I began watching people after my father died.
Not out of curiosity. Not exactly. It was more a way to occupy space—fill time without direction. I would walk, sometimes for hours, with no destination. Everyone belonged to someone else. I liked that. You could pass by a hundred lives and never interrupt a single one.
At first, I only watched. I sat at cafés without ordering, lingered in train stations, noted the rhythm of strangers' habits. A man always checked his reflection in the window before boarding. A woman folded receipts before throwing them away. A teenager rehearsed arguments under his breath. I started taking notes. Not names—details. I didn’t want to know who they were. I wanted to understand what repeated.
I told myself there was nothing wrong with this. People called it loitering. I called it living near others without having to be part of their lives.
Eventually, I began following.
Not far. Just enough. Ten steps behind, never eye contact. I’d choose someone in the morning and let them guide my day. Once, I followed a man who visited three bookstores and never bought a thing. Another time, a woman who returned to the same alley at dusk, where she touched a rusted fire escape and left. That’s all she did—every day for a week. I never asked why.
I avoided the wealthy. I preferred the ordinary. The ones who blended in. I liked the way they moved through the world as if it owed them nothing.
But soon, watching wasn’t enough. I wanted to be seen—not noticed, just seen. I began leaving small traces. A cigarette lit where someone had just stood. A coat left draped over a chair I knew they'd take. Sometimes I left a phrase written on napkins or inside books. Nothing clear. Just fragments:
You were noticed. Someone remembered. What you do matters to someone who doesn't know your name.
I don’t know what I wanted from them. Maybe just proof that I could still leave something behind.
One day, I followed a man with a limp. He wore the same coat every day, walked like he was late for something that didn’t want him anyway. He didn’t look around. Not once. I followed him through side streets, past shuttered shops, across the bridge with the rusted railings.
He led me to a building I hadn’t seen before. Unmarked. Plain. He disappeared inside without hesitation. I waited. Ten minutes. Twenty. A full hour. He never came out.
That night, I dreamed of my father again. He was standing at the end of a long hallway. He didn’t speak. He just held the door open. Behind it: nothing. No light. No walls. Just absence. I wanted to ask him if he ever saw me—really saw me—but I knew the rules. The dead don’t answer. They only leave.
The next morning, I went back to the building.
This time, I went inside.