···He had old me about him going back home, how he saw all the people we used to hang out with. All of them had changed but the city remained the same.

···"It's amazing how that place remains the same." He said. "As much as people try to change that city still manages to swallow you up, even if you're only there for a few days." He looked down and took a drag form his cigarette. IT was his fifth since we started talking and the ashtray was beginning to fill up with ashes.

···"It's part of the reason I left in the first place. There's no way to change that city. Hell will always be hell, you cannot change that." He looked at me and my expression told him that I knew exactly what I was talking about. I had left the city long before he had and, although he does not know, it was for those same reasons.

···"You can never expect too much from a city, it has the buildings and people one will use to move forward. The city itself will never push you forward." That city seems to be stuck, visiting it ten years ago is the same as visiting it today.

···We talked about the trip, the one he'd made that probably wasted his time. Of how the people in that town that welcomed him so at first turned around and stabbed him in the back. He told that meeting me there was a relief at first but it was already too late, things had already taken their toll and the gears were already moving in an unstoppable direction. "Having you there was the best thing that happened to me even if we saw each other only as passer by. Seeing a familiar face somehow refreshed my days and, in a way, helped me remember that there are still people out there that are not hiding knives behind them."

···"People here are strange." I said. "It's as though they welcome you only for the perverted pleasure of watching you die afterwards. They believe that we're here to take their place when, in fact, we just want to find our own. Little do they realize that we want little to do with them." He looked at me and chuckled, some smoke came from his mouth as his lips open up for a laugh.

···"You have no idea how right you are, my friend."

···We were quiet after that. Our favorite bar was still pretty empty despite the late hour. Outside the weather was unusually warm.

···I guess the city had changed after all...