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Have you ever wondered what the most terrifying thing that can happen to a person is? No, not death. Not the loss of a loved one. Not even betrayal. The most terrifying thing is when something inside you—deep down, in that place you call your soul—*breaks*. Without a crack, without a scream. Just—snap. And that's it. One invisible click, and the world before your eyes begins to web over with fine, thin cracks. As if someone invisible has struck a hammer against the crystal dome that kept you afloat. And now those cracks spread further and further. Relentlessly. Coldly.
And then the cracks grow deeper, and the world shatters into thousands of tiny, sharp shards. They cannot be glued back together. They cut from the inside, but you don't even feel the pain—only a strange, viscous emptiness that fills every cell of your body like a cold, thick syrup.
Somewhere within this torn picture, a person stops seeing colors. It's not that the world becomes black and white—no, that would be too simple. The hues remain in their places: the sky is still blue, the grass is green, the wine in the glass is ruby-red. But your gaze slides over them like shop windows behind which there is nothing of yours. You look, but you don't see. You know it's beautiful—but that knowledge lives somewhere far away, in that part of your consciousness that no longer belongs to you.
Somewhere, he stops feeling. At first, it's imperceptible. He simply wakes up one morning and realizes that his favorite perfume—the one with the peachy notes and the tart, wine-like aftertaste that used to make him close his eyes and smile—now smells of nothing. He brings the bottle to his nose, inhales deeply, until he's slightly dizzy. Nothing. Only a faint, barely perceptible scent of dust and alcohol.
He looks at himself in the mirror—and doesn't recognize the face. There, behind the smooth, cold surface, someone is there. Some kind of shell. A broken mannequin, composed of a billion cells that still obediently divide, renew, breathe. His heart beats—like a wound-up mechanism, without asking permission. His brain sends signals: stand up, smile, pretend. But behind this rhythm, there is nothing. Only emptiness.
Kaveh no longer remembers the last time he tasted food. But even in this gray, faded existence, shards of old habits remain—useless, mechanical, yet the only things still holding him on the thin thread between "living" and "merely existing." He knows: you shouldn't drink wine on an empty stomach. That knowledge ingrained itself into his flesh before the world cracked. So first, he mechanically pops tasteless, rubbery snacks into his mouth—olives, salted nuts, a slice of cheese—chewing, feeling neither texture, nor saltiness, nor bitterness. And then he methodically drowns himself in tart red wine, which has also lost all taste, leaving only a burning warmth spreading down his throat—the only sensation that still manages to pierce through the cotton wool.
The Tavern Lambda. Kaveh has been sitting here for… how long? He's lost count. Probably the third hour. Or the fifth. Or maybe it's already night outside the windows, and he never noticed the daylight fade. The bar counter before him is dark, oily wood, scratched by hundreds of knives, stained by thousands of spilled glasses. On its surface are murky streaks, puddles of spilled wine, breadcrumbs. Kaveh stares at them, unseeing, and thinks that these streaks look like a map—a map of a world in which there is no longer a place for him.
To his right, patrons buzz. Their voices merge into one continuous, monotonous drone—like a swarm of flies over carrion. Someone laughs gutturally, someone clinks a mug, someone argues loudly about the price of spices. All these sounds throb against his temples like dull needles, but Kaveh stopped flinching long ago. He just sits, his heavy head dropped onto his folded arms, and watches how sunbeams—alive, insolent, colorful—dance across the uneven tavern walls. One slides along the sooty ceiling, another pauses on the brass counter, a third trembles on the tip of someone's finger.
He is an architect. He knows how incredible this is. How beautiful. He could mentally dissect this dance of light into patterns, into proportions, into the laws of refraction. But there are no more colors in his life. Not one bright, warm patch. Everything has faded, like an old photograph left in the sun. People pass by—colorful splotches, cloaks, feathers on hats. Kaveh doesn't distinguish shades. Only shadows. Only gray, black, and sometimes red—the color of the wine in his glass.
His gold earrings—delicate work that he once commissioned in a burst of inspiration—swing heavily when he turns his head. The rays of the setting sun—the same sun that is now slowly dying behind the dusty tavern windows, painting the sky crimson—touch the polished metal. And the earrings explode with reflections. Sharp, painful, beautiful. Once, this would have made his heart flutter. He would have caught that gleam, memorized the angle of incidence, conceived a new arch for a future palace, inspired by the play of gold and fire.
Now, his heart doesn't even twitch. It beats steadily—like a metronome counting down the time until the end.
Kaveh inhales deeply, with a wheeze—the smell of sour beer, roasted meat, cheap tobacco, and stranger's sweat fills his lungs—and buries his forehead back into his arms folded on the counter. His little, genius head, which once gave birth to projects that left clients breathless, is now filled with only one thing. Devouring thoughts.
The thoughts don't come to him as words. They come as images. Pictures. Here is his place at the drafting table, gathering dust. Here is someone else—young, hungry for fame—unfolding his unfinished blueprints. Here is Lambad wiping the counter where his glass just stood. And no one looks back. No one sighs with relief or regret.
*How long would it take to find a replacement for him?* Kaveh thinks, and the thought, slick as a leech, latches onto his consciousness. *A day? A week? An hour? Is there anything irreplaceable about me at all?* He runs through his skills like a set of rosary beads—architect, draftsman, poet, lover, friend—and each bead turns out hollow inside. Everything can be replaced. Everything. In this world, everything is a commodity. Especially people. Especially broken people.
