The man in Apartment 604 never made it to his front door.
He juggled a paper bag of groceries, keys between his teeth, umbrella dripping puddles in the hallway. The elevator doors closed behind him with their usual stubborn slowness.
"Should've bought less," he muttered around the keys. "Should've bought a spine."
A tomato rolled out from a tear in the paper, hit the floor, and began to wobble away toward the stairwell.
"Hey—"
He leaned to catch it.
The hallway light flickered.
For everyone else in the building, it was a normal electrical glitch. No one looked up. No one paused their conversation or their argument or their show.
For him, time stopped.
The dripping from his umbrella froze in mid-air. A neighbor stepping out of 602 with a trash bag was locked mid-sigh. The tomato, mid-roll, hung above the floor.
His keys fell in slow motion, as if reluctant, then halted just above the ground.
The man blinked, breath misting in a world that suddenly felt too still.
"What…?"
The air thickened around him like water. His heartbeat grew louder.
Words appeared, not on the wall, not in the air, but behind his eyes.
"AUDIT: CHOICE FLAGGED"
"SUBJECT: KALIN P. DHIR"
"SIGNIFICANCE: MINOR"
"Kalin?" he whispered, recognizing his own name as if it belonged to someone else. His voice didn't echo.
Another line appeared.
"PRIMARY BRANCH: OPEN FRONT DOOR → LIVE"
"REJECTED BRANCH: GO BACK FOR FALLEN ITEM → DIE"
He stared at the suspended tomato.
"That's a little dramatic, don't you think?" he tried to joke, voice trembling.
The world answered with a crack.
A thin, vertical line split the air in front of his door. It widened slowly, revealing nothing on the other side. Not darkness. Not light. Just absence.
His breath hitched.
He didn't move. Instinct told him to run, but where? The stairwell door was frozen mid-swing, the handle out of reach of his locked neighbor's hand. The world around him felt less like a place and more like a paused video.
Something stepped through the crack.
It wore his face.
Sharper. Fitter. Eyes harder, like they'd seen something that never happened. Same stubble, trimmed instead of half-neglected. Same hands, but the grip looked stronger.
Kalin gasped. "Wh… what are you?"
The answer appeared above both of them.
"POSSIBILITY: UNLIVED #014 — "RETURNED FOR TOMATO""
"OUTCOME: STRUCK BY DELIVERY TRUCK, KILLED INSTANTLY"
"STATUS: UNREALIZED"
"OBJECTIVE: RECLAIM LIFE"
The other Kalin looked down at the tomato.
Then at him.
Kalin took a step back, shoulder hitting the wall. "Wait—wait, that's not—this is insane. I didn't go back. I chose right. I chose right—"
The Possibility tilted its head.
It smiled.
Not kindly.
"Lucky you," it said in his voice. "You got my good ending."
Kalin's throat closed.
"Please," he choked. "I have a daughter. I—"
Pain exploded through his chest before he saw the movement.
The Possibility moved like a man who had died once and decided not to waste his second chance. Efficient, decisive, with no fear of consequence. Its hand drove into Kalin's sternum—not flesh, not literally bone-breaking, but something inside him tore with a noise that wasn't sound.
The world around them dimmed.
Kalin's hands clawed at the arm piercing through nothing and everything. No blood spilled. His body didn't break. But his life—the pattern of choices that made him him—came apart like a thread pulled too hard.
He saw flashes.
The day his daughter was born.
The argument with his father he never fixed.
The day he almost turned back to pick up a fallen tomato—
The Possibility ripped something out of him.
Kalin sagged.
His last thought was that it wasn't fair, and he couldn't even say who it wasn't fair to.
His body slumped to the floor.
The Possibility straightened.
For a second, its expression flickered—fear, joy, guilt, triumph—then smoothed out. It rolled its shoulders, testing them, like a man trying on a new jacket. Then it stepped forward, keys in hand with practiced ease, and reached for the doorknob.
