...The smell of distance. Evening was slowly settling onto the city’s shoulders, and the cobblestones beneath my feet made a faint crushing sound not outside, but somewhere inside my head. The sound of something old collapsing. Maybe the distance between imagination and reality.

I pulled my backpack tighter onto my shoulders. My camera rested in my hand, but I didn’t dare lift it. Some moments die the instant you try to capture them.

The city was loud.

But for me, there was only silence.

And inside that silence, one thing flowed.

A piano.

The same piece I used to listen to years ago, back when this place was only a possibility, when I would walk alone in my room and imagine myself climbing toward Piazzale Michelangelo. Back then, it was just a beautiful lie I told myself to survive.

Now the street beneath my feet was real.

The air was half clouded, half clear. Even the sky seemed undecided, as if it didn’t know whether this moment was real or still a dream.

Every step was a collision.

Between who I used to be and who I have become.

And the most terrifying part was this:

The city didn’t feel unfamiliar.

It felt like something I had left unfinished here long ago.

Like I hadn’t arrived.

Like I had returned.

Some cities you visit.

Some cities remember you.

And somewhere between the station and that first real step, I understood that some journeys are not movements across maps.

They are movements across fate.