“If you’ve done your toileting, we can go,” I say and turn around and start walking towards the car. Chloe runs after me in the darkness as if she’s running away from a mythological monster trying to jump on her. I hear the sound of gravel crunching under her feet and rolling down the slope. I slow my steps; I have to let Chloe catch up with me. And why this unnecessary rush in me? Now the night surrounds me through a delicate filter. A giant blanket of darkness has covered everything except the golden light beams falling on the ground at symmetrical intervals from the road lighting poles on the highway. The highway stretching in front of me is howling like a wolf. The hum of the forest and the creepy hisses heard from the grass are transforming the darkness into a talking creature. My ears hear strange sounds. I feel the hairs on my neck start to rise. My pupils dilate. Finally, I stop and turn back to Chloe. My right hand or my left hand? I wait on my waist. At the same time, a smile spreads from between our lips to his face involuntarily. I have no doubt that this smile that appeared on our faces on the side of an intercity highway in the deserted night; is due to both of us remembering the fact that I am no longer alone on this journey. It makes me feel strange: Because I had started to take this fact more and more for granted day by day. I suddenly go back to the years I was in Asia. In a small city in the north of Mongolia, someone named Bilguun had hosted me in his house. Whenever I wanted to say goodbye to him to set off on my way, he would say: “Let me cook you a nice kuus tonight, so you can set off early tomorrow.” A bottle of wine usually completed the table made special by the local flavor, and that room heated by the coal stove added grandeur to the moment I was in. Then, towards the end of a month-long stay, Bilguun started talking about the idea of ​​traveling with me. Since I didn’t think he could be serious, I hadn’t even considered it. Until that night when he fell on the pavement. We had spent that day touring the city’s tourist attractions. It was late. We headed toward the bus stop. If we missed the bus, we would have to walk home in the frosty Central Asian night. Suddenly, a panic seized me and I began to run at a speed that would outshine a hundred-meter athlete. The feeling of lightness I felt during the rare moments when I didn’t carry my backpack was also effective in this. I suddenly realized that Bilguun was not behind me. When I turned back, I found him on his knees in the fog, breathing in pain. He had fallen, the knees of his pants were torn, and the palm of his hand was bleeding. “You see, even when I am walking home in my own city, I cannot catch up with you and I fall. I am stupid, I am making plans to come with you in this state. What good can I do other than slow you down?” The last words fell from his trembling lips. Then he began to sob. Bilguun, who was quite tall, had broad and masculine shoulders that kept shaking. It was as if all the sensory processes in her had been imprisoned for years and now they were scattered around her face down on the pavement. I felt that it was up to me to put an end to this. I had to do something, at least say a few words. I was crushed by the feeling of responsibility. But at that moment, under the sky clouded by the coal stoves that kept the city dwellers warm in their homes, everything inside me had fallen silent. I stood motionless, like a street performer imitating a statue, over Bilguun. Suddenly, a strong sense of astonishment took over the silence inside me: How wretched a human being was. While trying to escape her own loneliness, she was trying to take refuge in someone else’s loneliness. When I woke up the next morning, Bilguun was doing her housework with a closed expression on her face. I noticed that the things she was doing were the things she had neglected since the day she had hosted me. This meant that the road was now visible to me. I shouldered my bag, shouldered the Tasseled Comrade and said goodbye to leave. I was sad, my inner world was in disarray. However, this was not the first farewell that made my departure difficult. Bilguun was not the first person I had to part with, nor was this steppe city covered in a cold fog the first city I left. CONTINUE IN THE COMMENT.