He raises his head and looks at his hands. Thin, pale, with ink ingrained under the nails. Hands that built palaces. Now they only tremble when he lifts another glass to his lips. Where is that Kaveh who made marble weep with delight? He's gone. Only this shell remains, drinking alone in a tavern.
*Even if I am a great architect, it's only in words,* a bitter smirk twists his lips, parched from the wine. *Someone else will also build a beautiful palace. Someone else will also see the beauty of stained glass. Someone else will chase sunbeams across the walls—and that someone, perhaps, will even weep with joy. And then that someone will give the world something great. Unprecedented. But that "someone" certainly won't be Kaveh. Kaveh won't give anything to anyone anymore. He can't even give himself peace.*
Everything swims before his eyes. Glasses double, then merge back. The walls narrow, then expand, like the lungs of a dying beast. Kaveh doesn't know how much he's drunk. The third glass? The fifth? The wine lost its taste long ago; only the burning remains, and a crushing nausea somewhere under his ribs.
When the crystalline clink of the empty glass fades, Kaveh doesn't immediately register the sound behind him. A quiet sound. Measured. The click of heels on the floor. Shoes. Expensive. Confident. He doesn't turn around—he lacks even the strength for that—but from the corner of his eye, he notices a shadow fall across the counter. A green coat touches his shoulder. The fabric is cold, smooth, smells of wood and old books.
Kaveh struggles to lift his heavy, leaden head from the counter. His neck won't obey, the back of his skull throbs. Before his eyes—still the same murky haze. But through it, he recognizes this figure anyway. The gray mane that their mutual acquaintance once called “the nest of a sad parrot.” The sharp cheekbones. And the eyes. Incredibly beautiful eyes of the "Acting Grand Sage." There is no pity in them. Only calm, cold curiosity, like a scientist examining a strange specimen from his experiments.
Al-Haitham parts his lips—but Kaveh knows he's about to hear something caustic. Barbed. About Kaveh sinking to the bottom. About his genius mind finally drowning in cheap swill. About how only alcoholics drink alone.
But Al-Haitham doesn't get a chance to utter a single word.
Kaveh simply reaches forward. Slowly. Clumsily. Like a marionette with its strings cut. And leaves on Al-Haitham's lips a light, almost weightless kiss. With a taste of wine—bitter and tart, like wormwood. This is not passion. Not love. It's not an attempt to reclaim something or prove anything. It's simply… the last shard. The gesture of a drowning man grasping at a straw, already knowing it won't save him.
They freeze for a moment. The silence around them grows dense as resin.
Through the haze, Kaveh sees Al-Haitham's eyebrows lift slightly. Surprise? Possibly. But the Sage doesn't comment. Nothing. Not a single word. No mockery. No "you're drunk, Kaveh." Nothing.
Instead, Al-Haitham silently pulls out a purse from his pocket, counts out a few coins, and places them on the counter. The mora clinks against the wood—dull, heavy, like a verdict. Without asking permission, without waiting for objections, Al-Haitham hooks him—one arm under his back, the other under his knees—and lifts him from the chair. Abruptly. Easily, as if Kaveh weighs no more than a sack of feathers.
The world lurches. The floor disappears from under his feet, the ceiling flips over, the walls converge like a wedge. Kaveh feels sick. He squeezes his eyes shut, clutching the coat with trembling fingers—the rough fabric that smells of the life that no longer exists within him.
"Haitham…" escapes his throat, soft, pained. Almost soundless.
Al-Haitham is silent. He simply holds him tighter against his chest—so that Kaveh can hear the other's heart. It beats steadily. Calmly. Not a drop of anxiety.
And strangely, that hurts even more.
The cold wind from the street bites his cheeks as they leave the tavern. The night air smells of dampness, withered leaves, and the rain that never quite decided to fall. The tears on Kaveh's face—warm, salty—instantly turn icy.
With his face buried in Al-Haitham's warm, living shoulder, Kaveh hears a dog barking somewhere in the distance, the wind whispering through the gaps between houses. And he so wishes that this wind would carry him away. Just dissolve him. Make it so there is no more of this weight in his chest, this cold in his fingers, this dark, viscous emptiness.
His legs sway limply in time with Al-Haitham's steps.
"Hayati…" his voice breaks into a whisper, but in the silence of the nighttime street, it's audible. Too audible. "I want to go home."
These words are not about a house. Kaveh hasn't had a home—four walls and a roof—for a long time. "Home" is to where it's warm. Where he'll be accepted even like this—broken, empty, unwanted. "Home" is to where there is someone who will call him by name, and that name won't sound like mockery.
Al-Haitham is silent for several long moments. Kaveh feels the other's chin press against the top of his head—heavily, possessively. And there is no tenderness in this gesture. Only a strange, clumsy care from a dead language they've forgotten how to speak.
"You can close your eyes for now, Habibi," Al-Haitham's voice is low, even, without a trace of derision. "We'll be home soon."
And Kaveh closes his eyes. Wet lashes stick together. In the darkness beneath his lids, the world becomes simpler—no cracks, no shards, no eternal "who am I without all of this?" Only the warmth of another's body, the measured rhythm of footsteps, and the dark, sweet emptiness he so desperately wants to fall into, never to wake again.
But he knows: he will wake up. Tomorrow morning. Again. Inside—still the same crack, the same gray veil over his eyes, the same cold in his chest. And there will be a new day, and a new glass, and a new evening when Al-Haitham will come for him again. Because to someone, this broken, worthless, faded Kaveh is still needed. Even if Kaveh himself no longer understands—why.