The thick cover of darkness was where people's fears and insecurities came out to play.
In the dead of night, a man shuffled anxiously around a dimly lit room, his movements sharp and hurried. He frantically shoved his belongings—clothes, a pair of worn sandals, his mother's old diaries—into a rough, patched bag he had taken from one of the food storage rooms earlier that evening. He didn't bother to pack everything he owned, just the ones he could carry along with him while he made his escape.
The room he stood in had been his for years, yet it had never truly felt like it belonged to him. The thin straw mattress in the corner, the cracked plaster walls, the lone wooden stool by the window, everything about it spoke of a temporary existence.
