There is this café, two blocks away from school, that sells the only truffle cheese croissant in Paris. For a reasonable price, that is.
It is not excellent. But it is not horrible, either.
The croissant itself is uneven, if I'm being honest. The outer layers are flaky in some places, softer in others, as if the dough hadn't quite decided what it wanted to be yet. The truffle isn't strong, just a faint, earthy note that lingers more in the aroma than in the taste, with only a vague afterthought of flavor left behind, and the cheese melts unevenly across the croissant, sometimes rich and warm, sometimes barely there at all. Every bite tastes slightly different from the last. It is inconsistent. A bit sloppy some might say.
And yet… there is something about it.
Something about eating a handmade croissant like that—one shaped by hands that have repeated the same motion for decades, perhaps longer. Hands that no longer rush. Hands that don't need to prove anything.
The café itself has been there for nearly three centuries. Or so the old man claims.
It is run by an elderly couple. No children. No one waiting to take over once they are gone. Eventually this place will likely disappear with them, without almost anyone noticing. Like it was never meant to last in the first place.
It is not popular. Not even close.
In fact, it is rather run down. The wood along the walls has darkened with age, the chairs creak as if they were protesting when you sit, and the windows never seem entirely clean, no matter how often they are wiped. Its only customers are old people looking to escape the noise of the city for a while… or the occasional lost soul who wandered in by accident and stayed just long enough to finish a coffee. People who enjoyed a slow life without having to be pressed outside so the next customer could fit inside.
To find it, you have to pass through a narrow passage, half-hidden between buildings. The ground is uneven, roots breaking through old stone, moss clinging to the walls like it has been there longer than the city itself. It looks less like an entrance and more like a forgotten ruin. Simply the kind of place someone would hesitate to walk into.
That is probably why only regulars come, people who have stumbled into the shop once and decided to stay. People who enjoy passing their time in leisure, reading the newspaper while eating something small. People which are soothed by the sound of the soft bell above the door every time it rings, announcing someone arriving… or leaving. Those who appreciated the faint smell of freshly brewed coffee lingering in the air all around the cafe mixed with a soul-warming smell of freshly baked cakes, and with it the sound of the owner pressing the coffee, careful yet with masterful precision and force and his wife that stood next to him glazing a cake or rearranging the baked goods on display, watching artists doing their work.
And people like me, I suppose.
People who found it once and never quite stopped returning, not because it was good, but simply because it was… there.
Because it asked nothing of me.
I could sit in the corner, holding a croissant I didn't particularly enjoy, and simply exist in a space, for a while. One that didn't care if you were there or not. Watching the old couple move behind the counter—slow, careful, certain—as if time had long since stopped mattering to them. Another reason was: I simply didn't really have anywhere else to go. My apartment was merely a place for me to sleep in nor did I have any friends or family to spend time with, so whenever I had the chance, I came here, before they closed at six. It was one of the few places where I didn't feel like I had to drown in my own thoughts.
I never fully understood why I kept coming back. Perhaps I was trying to comprehend the "reason" behind this cafe. Maybe I was trying to understand the "reason" behind this place. Why it was still here, even though it barely made any money. Why people came at all, when the food was mediocre at best. Why the old couple kept smiling, day after day, in a place that seemed to serve no real purpose. It could disappear tomorrow, and nothing in the world would change.
So why?And yet, they were always there. Day after day, almost never missing one. The old man behind the counter, his wife beside him, moving in the same slow rhythm, repeating the same gestures, wearing the same small, warm smiles. I found myself watching them more often than I should have, trying to understand why they stayed, why they continued, in a place no one really came to, a place that should have faded away long ago. And yet it hadn't. They hadn't. There was something in the way they moved…almost untouched by everything outside, as if this café existed somewhere else entirely, cut off from the rest of the world. Like a small, sealed space. A quiet world of their own. I couldn't quite name what it was, but I kept coming back, thinking that if I stayed long enough, I might understand it, or maybe I was just hoping to feel the same—to sit somewhere the outside world couldn't quite reach. And before I realized it, this place had quietly become that for me too.
A place where I could tap into said warmth. The way the old woman would sometimes place one of her handmade cakes in front of me without a word, then stay just a little longer than necessary, waiting for my reaction. Waiting for me to say whether it was good. And I always told her it was. Every. Single. Time. Not because it always was, but because I knew she would give me that faintly warm smile when I said that it was indeed delicious, and somehow, that alone made the cake taste better.
And the way the old man, would watch my cup more closely than I did myself, stepping over the moment my glass got empty empty, refilling it before I could even think to ask. He then would, as always, drift into one of his passionate lectures about coffee: how the beans changed everything, how the grind, the pressure, even the water could alter the taste entirely. I never remembered most of what he said. But I listened anyway. Because it felt like it mattered to him. And in a way I couldn't quite explain… that made it matter to me too.
Still, there was this one time when the two of them seemed… off.
It was a windy, late autumn afternoon, the kind of day where winter slowly starts to make itself known. The days had grown shorter, and the trees were losing their brown leaves, their branches left bare as the wind tore the last of them away. They fell quietly to the ground, gathering in many layers, almost like they were painting something about the passing of time, about life slowly giving way.
The air was cold and heavy, pressing against your face, the kind that made you squint your eyes just to keep moving forward.
I was wandering through the narrow cobblestone streets of Paris, keeping to the tighter alleys where the buildings leaned closer together, where the wind couldn't quite reach as easily. The wide, open roads felt unbearable—too exposed to the wind and to the people… even more so.
I didn't really have anywhere to go.
Or rather… nowhere I wanted to be.
So I kept walking. Not with any real purpose, not toward anything in particular. Just moving, letting one step follow the next. Letting my feet carry me wherever they wanted me to go.
And then, without really thinking about it, my feet stopped.