The taxi dropped him at the edge of the old quarter, where the streetlights gave up. He walked the last block alone, over cobbles slick with recent rain, past shuttered windows that seemed to breathe.
He walked home. The city was asleep. The windows were all dark. But now he knew: behind every dark window, someone else was also just returning, also feeling the phantom weight of a second mask they'd only just learned to see. eye wide shut
Outside, later, the rain had stopped. He stood under a working streetlamp, watching his breath cloud. He still wore his mask. He wasn't sure anymore which side was the inside. The taxi dropped him at the edge of
He whispered it. The slot closed. Bolts turned. The city was asleep
He looked. A man in a black mask wept silently. A woman touched her own throat as if checking for a pulse. In the corner, someone held a mask in both hands — the mask he'd arrived wearing — and slowly, without ceremony, put it on over the first.
They circled the room. On a dais, a ritual he couldn't name was unfolding — slow, deliberate, not quite a dance, not quite a prayer. The guests watched with the stillness of those who have stopped pretending to be shocked.