There is a difference between listening and accepting.
Authority had learned the first.
The second was harder.
The city woke under a tension that didn't announce itself. No directives. No questions. No messages asking for feedback. Just a quiet awareness that today, something uncomfortable would surface.
Listening had opened the door.
Now the wind was coming through.
✦
Arjun sensed it before anything happened.
"People are holding back," he said.
"Not silent. Just… choosing words."
"Yes," I replied.
"Because they know what's about to be said can't be unsaid."
✦
The other Ishaan aligned, voice calm and exact.
Power fears information it cannot correct, he said.
Because correction preserves superiority.
✦
By midmorning, the first fracture appeared.
A report circulated—unofficial, carefully anonymized. It wasn't dramatic. No accusations. No moral framing.
Just patterns.
Delays traced not to incompetence—but to oversight layers.
