He was sitting on the L-shaped sofa in his studio apartment, his legs stretched towards the low table less than a metre in front of him. One eye was fixed on the screen before him; the other peered through a gap in the curtains covering the window that reached almost from ceiling to floor, looking across at the apartment building opposite. It was early morning. Perhaps the only light still on in the entire city was in one room of a west-facing apartment on the fourth floor of that building. But the strange thing was not that the light was on. For nearly two days—or, at most, thirty or thirty-five hours—it had been blinking at regular intervals of fifteen to twenty seconds. He had first noticed this oddity a day and a half earlier, when he had returned home after quitting his job. Perhaps it had been happening for much longer, going unnoticed simply because nobody had said anything. “Come on, surely someone must be curious. Someone must have gone over to ask about it, surely,” he muttered to himself. Then he turned back to his screen, sighed deeply, and put on his headphones. He made a few meaningless noises, as though to remind himself that he was still there.

“Don’t let it get to you so much. You’re very talented; I’m sure the first place you apply to will take you on in no time,” said the voice in his headphones. “I’ve never seen you get distracted this often,” it added. He had not expected quitting to weigh on him so heavily afterwards. So many things he had wanted to say to his manager—words that would have pierced his pride and dignity—had become lodged in his throat. It was as if those unspoken words were eating away at him from the inside, clinging to his throat and making it hard to swallow. His mind kept itself occupied by imagining what it would have been like to say them, so he failed to notice how often he drifted off. “Let me tell you something,” the voice said eagerly, enough to draw the other person’s attention. “Years ago, when I started an internship at an agency, I was given the same menial tasks as every other intern. I had a whole year ahead of me to learn the job and decide whether I wanted to build a future in that field. I left the decision entirely to fate. You know how people say, ‘Just go with the flow’? That was what I did: I let the days pass, one after another. They were so much like the days before them that I had to trick my own mind into feeling happy. I would set fake alarms well before I actually needed to get up, leave my phone on the other side of the room, and go to sleep. When the alarm rang, I would grumble as I got up and check the time. When I saw that I still had plenty of time before I really needed to wake up, believe me, I would climb back into bed and enjoy some of the sweetest sleep of my life. I don’t know whether that makes me an idiot, but for a long time this little trick made me unbelievably happy. Every day, I reacted as though I had woken up earlier than I was supposed to for the very first time, pretending I hadn’t been the one who set the trap. The days went on in their usual routine, while I counted down the seconds until I could go home. Before long, I realised that I didn’t actually want the job. You know how full of life I am; the monotony of that work would have driven even someone like me, after a few years, to search Google for things like ‘How many knots should a rope have? Which is the quickest? Vertically or horizontally?’ Before long, I found myself looking for a different occupation and another job. My internship had become little more than a small source of income and a trial run at life, during which I delivered documents from place to place while gathering information about other things I might do.

Then, on what I thought would be another ordinary day, a refugee was hired at the agency. He had fled the war in his country with his father and two older brothers, and they had come here. The listener was surprised that all the refugees were men and interrupted the voice, assuming there had been some mistake. “Are you sure they were all men?” he asked. “That’s exactly why I remember it!” the voice replied, clearly pleased by the surprise in the other person’s reaction, and continued: “At first, he won the staff over with the humble, apologetic smile of someone seeking refuge. In time, he became one of us and blended into the workplace. But as he grew accustomed to the job and the people, he became irritating, arrogant, and stubborn. He started acting as if we were the ones who had sought refuge in his country. I genuinely couldn’t stand the guy. I usually worked at the back or upstairs, so I didn’t see him very often; when we did cross paths, we generally argued. I called him a coward, and he accused me of being useless. I often complained about him to people who shared my views. I kept thinking how unfair it was that he had survived when women and children could have been the ones saved. I would bite my nails and pick at the skin around my fingers. Deep down, my resentment towards him grew every day, and I assumed he felt the same way about me.

One day, while the other employees were out on a break, I realised that he and I were alone on the agency’s second floor as I finished some unfinished work. We kept provoking each other with pointed remarks, as if we were waiting for one of us to go too far. My temper, combined with the recklessness of adolescence, must have got the better of me. I suddenly lashed out and slapped him hard across the cheek. For a long time afterwards, I would regret what I had done, and I would also struggle to understand his reaction. The force of the blow sent him stumbling backwards. He looked at me in utter shock, as though I had betrayed and disappointed him. I was expecting him to strike back, but instead he simply looked at me with tear-filled eyes, almost asking, ‘Why?’ Still angry, I began hurling at him all the things I had never said to his face but had said behind his back. I told him that his life had no value, that his father and brothers were cowards just like him, and that they had fled without caring what happened to his mother or any siblings he might have had. As if hurting him physically were not enough, I wanted to break him emotionally as well. He made it clear that he wanted to get away from me, then walked towards the stairs without taking his eyes off me. He descended one step at a time, turning his head only on the last few steps, when I could no longer see him. I tried to calm down by breathing deeply and returned to my usual work. Since I didn’t want the incident to reach my boss, I acted as if nothing had happened. I reassured myself that he would not want anyone to know about such a defeat either, and decided to ignore him.