Time snapped.
The water resumed dripping. The neighbor finished their sigh and continued toward the stairwell. The tomato hit the floor with a soft thud.
Apartment 604's door opened.
Kalin P. Dhir walked in and called out, "I'm home!"
His daughter's footsteps ran toward him from down the hall.
No one in the world noticed that the man who stepped into that apartment wasn't the one who left it.
—
Eshan Vale woke up with the feeling that someone had shoved a cold stone in his chest during the night.
He lay there a moment, staring at the ceiling, waiting for that weird heaviness to fade. It didn't.
It pulsed.
Like an extra heartbeat that wasn't his.
He scrunched his eyes shut. "If this is going to be a regular thing now, I'd like to file a complaint."
He rolled onto his side and immediately groaned as several muscles protested. His arms and shoulders ached as if he'd fought a car. Which, in a way, he kind of had. A car shaped like himself.
Yesterday…
For a moment, his mind refused to replay it. Like touching a hot stove. Then it all rushed back anyway.
The frozen rain.
The words in the sky.
The crack in the air.
His own face staring at him with someone else's certainty.
That impossible move he'd made.
The hole where a memory should be.
He shoved himself upright, breathing carefully.
The faint glow in his chest from yesterday was gone, but he could still feel the fracture mark like a bruise on the inside of his ribs.
He checked his phone on the nightstand.
The screen was still dead.
"Yeah," he muttered. "You're definitely not hallucination-proof."
His mind kept circling the same terror: if no one else saw yesterday… then he was alone. If someone did see it and just pretended they didn't… that was somehow worse.
His head throbbed.
He pushed himself to his feet and shuffled to the bathroom, splashing water on his face. His reflection in the cracked mirror looked back at him, hair messy, eyes ringed with tired shadows.
He held his own gaze for a moment, half-expecting his reflection to lag behind, to smile late, to blink out of sync.
It didn't.
"Good," he said. "Let's keep it that way."
He hesitated, towel still in his hands.
"What did I lose?" he murmured.
Not dramatically—just quietly, from the part of him that kept lists of small things.
Eshan closed his eyes and retraced his life. His mother's cooking. The cheap fan on the ceiling. That time he fell off a bike in front of his crush. Late-night game sessions. Exams. The bitter taste of failure on test days. The way the classroom smelled on rainy mornings.
Everything lined up, but it felt like reading a story with one sentence missing. You could still understand the plot, but something in the flow snagged.
He focused on his mother's voice.
He could hear her.
…but there was a gap.
A specific phrase, a specific way she used to say his name, wouldn't come. The more he tried to recall it, the more his head hurt.
Eshan opened his eyes and forced a crooked smile at himself in the mirror.
"Okay," he told his reflection. "New priority: don't use mystery power unless absolutely necessary. Side effects include forgetting important life stuff and looking crazy on the street."
His reflection did not argue.
—
By the time he left his building, the sky had decided to behave normally. The sun burned through thinning clouds, and the puddles from yesterday were already starting to dry, leaving pale rings of mud on the pavement.
The city looked exactly the same.
That made it worse.
Cars honked. A guy on a scooter cursed at someone cutting him off. A shopkeeper dragged crates of vegetables to the front of his store. A kid whined about not wanting to go to school. A dog barked at a plastic bag.
No one glanced at the sky like they were afraid of it. No one avoided the spot on the street where reality had torn open.
The bus stop near where it happened was crowded with people scrolling on their phones, smiling at memes, typing angry messages, watching videos of cats or car crashes.
No one was talking about frozen rain.
He passed the exact place on the road where he'd fallen. He knew it was the same place—the faint skid mark from yesterday's scooter, the slightly chipped bit of pavement near the curb.
There was no sign of a crack in the air. No shattered nothingness. Just a street.
For a moment, Eshan wondered if he really had imagined it. Maybe he'd had a psychotic break, or fainted, or—
He flexed his fingers.
