The decision didn’t arrive by walking.
It arrived by leaping.
It was the night before Christmas Eve, and Heraklion was loud, streets crowded, shop windows glowing, engines and voices overlapping like unfinished sentences. The city felt tightly wound, moving forward whether you were ready or not.
Inside his apartment, time loosened.
He was home, ordering food alone, with Zeus nearby, warm, solid, breathing. Zeus didn’t care about holidays or diagnoses or theories about reality. Zeus cared about presence. About staying.
Everyone else was busy in their own chapters.
One friend was far away in America, on his honeymoon.
Another wandered the city, waiting for his girlfriend to finish work.
His brother was making music late into the night, building sound on sound.
His parents were traveling in Holland.
No one had abandoned him.
Still, the apartment echoed.
The past two years had been labeled as illness by the world. Schizophrenia, they called it. A diagnosis meant to explain fractures, distortions, overlapping thoughts. Medication followed. Stability followed. Then came the quieter consequences: weight, blood sugar, numbers that needed watching. Prediabetes, growing out of survival.
But he had never fully accepted the diagnosis as an ending.
Instead, he gave it another meaning.
To him, his mind wasn’t broken. It was expanded. A structure like an apartment building with many floors, each one a different universe. Some floors were calm. Some chaotic. Some filled with rules, measurements, and careful attention. Others held memories, symbols, and beings that didn’t belong to only one dimension at a time.
He didn’t live on all floors at once.
He learned to move between them.
Tonight, he was hungry, not just for food, but for placement.
Two meals appeared on his screen.
Or maybe two elevators.
One opened into a warmer floor.
A slow-cooked rice dish, rich and grounding, meant to be eaten hot, not postponed.
A folded omelet heavy with melted cheese and smoke, simple but protective, like something made by hands that know you.
Rustic bread softened with tomato, olive oil, and tangy cheese. Bright, anchoring.
And a sharp, vinegary dish, old and assertive, reminding him that balance doesn’t come from sweetness alone.
This floor felt familiar before it felt understandable.
It smelled like kitchens that didn’t change.
It sounded like routines that survived loss without comment.
The other meal opened a different floor.
Simpler food. Lighter dishes.
Eggs cooked with tomato that carried his mother’s voice, his grandfather’s quiet joy, meals eaten together after loss as if continuity itself were medicine.
Creamy chicken rice that held childhood, and also the echo of a love that ended abruptly after four years, leaving behind a parallel floor where things had continued without him.
That floor wasn’t dangerous.
But it was exposed.
And exposed floors require energy.
He closed his eyes.
One floor asked him to feel.
Another asked him to rest.
He chose the floor that didn’t demand translation.
He didn’t choose with discipline. He chose with rhythm.
A little brightness first, like turning on a small lamp.
Then protein, like locking the door.
Then warmth, settling in while it still mattered.
Small portions. A pause.
Another step only if his body agreed.
Even the practical signs aligned. The restaurant behind this meal was old, tested, trusted by hundreds. The other was new, uncertain. This meal cost slightly less, not because one euro mattered, but because it echoed something inherited: enough is enough, and care doesn’t need spectacle.
Zeus lifted his head when the order was placed. One quiet thump of a tail.
When the food arrived, he ate slowly. He stopped before the plates were empty. He left some for tomorrow, not as restraint, but as continuity. Proof that this floor would still exist in the morning.
Outside, Heraklion rushed toward Christmas, switching floors constantly.
Inside, a man and his dog stayed where the walls were thick, the light was soft, and the noise didn’t follow.
The food didn’t cure anything.
It didn’t need to.
It chose the floor for him.
The familiar one.
The safe one.
And for that night, that was enough.
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