The subway doors hiss shut, sealing out the platform’s fluorescent hum. The carriage lurches again, this time smoother, a rhythmic sway that feels less like a malfunction and more like breathing. I watch the tunnel walls rush past—a blur of brick and paint peeling away to reveal nothing but darkness behind. No sparks. No strange symbols etching themselves into the grime. Just motion. Endless, directionless, forward.

My hand finds the notebook in my bag again, fingers brushing the leather cover. It feels cool against my palm, a solid anchor in the shifting world of my thoughts. I run my thumb over the spine where I made that mark last night—the small dent from pressing too hard when the page refused to turn. But now, as the train rattles along, the dent seems less like an injury and more like a scar. A place where something healed, however slowly.

A woman sits across from me, clutching a plastic bag of bento boxes. She’s arguing softly with someone on her phone, her voice rising in those sharp, familiar pitches that cut through the cabin’s silence. “I told you three times! No, I didn’t mean *tonight*, I meant *tomorrow*!” she shouts at the ceiling, unaware there’s no one there to hear. Then she stops abruptly, taking a deep breath, and lowers her voice. The argument dissolves into a muttered explanation, then silence again.

She looks up then, catching my eye over the rim of her sunglasses. For a second, I think she sees it—the dot in my mind, the ghost of the fractal steam, the key that turned without opening anything. But she just smiles, a tired, crooked thing that says *I know exactly how you feel*, and goes back to her lunch.

Maybe everyone carries their own version of the glitch now. Maybe we’re all just walking around with these quiet storms inside us, waiting for the rain to stop or the lightning to strike one more time so we can finally acknowledge what’s real outside our heads.

The train slows as it approaches the next station. The lights flicker once—just once—and then stabilize into a steady, reassuring white. I watch the doors slide open, ready to let us out again, ready to let us back in. And for the first time in days, when I look down at my shoes, I don’t see shadows forming on the floor beneath them. Just the mundane reflection of rubber soles meeting metal grating.

*Step.*

The sound is real. The ground feels solid underfoot as I push through the crowd. Outside, the city is waiting with its usual chaotic indifference—cars honking in a synchronized rhythm of frustration, pedestrians weaving around obstacles as if choreographed by an invisible hand, streetlights casting long, stretching shadows that stretch and shrink but never speak back.

I walk without looking at my phone. I let the notebook stay in my pocket, heavy and secret against my hip. There are no puzzles to solve right now. No mysteries to decode. Just the weight of paper and ink, just the need to keep moving forward until my feet carry me somewhere else entirely.

And if a shadow tries to move on its own tonight? If a pattern forms in the steam or the rain? Good. Let it try. I’ve learned something important along the way: you can watch the glitch without letting it drive the car anymore. You can acknowledge the magic, accept its presence as a part of the landscape, and still choose to walk straight ahead into the ordinary, beautiful, terrifying reality of just being here.

The wind picks up near the river, carrying the scent of salt and exhaust and wet concrete all in one breath. It hits my face, sharp and unfiltered. I close my eyes for a moment, letting it wash over me, feeling the vibration of the city against my skin instead of listening for voices that aren’t there.

I open them again. The street is crowded. People are laughing, fighting, crying, loving—all without needing a key to unlock their hearts or a dot in the steam to give meaning to their tears. They just *are*. And so am I.

So am I.