The days passed, and less than a week remained before my internship ended. As the end of the workday approached, I began getting ready to leave. I switched off the machines I was responsible for, changed my clothes, and packed my belongings. Then I left work and took my usual route towards the tram stop. I hadn’t gone far when a familiar voice called my name from behind. I turned around: the refugee was following me. Unease spread through me like static. I wondered whether he might have a knife or some other weapon, and prepared to defend myself—or even run. But he was simply walking calmly, so I decided to wait. He stopped before coming too close and said he wanted to talk to me. I was astonished. I had expected a fight or a showdown, yet he wanted to speak to me like a civilised person and share something with me. How strange. I agreed, and we sat on a nearby bench. My words must have hurt him deeply, because he wanted to tell me his life story. I agreed to listen.

I won’t tell you everything he said, but I’ll give you a brief summary. He had actually enjoyed a wonderful childhood in his own country. His family was wealthy, close-knit, and loving, and he had been an excellent student with a promising future. But during the war, he lost his mother, father, and all his siblings in a single night. He managed to escape and found shelter with another family. The people who had come here with him were not his father and older brothers. The man he called his father was actually his former mathematics teacher: a sixty-seven-year-old man who had lost both legs and his wife, and who had two sons with intellectual disabilities. The young man had been devastated by surviving while his own family had died, and he had reached a point where he struggled to see a way forward. Yet he was deeply moved by his teacher’s determination to keep going, and decided to help him and his sons. He carried the man on his back for kilometres and promised himself that he would keep going until he had brought them to the border. Later, at the teacher’s insistence, he entered the country with them and took responsibility for their care.

His teacher’s determination to live despite his disabilities, the loss of his wife, and the challenges of raising two sons with disabilities inspired the young man enormously. It helped him continue with his own life and brought him to where he was now. I had never felt so ashamed of myself. I apologised to him again and again and told him how deeply I regretted what I had done. He had already forgiven me; in fact, he didn’t even bother thinking about what happened and had left it behind way long ago. I was beginning to admire him, and I sincerely told him how glad I was that he had found a reason to keep living. Then, as if he had suddenly remembered something, he turned to me and described a strange similarity he had experienced.

When the mathematics teacher lost his wife and his legs, he too had reached a point where he could barely imagine carrying on, even though he had two sons who depended on him. He kept reminding himself that their chances of surviving were very slim, and struggled to find the strength to face what lay ahead. Around that time, while watching the night sky, he noticed a star blinking at regular intervals. Whenever his darkest thoughts returned, the star seemed to blink faster; the closer he felt to giving up, the quicker it appeared to flash. One day, he forced himself to pause and remember that his children had never chosen to be born into this world or this part of it, and that they were not responsible for the misfortunes they had endured. Little by little, he began to put off any irreversible decision and to find the courage to continue. As he did, the star blinked at longer intervals. At last, when he chose to keep living, it stopped blinking altogether and remained fixed in the sky.

Meanwhile, as the refugee himself was going through his darkest period, he began to hear an inexplicable ringing in his ears. The more his distress took hold, the louder the ringing became, bringing on severe headaches. Whenever he spoke with the elderly teacher and managed to turn his thoughts away from the darkness, the ringing gradually subsided. In the end, just as the teacher’s star no longer blinked, the ringing in his ears stopped, too. “Just think about it,” he said. “The universe gives you a signal that grows more intense as you approach the edge, but you can’t understand what it means until you speak to someone who has experienced something similar and recognised it.”

He turned his head slightly towards the window and squinted as he looked across at the apartment opposite. The light in the room had gone out, and it did not look as though it would come on again for a long time. “Anyway, the point is, even if you were in the right, you don’t need to be upset about losing your job. You’re capable and hardworking, after all. Something new—and better—can take the place of what you’ve lost. These people keep living and find happiness, even though they can never get back what was taken from them. You shouldn’t let little things like this weigh you down. Life goes on, doesn’t it?” He agreed what the voice said, and he continued staring at the apartment. Only one question crossed his mind: why had the voice told him this story?