Warmth was the most unbelievable thing in the darkness.
Barış’s fingertips were still suspended in the air.
Deep inside Derinkuyu Underground City. A low ceiling. Cold stone walls. Faint light. The white dog standing there.
Everything remained frozen exactly where Episode 51 had ended. Yet it was not entirely the same. The weight of the air had shifted slightly. With the distance between them still impossible to cross, it felt as though time alone had sunk deeply once.
The dog did not run away.
It did not bark.
It did not come closer.
It simply remained still, as though it knew that Barış’s hand was there.
Just beneath his fingertips was white fur. Under the underground light, its whiteness appeared slightly sunken into gray. In the light outside, it would probably have looked like a different color. But now, it was a color that could only be understood within this darkness.
Barış drew in a breath.
He smelled stone.
The smell of dry earth.
The smell of air that had been trapped there since the distant past.
It was completely different from the smell of morning bread in Göreme aboveground or the steam rising from tea at the inn. Here, everything was old and cold, remaining without making a sound.
Among all of it, only the dog possessed the present.
Barış’s finger lowered slightly.
The first thing he touched was the tip of its fur.
It was softer than he had imagined.
That alone caused something deep inside Barış’s chest to tremble faintly.
In the next moment, his fingertips reached beneath the fur.
It was warm.
He had expected it to be cold.
He had thought that everything underground was cold. The stones, the walls, the air, the traces of his father, the old letters, and the broken memories.
But the dog was warm.
It was alive.
Barış could not immediately accept that all-too-obvious fact.
“…You’re alive.”
He had not meant to say it aloud.
But the words fell softly into the passage.
The dog did not move.
It did not turn, pull away, or show joy. It simply remained there in silence, as though entrusting its warmth to Barış.
That only made it more mysterious.
An ordinary dog should have done something more. It would have become cautious. Moved its nose. Shifted its paws. Wagged its tail. Stiffened its body.
But this dog was different.
It did not refuse him.
It did not ask for anything.
It simply did not run away.
Barış could not take his hand away.
It was not that he had expected to understand something the moment he touched it. But he had never imagined that warmth without understanding anything could disturb his heart so deeply.
Behind the dog were three short scratches.
He could also see the small hollow beneath them.
The place he had noticed in Episode 51.
Barış looked at it.
Although it was the dog he was touching, his gaze was drawn toward the scratches in the stone.
His father’s map.
The scrap of paper from the drawer.
…afa.
/04.
It felt as though everything was returning from far away to the same passage.
But for this moment alone, it was slightly different.
The traces of his father were cold.
The dog’s body was warm.
The past and the present existed in the same place.
At the moment he realized that, Barış understood for the first time, at least a little, what he had truly been afraid of.
He had not been afraid of touching his father’s past.
He had been afraid that even after touching the past, he would still have to live in the present.
He had thought that finding the answer would bring relief.
But there were moments when, even without an answer, he still had to touch what was in front of him.
That was what this warmth was.
The dog blinked slowly.
That was all.
The movement was so small that someone else watching might not have noticed it.
But Barış understood.
It did not seem as though the dog had accepted Barış’s touch.
It looked as though it had known about that moment for a long time.
“You are…”
He could not say the rest.
It had no name.
There was no way to call it.
Because of that, he felt that nothing he said would reach it.
The white dog.
That dog.
A shadow.
Those were not enough.
But he still could not give it a name.
If he gave it a name, then, just as when his father had become Mustafa, its existence would suddenly become distant and real.
Barış was not yet ready to carry that weight.
Only the warmth remaining in his fingertips was certain.
Deep inside the underground city, distant footsteps echoed once.
They might have belonged to tourists.
It might have been the voice of a guide.
Or perhaps stone had merely made a faint sound somewhere.
The dog’s ears moved slightly.
Barış drew his hand back a little.
At that moment, the dog raised its head for the first time.
It did not bark.
It did not stand up.
It simply looked not at Barış, but at the dark passage behind him.
As though something still remained there.
Barış turned around as well.
He saw nothing.
A narrow passage.
Low light.
Stone walls.
Darkness.
That was all.
Yet from those depths, where there should have been nothing, he felt as though invisible time was looking back at him.
Barış looked at the dog once more.
The warmth still remained in his fingertips.
That warmth was not reassurance.
It was not an answer.
Rather, it felt like a quiet message that he would have to continue farther from here.
Barış lowered his hand.
The dog did not move.
In front of the three scratches, the white dog was still there.
He was not afraid.
That was what frightened him most.
