are you?" she asked. "Coming back from school?"
There was nothing strange in the words, and that made it worse.
"Yes," Fiab said. "I'm going home."
"Of course."
She smiled slightly. It was the same smile as the night before, barely visible and controlled, not warm exactly, but not cold either.
Fiab shifted the backpack on his shoulder. For some reason, he became aware of his own hand, the hand that had touched hers for more than a second, long enough for her fingers to close around his.
"Is everything all right?" she asked.
"Yes."
"You look tired."
"I slept badly."
The moment he said it, he regretted it. Her smile did not change.
"Bad sleep can leave traces," she said.
Fiab looked at her while the rain fell between them, thin and constant. He wanted to ask what she meant. He wanted to ask why she had nodded when he told her his name, and why he had felt something move inside him after touching her hand. Instead, he said, "I have to go."
"Then go," she said gently.
Fiab nodded once and started walking again. He did not look back immediately. He waited until he had reached the corner, then turned his head just enough to see her from the side. She was still there, still watching him. He faced forward again and quickened his pace.
What a strange woman, he thought.
There was no better way to say it. Not dangerous, not frightening. Strange. As if she belonged to the same city as everyone else, but followed different rules inside it.
Behind him, the elderly woman remained beneath the entrance canopy and watched Fiab until the rain and distance swallowed him. Only then did she lower her chin slightly.
"What a strange boy," she murmured to herself.
The words disappeared into the sound of the rain.
Fiab reached home with wet shoes and cold hands. The apartment was quiet; his mother was not there yet. On the kitchen table, there was a covered plate and a note written in her careful handwriting. Lunch. Study. Don't go out in this weather.
He removed his jacket and hung it near the door. Water dripped from the fabric onto the floor. He took off his shoes, changed his socks and ate standing in the kitchen without turning on the television. The food had almost no taste.
After lunch, he tried to study. He opened his books on the desk, arranged the notebook beside them and uncapped a pen, but for ten minutes he read the same paragraph over and over without understanding it. Rain continued against the window. The room was dim, even with the light on, and his eyes burned.
He told himself he would lie down only for a moment. Not sleep. Just rest.
He took off his sweater, lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling. The crack was still there, and he followed it with his eyes from one end to the other until the sound of rain became softer and the room lost depth.
His body grew heavy. This time, fear arrived before the separation; it was already waiting.
Fiab tried to move his fingers, but they did not answer. His breath became distant, not absent but far away, as if it belonged to someone lying in another room. He thought no, but the thought had no weight.
He opened his eyes and found himself standing beside the bed. His body was there, sleeping on its side, one hand half-closed near the pillow.
For a moment, panic rose sharply. It wanted to take everything, to drag him back into his chest, into breath, into heartbeat. He forced himself to look at the floor. The floor was there. He could not feel it, but it was there.
Don't be afraid.
He repeated it slowly, without words, until the fear lowered, not disappearing but stepping back.
The room around him was the same silent copy as before: the desk, the books, the chair, the window full of rain. But the rain had no smell, no cold came from the glass, and no dampness lived in the walls. There was only the image of weather.
He moved toward the door, and this time he did not hesitate. He passed through it, crossed the hallway, then the apartment entrance, then the stairs and the building door. Every barrier opened without opening. Every surface meant nothing.
He was outside again, and the city was waiting.
In the dream, or whatever it was, the rain still existed, but it did not fall on him. It filled the air with silver lines, soundless and endless. Puddles reflected the buildings without rippling. Cars were fewer than they should have been, and some stood still in the street with headlights on, empty or distant, like images left behind by memory.
Fiab walked. At first he stayed close to home because he wanted to test things. The idea had been forming in him since the previous night: there had to be rules, not clear ones, not yet, but limits. He could pass through his bedroom door, the front door, the building entrance, the shutter of the comic shop. All places he knew. Places that belonged to his ordinary life.
But did that mean he could enter anywhere?
He turned toward a small restaurant on the corner, one he passed almost every day but had never entered. During the day it smelled of oil, sauce and old wine; at night, metal chairs were stacked inside and the front lights went out. Now, in the silent rain, the restaurant stood closed.
Fiab approached the glass door. He could see tables beyond it, or thought he could: pale shapes, chairs, a counter, a mirror behind bottles. He stepped forward. The glass did not stop him, but the space behind it did.
There was no impact, no pain, no wall. Instead, everything lost meaning. The interior refused to become clear. The tables blurred, the counter stretched into shadow, and the deeper he tried to move, the less there was to enter. It was like walking into a thought he had not finished.
He stopped as a pressure built around him, gentle but absolute. Not fear. Limit.
He stepped back onto the sidewalk, and the restaurant returned to its vague shape behind the glass. Fiab stared at it for a long moment. So I can't go where I've never been.
The idea was simple enough to be believable. Maybe the night did not give him the whole city. Maybe it only gave him the parts he knew, the places his memory could hold: his apartment, his street, the school route, the comic shop. A map made of habit.
It made sense. Almost.
He walked again, and without deciding to, he took the road from earlier that day, the road where the woman had stood beneath the canopy. The rain continued in silence. Buildings passed beside him, gray and repeated: doorways, shutters, balconies, intercom panels, narrow windows. Most of them were dull, unfinished copies of what they were during the day. Some were so faint they seemed drawn in pencil and half erased.
Then he saw the door.
It stood on the same side of the street where the woman had been. He was sure he had passed it before. In the real city, maybe it had been just another building entrance, dark wood, brass handle, names beside the intercom, nothing worth remembering.
But here it was different. Not bright, not beautiful. More colored than the others. That was the only way he could describe it.
The door had depth. Its dark red paint seemed almost warm against the gray facades, and the brass around the handle held a low glow, not shining, not reflecting, but present. The frame was sharper than the walls around it, more complete, more awake.
Fiab stopped across the street. The rest of the building was ordinary. The door was not.
He looked left and right. No one was there. No faceless figures, no cleaning worker, no cars moving through the rain. Only the street and the colored door.
He crossed slowly. With every step, the door seemed to become clearer.
When he stopped in front of it, there was no name he recognized on the intercom panel. The small labels were unreadable, blurred into pale rectangles, and when he leaned closer the letters would not form.
He reached for the handle, then remembered that he could not touch it. His hand passed through the brass without sensation.
Of course.
He almost laughed, but the sound did not come. Then he thought of the restaurant. I shouldn't be able to pass through.
He had never entered this building. He had never visited this place. He did not know what was beyond the door. If his theory was right, the inside should refuse him. It should blur, flatten, become nothing.
He remained still as a faint unease moved through him. Not fear yet. Something thinner. Expectation.
He thought about the woman: her white hair, her black coat, her sunglasses in the rain, her hand closing around his, the pressure inside him after the touch, her voice that afternoon. Bad sleep can leave traces.
Fiab stepped forward.
The door accepted him.
There was no resistance, no blurring, no collapse of space. For one instant, the red surface filled his vision; then he was on the other side.
He stood in an entrance hall he had never seen before, and it was perfectly clear.