Lena worked in the city archive, where the dust had its own calendar and maps whispered in the evenings. One rainy Monday, she put her binder aside and found a folder marked: The Street That Isn't There. Inside was a plan of the neighbourhood, on which an empty white gap between two tenements loomed. Someone had annotated with a pencil the date from half a century ago and a sign in the shape of a modest lamppost. That same evening, curiosity won out over reason, so Lena took the plan and went out into the rain. The city smelled of ozone, the neon reflected in the puddles and the trams dragged like unwilling whales. According to the plan, a nameless gap should have nestled between a button shop and a bakery. Instead, there was a wall with scratched plaster, and a sign flickering on the plaster, as if made of light. Lena pressed the map against the wall and felt a slight current, as if the wall was breathing through a thin sheet of paper. Her heart thudded, but curiosity pushed her as she aligned the drawing of the lantern with the crack in the plaster. Something clicked invisibly and the light from the puddles gathered in a streak that cut through the wall like a castle. The wall trembled and moved aside, revealing a narrow corridor that smelled of dust, malt and storm. At the end of the corridor a small lantern was lit, and beneath it hung a sign: the Office of Non-Existent Things. On the door, instead of a handle, there was molten metal stuck, cracked like a mirror that remembered too many faces. Lena withdrew her hand when she heard someone coughing in the darkness, and then a soft step, unhurried and sure. An older woman in a coat with pockets stuffed with letters emerged from the semi-darkness, carrying a key the size of a chisel. "You're seven years and five rains late." - she said calmly and handed Lena the key with a clink. "We don't have time for tea, the city's already counting it down to us because it's recovered a fragment it didn't remember." "If you come in, you'll have to give back something you think is your own, but has always belonged to this street." A low murmur came from behind the door, the metal vibrated and flared from within; Lena slid the key into the lock. The corridor clanged with a draught, a siren wailed somewhere far away, and neon lights went out in the puddles outside. "Don't turn around, though you'll hear your own footsteps behind you," the woman whispered, looking over Lena's shoulder. Indeed, a moment later, footsteps sounded, perfectly in tune with her breathing, foreign and exactly the same. The metal of the key was cold, like the first snow, and the lock pulsed with a light that seemed to count to three. Lena clenched her fingers, the air vibrated like the membrane of a drum, and suddenly someone on the other side moved the bolt.