The silent secret of the subway.

"Sometimes it's not what we give that counts, but whether we stop for a moment next to each other."

It happened in an subway, where there's always a draft and the sounds get louder. The echo of footsteps, the rumble of a distant train, the noise of the city that never completely falls silent.

A woman sat on a blanket against the wall. She didn't have a sign, she didn't ask out loud. She just held a thermos, empty. Sometimes she looked into it, as if hoping there was still a sip left at the bottom.

A man walked past her. He stopped, didn't speak right away. He took out his own thermos, unscrewed the cap, and the steam immediately rose.

"It's still warm," he said, more to himself than to the woman.

He poured it into a glass and handed it to her. The woman took it with both hands, as if it were fragile.

"Thank you," she whispered. She didn't look up, just watched the steam.

The man didn't ask where she came from, why she was here, where she was going. She knew that these questions wouldn't warm her up right now.

When she started walking, the woman said after her:

"It's not just the tea… it was also good that you stopped."

The man nodded and kept going.

The city remained the same. The draft didn't let up.

But a thermos emptied, and for a moment two people were not invisible to each other.

The stop.