The Enchanted Wilted Cabbage Shop

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Tucked between two streets unmarked on any map lies a shop you'll only find if you're not looking for it. Its facade is crooked, the sign above it half-weathered, and the name—"Wilted Cabbage Shop"—seems more like a joke than a business. And yet, anyone who passes through its creaking door enters not a greengrocer, but a world of faded magic and yellowed possibilities. The owner? A certain Mr. Fendelbaum, formerly a third-degree herbal illusionist. His smock is covered in mustard stains, his glasses so thick you can see his thoughts reflected in them. But his gaze—oh, his gaze—shines like the last glimmer of a star that can't decide whether to go out or explode. The shop smells of tea, old books, and cabbage that's never quite fresh, but never quite rotten either. The shelves are overflowing with things no one needs, but everyone has missed at some point: a disheveled notebook containing the dreams of a vanished poet, a pair of boots that slip away in their sleep, and a bottle of "once fragrant mist from the morning of the day before yesterday." In the middle of the room stands—like an old king on a vegetable pedestal—the cabbage. Not fresh. Not dead. But... pensive. Fendelbaum sometimes gently strokes its outer leaves. "He's still thinking," he says then. "You have to let him." But what no one knows: The Wilted Cabbage Shop doesn't sell goods. It sells moods. Shadows of memories. Forgotten desires. If you bring the right perspective—slightly slanted, half backward, with a touch of melancholy—a small shelf opens up between the cabbages, neatly packed with what you thought was long lost. A woman once came to find her smile again.
A boy was searching for the last summer day of his childhood.
And a watchmaker bought, for a moment, the sound his late wife always made when she cleared her throat in the kitchen. Fendelbaum never asks for money. Only a word you've never spoken. Or a sigh you've held back too many times. You pay with what lies between the lines. In the evening, when the lights outside grow dim, Fendelbaum closes the door. Then he sits on a stool that constantly tries to forget that it's a stool and reads to Kohl from old newspapers. Sometimes Kohl laughs. But mostly he remains silent. And Fendelbaum nods. So time passes, as it only passes in shops that shouldn't actually exist. And whoever leaves him leaves him differently, even if they don't notice it right away. You smell faintly of cabbage. And a little bit, if possible.