The hallway is quieter than I expected. The carpet muffles my footsteps, turning them into soft thuds that don’t quite reach the ceiling anymore. My reflection in the darkened windows of the stairwell doors looks ghostly, a faint silhouette against the gray concrete. It doesn’t look like me anymore—just someone who had been sitting too long, holding their breath for hours until they forgot what air felt like on its own.

I take the stairs two at a time now, the rhythm familiar and grounding. *Thud-thump… thud-thump…* No cursor blinking in my ears, no metallic taste of stale coffee coating my tongue. Just the sound of gravity doing its work, pulling me down toward the street where the city is finally letting go of its grip.

At the bottom, the wind hits me with a sudden force, stripping away the last layer of the office air that had clung to my coat. The cold snaps into my lungs, sharp and clean, waking up parts of myself that hadn’t registered in hours. I pull my collar up, tucking my chin down against the draft.

Outside, the streetlamp flickers once more before settling back into a steady, sickly yellow glow. It illuminates a puddle on the sidewalk where rainwater has pooled since morning. The reflection is distorted by the ripples in the water—broken shards of light that look nothing like the city they reflect. They look like `t i t`, fractured and scattered across the surface.

I stand there for a moment, just watching the puddle settle. The world feels solid again. Heavy and real. No longer a document waiting to be filled or a screen waiting for input. Just a place I am standing, under a sky that is slowly turning from gray to black, dotted with stars I can barely make out through the smog.

I start walking toward the subway station, my footsteps echoing slightly on the wet pavement. There’s nothing left to write here. The period has arrived; it was there all along, waiting at the end of everything. And now that I’m moving again, space doesn’t matter so much anymore. The gap between `t` and `i` closes behind me as I walk forward into the night.