from the stained, smudged window of the second-floor lecture classroom, his gaze — blurred with the boredom of a seminar on ten principles of economics — drifted over the uninspiring view that had become the backdrop to his intellectual captivity. directly opposite, standing like a grim defender, was a block of flats, a stark and unyielding railing made of cold metal painted black, with large glass doors leading to the tiny balcony where, if you tried, you could see a distorted, greyed-out version of the university itself. each balcony was a beige stone platform with a fragile, ornate fence that looked like a carbon copy of the others, and they held nothing but the ghosts of quiet nights. on some, a plastic chair was folded against the wall; on others, a forgotten bicycle tire lay flat and useless. but on one, several floors down, there was a splash of colour, the only defiance against the crushing monotony. it was a cascade of withered red flowers, perhaps geraniums, their petals now the texture of battered velvet and the colour of old blood. they clung with a kind of desperate vitality to the railing, each leaf a trembling fist against the inevitable, as if afraid to let go and join their brothers on the pavement below.

beyond the stark geometry of the flats, the land had its own, sadder life. a bunch of overgrown bushes, once a proud fence, was now a tangled mess of dark green and messy brown, their leaves already dusted with the mud from the nearby road. among them were the skeletal remains of summer blooms — flowers that had bravely flashed with colour just weeks ago but were now bleached and folded. their vibrant yellows and purples reduced to a memory under the harsh, metallic light of the early-september sky. this was not a gentle transition into autumn; it was a swift, merciless displacement of the last happy reminders of a warm, so familiar summer, which didn’t want to forget at all. the wind, when it gusted, carried a bite that spoke of coming frosts, and it knocked at the window frame near one’s ear with a soft, persistent whine. the whole scene was framed by a sky the colour of cornflowers, a vast, unbroken expanse of cloud that promised neither the pouring rain nor the false hope of sunshine, only the weary, indefinite continuation of the term. he found himself mapping his own internal state onto the landscape: the rigid, imprisoning structure of the flats was his syllabus, the dying flowers his own fading enthusiasm, and the vast, indifferent sky — amorphous future that stretched out before him, filled with a profound grey. it was a perspective that didn’t just reflect his misery, but actively worsened it, each dying leaf a silent confirmation of his own stagnation.