"Until Dawn Breaks" A pale corridor suspended before sunrise, haunted only by the fading echo of noise. Someone's everyday life once filled this place — the worn jingle of a key, words exchanged without a second thought, the warmth of people passing through. Then, at some unmarked moment, colour began to peel away and the edges of things grew uncertain. Clinging to nothing but the conviction of being here, a shadow presses on — step after step — struggling to hold its shape, to keep from dissolving. And the brighter the light grows, the more clearly the world comes back into focus, the closer that presence drifts toward transparent mist. In the eyes that gaze upon that faint boundary (awai — a Japanese word for the delicate, liminal state between two conditions) … I am still here. The street hums with laughter and light. But no one can see me anymore. I used to be part of this place. I poured coffee behind a café counter, laughed with friends, and believed in the future just like everyone else. Now I only walk. Quietly, unnoticed — only my shadow stretching across the ground. This city is slowly forgetting me. And I am afraid of being forgotten. More than losing myself, I fear that this "here" will disappear too. So I keep walking, day and night. Until I dissolve into the light…… Until, at last, dawn finally comes. ◈ Artist's Note Artist's Note: Until Dawn Breaks When I first began working on this piece, what stayed with me was a feeling — quiet and aching — of something almost gone yet undeniably present. A place that must once have overflowed with people, heat, and laughter, now lying perfectly still. I wanted to give shape to that rupture between time and space. For the composition, I deliberately chose a deserted underground passage — a wide, open corridor that reads as clean and calm at first glance, but whose complete absence of human presence quietly surfaces an inexplicable loneliness, a sense of having been left behind. The element I laboured over most was the figure standing at the centre. A plain black silhouette would not have been enough. To convey a being that resists clear definition, I deliberately distorted the contours of the face and applied blur and motion effects so that the edges of the body dissolve into the surrounding light. This indistinct quality is meant to capture two things at once: the desperation of a bodiless spirit striving to hold its own form, and the precariousness of a presence already beginning to bleed into the world around it. The more the outline softens, the stronger the feeling grows that the boundary of "what I am" is no longer something I can name. The words I placed alongside the image trace the story that might lie beyond each step. I wrote them imagining a heart swinging between the memory of once living fully in this place and the dread of gradually becoming part of its scenery. There is a figure that walks on, unseen, yet still resisting the terror of being forgotten. Its solitude is not simply sad — somewhere within it is a quiet will, moving toward the light of dawn. The stronger the light grows, the more transparent the presence becomes… I was able to seal that contradictory sensation inside this single print. If anyone who brings this work home finds themselves, in a quiet moment, layering onto it the memory of a landscape they once knew or a precious something that feels close to vanishing — that would be the greatest joy I could ask for. ◈ Edition This work is a limited-edition (1 of 1) giclée print from the Mystique In Enigma series. ◈ Keywords loneliness / ghost / urban decay / silhouette / vanishing / solitude / underground passage / surrealism / monochrome / ephemeral existence