The memory of that perfect dodge wasn't a hallucination. His body still remembered the feeling of moving like water, of being… right. Efficient. Like a puzzle piece in the exact place it was carved for.
He exhaled slowly.
"Fine," he muttered. "World wants to gaslight me. Two can play that game."
His stomach growled.
"After breakfast, though."
He grabbed a cheap sandwich from a vendor near the main road. The man behind the cart was watching a small cracked TV propped on a wooden crate, volume slightly too loud to ignore.
"Big power cut yesterday, huh?" the vendor said casually as he wrapped Eshan's order. "My fridge almost died. They say it was a grid surge."
"Yeah?" Eshan tried to sound equally casual. "Whole city?"
"Mm." The man shrugged. "Something about some regional relay tripping. These officials, I tell you, they only know how to blame the weather. That'll be thirty."
Eshan handed over the cash automatically, eyes drifting to the TV.
The news anchor was talking about "localized time-lag anomalies" for a few seconds in several districts. People reporting "feeling weird," a few minor accidents, some close calls.
No mention of cracks in the air. No mention of alternate selves.
A scientist in glasses appeared in a small window. A line under his face read TEMPORAL PHENOMENA EXPERT. He was very calmly explaining that humans sometimes experienced "subjective time dilation during moments of stress," and any glitch videos on social media were likely edited for attention.
The channel cut to a compilation of slowed-down CCTV footage—rain falling strangely, a car seeming to freeze for a single frame before resuming.
Overlay text: GLITCH OR VIRAL HOAX?
Eshan chewed mechanically.
So. The world had noticed something, but not what mattered.
His chest suddenly tightened.
Not emotionally—physically. Like his heart had grabbed onto an invisible string and something at the other end had been yanked, hard.
He dropped the sandwich.
Pain flashed through his ribs, sharp and cold, then bloomed outward in spreading numbness.
His breath hitched. He grabbed the edge of the cart for balance.
"Hey, you okay?" the vendor asked, frowning. "You look like you saw a ghost, boy."
Eshan sucked in a ragged breath. The pressure spiked once, twice… then eased.
He straightened slowly. "I'm fine. Just… I remembered exams exist."
The vendor snorted. "That is worse than ghosts."
Eshan forced a laugh and backed away, leaving the dropped sandwich for the birds.
He walked fast, one hand pressed lightly over his chest.
"What was that?" he murmured.
The answer came in the form of an image in his mind—not his own. A hallway he'd never seen. A door with peeling paint: 604. A tomato in mid-air.
He tripped over nothing and caught himself on a lamp post.
"Okay," he said under his breath. "That's new. Do I get a user manual with this thing, or…?"
There was no voice this time. No system announcement. Just the lingering impression of something being… corrected.
Someone, somewhere, had failed their audit.
Someone had been replaced.
His stomach knotted.
—
By the time he reached school, the wave of regular teenage noise almost felt comforting. The gate was crowded with late students trying to slip in, early students gossiping, and that one overachiever already revising notes as if their life depended on the next test.
It was almost possible to forget the fracture in his chest and the ghost of a tomato in his head.
"Eshan!"
He turned.
A girl with a ponytail too high for gravity and an expression that said she didn't care about gravity anyway jogged up to him, bag bouncing. Her uniform blazer was half-buttoned, her tie loose, her shoes surprisingly clean compared to his.
Riya Menon. Classmate. Occasional co-conspirator in strategic laziness. Terrible influence, but only because she encouraged him to be the version of himself that didn't stress about everything.
"You look like you lost a fight with a drain," she said cheerfully, falling into step beside him.
"I did," he replied. "The drain won. It has better cardio."
She squinted at him. "Are you okay?"
He hesitated a fraction of a second too long.
"Yeah," he said. "Why?"
"You didn't even argue that I'm worse than a drain. Are you sick? Is this an impostor?" She poked his arm lightly. "Say something sarcastic. Do a trick. Blink in Morse code."
