sol.ace_r

The clock was pointing to 3:17 a.m.
The streets were quiet, but not completely still.
From time to time, the sound of a passing car drifted in from somewhere, and the ventilation units on the outer walls of buildings turned with low, breathing noises.
The city was asleep, but not fully.
As if this city, like him, had forgotten how to fall asleep.

He was insomnia.
More precisely, it wasn’t that sleep wouldn’t come—it was that his body refused to sleep.
Even when he turned off the lights and closed his eyes, his brain did not shut down.
The events of the day replayed in meticulous detail, and scenes of a tomorrow that might—or might not—happen repeated in his head like simulations.
His chest beat strangely fast, his fingertips were cold, and though his eyelids were heavy, his mind stayed awake.

Nights without sleep were long.
He often opened the window.
In his fifteenth-floor apartment in the middle of the city, opening the window let the wind sweep through the room.
That wind was far more honest than daylight.
There were no airplane sounds, no voices, no music.
Only the wind, and the faint glow of headlights on the road below.

He sometimes thought this.

“Is there someone awake like me at this hour?”
“Is someone crying right now?”

Just thinking that made the loneliness feel a little lighter.
His insomnia had begun a long time ago.
At first, he simply stayed up late because nights felt too precious to waste.
Then, staying awake became a habit.
And that habit, before he knew it, turned into a malfunction.

Sometimes, lying with the lights off and his eyes closed, he wished he could disappear.
Not that his consciousness would shut off, but that his very existence would lose its force.
Without sensation, without thought—just scattering into the air.

But the more he wished for that, the sharper some part of his mind became.
A body that could not sleep made emotions clearer, and that clarity was closer to pain.

He hated himself for it.
Being unable to sleep didn’t feel like a simple physical issue;
it felt like proof that he had lost his way of living.

One day, around four in the morning, he went up to the rooftop.
The city was still awake.
The lights were fewer, but not extinguished, and a handful of windows in the buildings were still lit.
Those lights felt like isolated islands.
Leaning against the railing, he counted them one by one.

“One, two, three, four…”

He stopped midway through counting dozens of windows.
Some showed curtains drawn thin, others revealed dishes on a dining table, and in some, only the glow of a monitor shone brightly.

He imagined the stories that might exist within those lights.
Someone unable to sleep might be writing in a notebook in front of a laptop.
Someone else might be sitting on the floor, swallowing their sobs.
All those possibilities comforted him.

“It’s not just me.”

That sentence became the greatest salvation he could offer himself.

Insomniac nights blurred the boundary between reality and imagination.
He often slipped into conversations that did not exist.

“Are you okay?”
“You couldn’t sleep again, huh.”
“You can lie down here. You don’t have to say anything.”

It felt as if he could hear those words.
The fantasy of being understood by someone.
Within that imagination, he could close his eyes for a moment.
Even if he couldn’t fall asleep, that emotional rest alone was enough to help him endure.

One night, he went out into the streets.
Instead of sleeping, he decided to walk.
Sidewalks lit by streetlamps, empty crosswalks, fluorescent lights in front of all-night convenience stores—this was another face of the city at night.

Sitting on a bench with an iced coffee, he quietly observed the expressions of a few strangers.
Someone walked with earphones in, someone else stared blankly up at the sky for no reason.
One person sat in an alley smoking, and another laughed alone.

To all of them, he spoke silently.

“You can’t sleep either.”

And then he whispered to himself,

“Nice to meet you.”

As dawn approached, his body grew heavier.
But sleep did not come.
Even lying in bed, even with his eyes closed, some part of his mind stayed lit.

He asked himself again and again.

“Why can’t I sleep?”
“Where did things go wrong?”

Then one day, he suddenly realized something.
The feeling of “comfort” itself had disappeared from him.
No posture, no music, no light felt comforting anymore.
His body couldn’t lean into rest, his mind couldn’t let go, and all that anxiety kept repeating these wakeful nights.

Then one day, by chance, he took out an old diary.
It was a notebook he had written in as a child.
Inside was a single sentence.

“Night is okay. I like it when the world grows quiet and it feels like only I remain.”

He stared at that sentence for a long time.
The person he was now couldn’t nod in agreement.
The night now was too heavy—not quiet, but hollow.
It didn’t feel like only he remained;
it felt like only he had been left behind.

But the version of himself who had written that sentence had, at least then, loved the night.
That feeling had clearly existed.
So he thought again.

“Maybe someday, I can feel that way again.”
“A day when night isn’t frightening or lonely.”
“A day when sleep comes naturally.”

He quietly folded that thought away and turned off the light.
Even knowing he wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight, he closed his eyes.