On a hot and humid summer night, a pack of cigarettes is passed around in Parc La Grange. Three are removed. The first is lit from a match, the other two off of the first one. There is much talk, teasing, perhaps even flirting, as the hours amble along at the leisurely pace unique to warm evenings. There is nothing to do, which is to say the time is ripe to do anything at all. 
The neck of a bottle of cider is broken in an amateur attempt to remove the cap. The next victim (a bottom shelf pinot noir) is protected by a broken cork. After an exchange of choice insults another bottle is procured and entrusted to the only one with hands unsullied by wasted alcohol. A short but passionate struggle ensues, culminating in the bottle succumbing with a soft “pop”.

Celebration.

The pack of cigarettes went around between the three friends again, conversation deepening as the stars revolved overhead. To express the profoundness of their friendship succinctly, they were about as close as three people could get. Souls touching, the romantically inclined may say. In the midst of this great harmony, a moment of madness was followed by a sudden but firm decision. It was time to do something significant to mark a night “well spent”, by all definitions that may occur to one at the precious age where we feel unspeakably rebellious drinking in public parks on summer nights.
A plan was formed, the tools hastily procured, and they set out for 1 Place Museux.
The beading around a window was carefully loosened by a screwdriver. The bottom of the window pane was pried open and the glass set down by hands slick with perspiration. After making sure it wouldn’t topple, they holstered their bags and climbed onto the ledge.

One by one, they slipped into the darkness.

That window had seen many things, and teenage vandalism did not phase it in the slightest. The wall, even more so, and the ground it stood on, more than we could ever imagine - more, but perhaps less varied than we may think. There are things that change and there are things that do not, “people” firmly belonging in the second category, along with the morals that make them who they are. There have been great scholars who have drawn up any number of distinguishing features between right and wrong, and there have been greater scholars still who have understood that there is no line between the two. There only ever have been, and only ever will be, people and their emotions.
What of those who passed? It is said that they aren’t gone until there is nobody left who remembers them—but no memory fades completely. There is always a page with their name, a life they touched, a tree that grew from where they were laid to rest. Nothing is ever gone, just in a different form than the one we recognize it in. It is in these forms our circle of being is hidden, and there isn’t a centimeter in the universe exempt from it. The implications are colossal, but allow us to return to the part that concerns us—that is to say, people in people form—for now.
It is a common mistake to label a room void of humans as “empty”. Nothing is empty just because it’s not filled by people at that moment—if, for no other reason, than because their ghosts remain. Every single room holds hundreds, if not thousands of lives. They are in books, both in the lines and between them, perhaps even in the margins, telling their own story and that of others. They are in the smudges on the board, in the squeaking of hinges, in the patterns our daily lives wear in the grass. They are in the faded texture of the steps—countless generations of the same emotions, yet each believing themselves different. Is this good? Is it bad? Both and neither—why do we care?

There is one room, in particular, that holds three lives at the moment. They are crowded in a window in the old library, their spray paint forgotten in the bags dropped at the door. They have an assortment of books between them, picked for aesthetics rather than their letters. As the minutes ticked by the mocking of titles had gradually dimmed to thoughtful thumbing of the yellowing pages. Good print is like that. Words have value, they have weight, and it is a forgivable human error that we estimate these based on the heft of their type and the texture of their cover. 
Between the books and people, the air is thick with a secret. It smells like alcohol and cigarettes and cheap perfume, but also like old paper, fresh laundry, and the sort of leather reserved for nice belts and watches. It’s shaped like two John Hallyday tickets and crumpled in a pocket. But it could be anything—it could be a sailor’s valentine, a letter to confess before conscription, a stolen glance that says more than words ever could. It could be the joy of daybreak, the serenity of night, the stoic comfort of a vigil. It could be the calm before the storm, the catharsis, or the dust as it settled. Both condemnation and absolution, accusation and forgiveness in the same breath. It is the same secret over and over for decades and centuries and millenniums, and as long as there is the secret, nothing can ever truly be empty.