The dim street lights illuminated the little room full of papers. Someone in the dark equipped only of a torch was searching those archives.

“N… M…” he said scrolling his fingers through the old archives “P… Pa… Pe…”

No one had entered there in a very long time, this was the administrative equivalent of a dumpster, every paper was destined someday to come here and never turn back. Huge square houses named with letters of numbers were no one was sure what exactly they contained. You could really find everything there, from reports of apples stolen in the poor quarters to long discussions about paintings authenticity of the high quarters.

The walls had long lost their colour and rats feasted on the papers. There was no guardian, no cleaner, no one. He had even encountered a hobo that asked for spare change when he entered.

He tried many times to get the permission to consult this place, yet figuring out who was supposed to hold this place was far beyond its skills. No one cared or wanted to have the responsibility if something important got missing, so just abyss what responsibility it was under a one-hundred-foot tall pile of old papers written, for all he understood, in Sankrit, and you will be sure that no one will ever dare to call you about that giant rat mother who is giving birth on someone birth certificate.

He closed another archive, the document was not here. Passing the hole in the floor he broke another lock and started scrolling thought this one “A...B….C…” he had done this for hours.

He had to take a free day at work, less he would have to explain why this document was so important to him. No this was the right choice. No one in the department needed to know this. No one would ever know this.

His fingers stopped, this was the file. He scrolled quickly through the immense list, and at the centre there he was. Him, it’s old him, the one that he barely remembered. It was only a log of the passengers of a ship but that name, that single line, gave him a sense of peace, a sense of relief.

He exited the room out of the same broken window that he had entered and successfully returned home without anyone noticing him.

Once returned home he moved the painting that hid the safe, insert the combination, and put that file with the sketch of a church. If someone knew that he held those two things dearer than all his savings they would laugh at him, he knew. But those things were important to him looking at those two figures gave him some sense of identity, some sense of what he was and what he was to be.

He looked at the clock

“Damn! Is already 2 am!” He thought to himself. He went to bed in all haste, quickly falling asleep with much easiness because of his tiredness.