VAILLANT

At nite, the city breathes anxiously - as if someone left the light on in the kitchen and never came back. Everything here is permeated with weariness and anger, mixed with smoke and the hope that tomorrow will be just a little bit easier. It doesn't matter if they don't believe it, if they judge - everyone carries their own scars, and no one knows which ones are old and which are fresh. In every word, there's the weight of the streets where principles, not people, sleep. Where friendship is tested not by time, but by prison sentences. Where weariness hides under the armor of irony, and conscience under a hood. And yet, somewhere in this gray mist, a pulse can be heard - steady, persistent, alive. One that won't let you lie down for good until all a hundred cash registers are "coffered," until it's proven that you can survive even if you sleep standing up and think on the run.