Doyun woke up already tired.
Not the kind of fatigue that came from lack of sleep, but the quieter kind that settled into the joints and stayed there. His body felt a half step behind his thoughts, as if it had not fully returned from the previous day.
He lay still for a moment, testing the sensation.
Nothing pressed in on him.Nothing pulled away.
That absence was unsettling.
The morning routine unfolded as usual. Water boiled. Coffee brewed. The city outside his window moved at its normal pace. Buses stopped, doors opened, people stepped on and off with practiced timing.
Doyun watched without engaging.
By the time he left the apartment, the residue from yesterday had thinned, but it had not vanished. It lingered just beneath awareness, waiting.
He chose a familiar route.
The sidewalk was narrow in places, widening unexpectedly near storefronts. Pedestrians navigated the shifts without thought. A delivery worker adjusted his cart to make room. A woman stepped aside while checking her phone.
Doyun felt the familiar tightening, but it arrived late.
He noticed it only after the adjustment had already occurred.
He stopped.
The flow corrected itself.
That was new.
Previously, he had felt the space tense before movement, the warning arriving early enough to matter. Now the response preceded his awareness. By the time he registered it, the moment had already passed.
He continued walking.
At a small intersection, he waited for the signal to change. People gathered beside him, their spacing uneven. The light turned green.
Everyone stepped forward.
The hesitation came after.
A fraction of a second too late, Doyun sensed the tightening. A cyclist slowed abruptly. Someone laughed nervously. The flow resumed without incident.
Doyun crossed and did not look back.
At work, the day demanded attention.
Meetings ran long. Reports stacked up. Numbers required confirmation, signatures, approvals. The system functioned with indifferent efficiency, unconcerned with timing beyond what could be measured.
Doyun found himself rereading the same paragraph twice.
He stood, walked to the window, and focused on the street below. Cars stopped and started. Pedestrians clustered, dispersed, reformed. The city corrected itself constantly, a series of small compensations layered on top of one another.
He could see it.
But he was always late.
In the afternoon, he took the stairs.
Halfway down, he missed a step.
Not enough to fall. Just enough to jolt. His hand caught the railing automatically, fingers tightening before his thoughts caught up.
The tightening came after.
Doyun stood there, heart pounding, and waited.
Nothing followed.
No ripple.No adjustment.No echo.
He continued down more slowly.
By the time he reached the lobby, his legs felt heavy. The sensation that had once guided him now lagged behind, arriving like an afterimage instead of a signal.
Outside, the air felt sharp.
He walked without purpose for several blocks, letting the city move around him. People passed, altered course, filled gaps. The world remained responsive.
Just not to him.
At a crowded corner, someone bumped into his shoulder. An apology followed. Doyun nodded and moved on. A week ago, he would have felt the adjustment before contact. Today, he noticed it only afterward.
That night, he sat at the table and tried to recall the moments that mattered.
There were too many.
Each adjustment bled into the next, indistinct. Without the early warning, everything felt compressed, as if the space between cause and effect had narrowed beyond usefulness.
He opened his notebook.
The page remained blank.
Observation had carried him this far. It had shown him patterns, connections, moments before things broke. But it demanded distance, stillness, a delay between seeing and acting.
That delay was shrinking.
Doyun closed the notebook and leaned back in his chair.
For the first time, he considered the possibility he had been avoiding.
Seeing was not enough.