The Man Who Bought the Matches

Story  ·  Nara  ·  Jun 16, 2026

The city was not cold that night. Cold enough for a coat, not cold enough to remember.

He walked home the same way he always did — past the printer's guild, across the stone bridge, down the narrow street where the gas lamps left gaps between their light. He knew where to step without looking.

She was standing at the corner near the bakery. He had seen her before, or someone like her. A small figure, a basket, a voice that said matches in the same tone every night, not asking, not quite offering either. Just saying the word into the air.

He had walked past before. He did not know why he stopped.

He bought three. She named a price. He gave her more than she asked. Neither of them said anything about the difference.

He did not light them right away.

He ate with his family. His wife spoke about something with the neighbors. His eldest son had broken something in the yard. He listened, or appeared to. The matches were in his coat pocket, then on the shelf by the door, then on the small table beside his chair.

He sat at his worktable. The matches were there. He looked at them for a while the way he sometimes looked at a block of type before setting it — not reading, just looking.

He struck the first one.

It burned. Then it didn't. The room returned to what it had been.

He held the spent match between two fingers. Set it on the corner of a sheet of paper. Looked at the dark again.

He struck the second one.

In the light of it, he saw his hands.

Not as they were now — ink-stained, the knuckle of his right index finger slightly thickened from years of the same motion. His hands as they had been before all of that. Before the guild, before the house, before the name he had grown into like a coat that fit well enough. Hands that had not yet held anything in particular.

He did not look away.

The match burned down to his fingers. The small heat of it. He let it.

When it went dark he sat for a moment without moving.

He struck the third match.

In the light of it, he saw himself running.

Not toward anything he could name. Just running — no coat, on stone, breath already short. And he was looking back over his shoulder. Not in fear. The face he wore then had no fear in it. Something closer to the feeling of not wanting to leave something behind. Of moving forward anyway.

He could not see what he was looking back at.

The match burned toward his fingers.

He touched it to the candle before it went out.

The candle held. He watched it for a while. The flame did not show him anything more. Or perhaps it did, and he was already too tired to hold onto it.

When the light came through the window, he was still in the chair.

The candle had burned most of the way down. The three spent matches lay on the corner of the paper where he had placed them. The room smelled faintly of sulfur and wax.

He sat for a while with his hands in his lap.

He did not yet know what he would do with the matches. He did not throw them away. He did not move them. They stayed where they were, on the edge of the paper, three small black lines.

He would have to be at the print shop by seven.

He sat a little longer.

Outside, the city was beginning.