The rain had been falling since morning—thin, deliberate, the kind that doesn’t ask for permission. Bern looked washed clean, its cobblestones slick with reflections of bicycles and yellow trams. You could smell the river from the bridge: cold, mineral, alive. Two people sat outside a café that hadn’t opened yet. The chairs were metal, the kind that keep the chill even after you sit.
A sign on the window said Kaffee ab 10:00, but the lights were already on. Inside, a barista moved like a ghost between cups. The man on the bench wore a wool coat, frayed at the sleeves. The woman beside him had her hands tucked into her pockets, fingers curling against the fabric for warmth.
“You walk a lot,” she said, watching a leaf circle the drain. “Is that your hobby?”
The man smiled, the way people smile when they’ve already heard the question before.
“Walking, yes,” he said. “But not the kind with destinations. I walk the way some people meditate. Step after step until the noise in my head quiets down.”
“So not exercise,” she said.
“No. More like—maintenance.”
A tram passed, and the sound dissolved into the rain. The air smelled faintly of roasted coffee and wet concrete.
“What do you think about?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Everything. Nothing. Sometimes it’s a sentence that won’t leave me alone. Sometimes it’s the way puddles hold the sky like a memory.”
“Doesn’t that get boring?”
“That’s when it starts working,” he said. “Boredom is the door you walk through before the world starts talking again.”
The café door clicked open. Warm air spilled out, carrying the scent of espresso and cardamom. They went inside. The windows fogged quickly, turning the world outside into watercolor.
The man ordered a black coffee. The woman asked for something with milk. They sat by the window, where the glass trembled each time a bus went by.
“You always do this alone?” she asked.
“Mostly. It’s easier to listen when I’m alone.”
“To what?”
“The city,” he said. “People’s footsteps. The sound of rain on roofs. The way light shifts when clouds move. It’s like the world’s heartbeat—soft, steady, always there if you stop long enough to notice.”
She traced a circle on her cup with one finger. “You sound like someone who’s afraid to stop moving.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But walking isn’t escape. It’s return.”
The café filled slowly. A student typing on a laptop. A delivery driver reading the sports section. A woman with a dog small enough to fit in her coat. Steam clung to the lamps. Somewhere behind the counter, a radio played an old jazz record, the saxophone threading through the air like smoke.
“Do you ever write about it?” she asked.
“Sometimes,” he said. “But I never finish. The walks are the writing. The world edits as I go.”
“That’s poetic.”
“It’s survival,” he said.
“And when you’re not walking?”
He smiled. “I cook.”
“Cooking?”
“Simple things,” he said. “Soup, rice, vegetables. Food that forgives you when you get it wrong. Cooking is like walking in place—you move through sound and smell instead of streets.”
Outside, the rain softened into mist. Cars left trails of reflected red light on the wet asphalt. A man crossed the bridge carrying an umbrella shaped like a crow’s wing. The city hummed quietly, alive but unhurried.
“I don’t really have a hobby,” she said. “Work takes up most of it. And when I stop, I just… scroll.”
“That’s not resting,” he said gently. “That’s drowning slowly in other people’s noise.”
She laughed, embarrassed. “You make walking sound like enlightenment.”
“Not enlightenment,” he said. “Maintenance, remember? The mind rusts if you don’t move it.”
“So what do you get from it?”
“Perspective,” he said. “When I walk, I move at the speed of ideas. When I run, I move at the speed of my breath. Both are ways of thinking. But walking gives the world time to answer.”
The café owner turned off the lights above the counter. It was near closing. The last customers zipped their coats, their chairs scraping softly against the floor.
The woman looked at him. “You make everything sound like it matters.”
“It does,” he said. “That’s the trick. The world’s full of miracles disguised as errands.”
“That’s a nice line.”
“It’s not a line,” he said. “It’s observation.”
They stepped outside. The rain had stopped, but the air still shimmered. Water dripped from the awning like seconds passing. The man took a deep breath.
“You smell that?” he asked.
“Rain?”
“No,” he said. “Clean slate.”
They crossed the street. Their reflections followed, rippling in the shallow puddles.
As they reached the bridge, the woman paused. “Do you ever get tired of it?”
“Of walking?”
“Of noticing. Of paying attention to everything.”
He thought for a moment. The river below carried a sheet of light, the kind that looks almost solid. “Sometimes,” he said. “But then I stop. I look around. And something—a bird, a shadow, the smell of wet stone—reminds me that the world doesn’t owe me beauty. It just offers it. My only job is to be awake enough to see it.”
She nodded, eyes on the water. “You make me want to walk more.”
“Then you should.”
“Where would I start?”
He smiled. “Anywhere. The moment your feet touch the ground, you’re already there.”
They walked together in silence, their steps syncing naturally. Behind them, the café turned off its lights. The reflection of the city danced in the wet street like a broken mirror reassembling itself.
As they reached the end of the bridge, a gust of wind passed between them, sharp and clean. It carried the scent of pine from the hills and something else—something almost metallic, like the first breath before snow.
The woman closed her eyes. “That smell—what is it?”
“That,” he said, “is the world remembering it’s still alive.”
life 
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