He managed a smile. "I used all my sarcasm quota for the day being alive."
"There we go," she said, satisfied. "Balance restored."
They walked through the gate together. The security guard didn't look up from his phone. A notification sound chimed from someone's pocket. Two boys ahead were arguing about a video one of them insisted was real.
"I'm telling you, the rain actually stopped," one said. "My cousin's friend in Sector 5—"
"Your cousin's friend also says he saw an alien last year."
Riya rolled her eyes. "Social media's having a festival today. Half the school thinks we glitched yesterday. I slept through it. Missed my chance to be chosen by the Matrix."
"Tragic," Eshan murmured.
She cut him a sideways glance. "You didn't… notice anything?"
He swallowed.
For one second, the temptation was blinding.
He could say yes. He could share the weight in his chest. He could ask, "What if a version of me tried to kill me yesterday?" and pretend it was a joke, see how she reacted. He could be less alone.
He could also sound completely insane and end up as the class cryptid.
He shrugged. "My lights flickered. I thought it was a power cut."
"Wow. Incredible story. Truly supernatural," she said dryly. "You should write novels. Call it 'The Boy Who Experienced Minor Electricity Problems'."
"Sounds like a bestseller."
They passed the noticeboard. A new printed sheet fluttered there, corners hastily taped down.
Riya slowed, reading. "Oh, great. Emergency assembly."
The paper announced a "brief session" in the auditorium during first period to address "yesterday's temporal disturbance reports" and "ensure student safety and psychological comfort."
Eshan stared at the words.
So the school at least was taking it semi-seriously. Or trying to look like they were.
Riya grimaced. "Psychological comfort. This is going to be some counselor reading from a brochure about stress management."
"Maybe they'll teach us how to be at peace with failing exams," he said. "That would actually be useful."
"Now that's a power system."
They headed toward their classroom as the bell shrilled across the campus. Students groaned, scattered, or sped up.
As they walked down the corridor, Eshan caught his reflection in one of the glass display cases that showed off the school's trophies.
He saw himself walking.
And just behind his shoulder, for a split second, another silhouette, staring.
He turned sharply.
Only his own reflection looked back.
His pulse spiked.
Riya, a few steps ahead, glanced over her shoulder. "You coming, or did you just discover your deep emotional connection to the badminton trophy?"
He forced his legs to move. "Just saying goodbye to my sports career. We had a good run. Mostly on the bench."
They reached the classroom. It was its usual chaos—bags on desks, students half-sitting, half-standing, someone trying to finish homework at triple speed, the class topper sighing deeply in the corner.
As he slid into his seat, the fracture in his chest pulsed again. Not pain, not this time. More like awareness expanding outward, brushing against invisible threads.
Somewhere, far beyond the walls of the school, something watched him back.
He set his jaw.
If the world wanted to pretend nothing had changed… fine.
He knew better.
He'd seen the crack. He'd been hunted by his own "good ending." He'd awakened something that could steal his memories and give him skills that weren't his.
And now, apparently, he could feel it when reality did that to someone else.
He flexed his fingers under the desk, hidden from Riya's view.
The move he'd used yesterday—could he do it again? On purpose this time?
A chalk scraped across the blackboard as their homeroom teacher entered and wrote: ASSEMBLY – LINE UP.
The class groaned in unison.
Riya leaned over. "On a scale of one to 'the cafeteria food is free today,' how much do you think they're going to lie to us?"
"Strong eight," he said. "Nine if the principal talks."
"Ten if they say we're completely safe."
He snorted softly.
They stood, filed out, joined the stream heading toward the auditorium.
Eshan glanced up at the sky as they crossed the courtyard.
Just clouds.
No words.
No crack.
No other him.
But the fracture in his chest hummed, quiet and constant, like a waiting pulse.
He knew better now.
The world hadn't gone back to normal.
It had just gone back to pretending.
And somewhere, in the space between choices, something with his face was still watching, waiting for the next decision to go wrong.