コルテイン

The bridge did not feel like a place meant to be crossed.

It stretched too far in both directions, dissolving into a pale horizon where the water and sky had already begun to forget each other. We stood there for a while without moving, as if stepping forward might disturb something beneath us. When I asked how far it was—between one shore and the other—the answer came quietly, almost without shape.

Not far.

It didn’t sound reassuring. It sounded like distance had stopped meaning anything.

You appeared after that, not all at once, but in pieces. First the sense of being watched, then the outline of a face that didn’t quite settle into place. Your features were soft in the wrong way, as if they had been remembered incorrectly. The eyes were the only part that stayed—wide, reflective, taking in more than the space could offer. I had the feeling they weren’t looking at me, but through me, toward something that had already passed.

We decided to meet halfway, though neither of us knew where halfway was. The bridge gave no markers, only repetition. Still, there was a place—there always is in these kinds of nights—where the structure opened inward. A restaurant, if that word still applied. It felt less like entering a building and more like stepping behind a surface.

Inside, the air carried a quiet hum. Not noise, exactly—something closer to the residue of movement. There was a machine near the center, tall and lit from within, its glass reflecting things that weren’t present. It dispensed drinks, but no one seemed to approach it directly. People drifted around it instead, as if orbiting.

We moved between levels without noticing the transitions. Stairs appeared where they were needed, then disappeared behind us. The walls were covered in unfinished work—paintings that stopped mid-thought, sketches that felt like they had been abandoned at the moment they became too honest. It was all held together by a kind of fragile intent, like the space would collapse if no one kept creating inside it.

Rain pressed itself against the windows, steady and patient. It flattened the outside world into a single tone, something distant and unreachable. We ate, or at least went through the motions of it. The taste didn’t stay long enough to matter.

Somewhere deeper in, I found the room.

It belonged to someone younger, though that word didn’t quite fit. The space was square, almost carefully so, like it had been measured against something invisible. An old television flickered in the corner, its light soft and inconsistent, casting shadows that didn’t align with anything in the room. The artist sat nearby, not working, just watching the screen as if waiting for it to remember what it was supposed to show.

Through the window behind them, there was a field.

It stretched out farther than it should have, a quiet green under a sky that hadn’t decided what it was becoming. Everything looked paused, held just before a shift. And then, from somewhere beyond the frame, a dog wandered into view.

Its fur was heavy with mud, darkened to the point of near-black. It moved slowly, not limping, but carrying a kind of weight that didn’t belong to its body. It stopped near the center of the field and looked toward the building—not directly at the window, but close enough to feel intentional.

There was something familiar in it. Not recognition, exactly. More like the echo of something that had once been known, then left behind without ceremony.

No one spoke.