Prologue
He appeared for the first time on Monday.
It was exactly 8:17 in the morning when the tram doors opened in the square and he stepped out. At first, no one noticed. People were hurrying to work, holding coffee cups and avoiding eye contact as usual.
But he wasn’t in a hurry.
He stood in the middle of the stream of people as if waiting. Tall, dark coat, hands in his pockets. Unusually calm. His gaze moved slowly and carefully across the faces of passersby — as if he were looking for something.
Or someone.
People only started talking about his presence in the evening.
“He’s here again,” the bakery clerk said quietly to a customer after the door closed. “After a year.”
The customer went pale. “I thought… I thought he wouldn’t come back.”
No one knew where he came from. No one knew where he disappeared to. But everyone knew one thing:
Every year he chooses one name.
And that person disappears within a year.
