Autumn had finally arrived — that peculiar season when Scandinavia’s relationship with the sun soured into something cold and avoidant. The sky dulled into an endless, oppressive sheet of grey, and the daylight shrank into thin, stingy slivers that barely clung to the edges of the day. There was a kind of silence to it all — not peaceful, but sterile. As much as Mary hated to admit it, he did miss the sun.

He wasn’t the poetic type — not usually. He’d always rolled his eyes at those who claimed to feel things in the weather, who wrote songs about the wind or the way rain sounded on rooftops. That wasn’t him. But after nearly a week of uninterrupted cloud cover, he could feel something shift inside. It wasn’t dramatic or cinematic. Just... off. Like a low, persistent hum of discomfort running somewhere beneath his skin.

“It’s just science,” he muttered to himself once, half-heartedly. Vitamin D deficiency, seasonal affective disorder — there was probably a diagnosis for it. That explanation suited him. It was tidy, clinical. Logical. He nodded as if that settled it.

But deep down, Mary knew it wasn’t really about the sun. Not entirely.

He just didn’t like thinking too hard about his own mental state. Introspection was a rabbit hole, and he’d never seen the point in crawling down it. Why bother? There were better, louder things to care about — like his band, repugnant. They were loud and fast and filthy in all the right ways. There was purpose in the noise.

Mary didn’t make space in his life for emotional maintenance. If he wasn’t rehearsing, performing, or getting wrecked with his bandmates, he was in bed, curled up under his blanket, facing the wall while a cooking show he wasn’t watching murmured in the background. That was what he called a “day off.”

He wasn’t depressed, he told himself. He was just tired. Relaxing. Decompressing. That was his justification — and it sounded fine in his head, so he left it at that.

That night, it was late — probably around 9:30 p.m. — and he was out back behind the venue, helping pack the band’s gear into the van. The air was sharp with the smell of rain-soaked pavement and cigarette smoke, and his fingers were stiff from the chill. The others were still buzzing from the show, voices overlapping in bursts of laughter and half-remembered jokes. Mary kept his head down, methodically coiling cables, his expression blank and unreadable.

He wasn’t upset. Not angry. Not even sad, not exactly. Just quiet. Disconnected, maybe — like someone had dialed down the volume on the world and left him watching it through glass.

But then, once the last amp was loaded and the van doors slammed shut, something inside him clicked back on. It was subtle — like flicking a switch in a dim room — but he felt it. A small flicker of presence. The guys offered him a drink or a ride home — both easy exits. He could’ve called it a night right then. No one would’ve blamed him.

Instead, he chose the bar.

Inside, it was warm and loud — a stark contrast to the cold parking lot outside. His friends slid into a booth, all elbows and inside jokes, but within thirty minutes they were off again, scattered across the bar, leaning into the company of a group of girls laughing too loudly near the jukebox.

Left alone, Mary stood. Slowly. Then, with a strange kind of deliberate calm, he began weaving his way through the crowd, shoulder brushing shoulder, until he reached the bar counter. He didn’t know what he was looking for. Maybe just a drink. Maybe just a moment where he didn’t have to pretend he was completely fine.

Maybe just... quiet, somewhere else.