Doyun noticed the absence first.
Not an anomaly.Not a spike.
The lack of resistance.
The morning felt too smooth.
He stood at the edge of the plaza, watching people cross without hesitation. Movements aligned cleanly. Adjustments came early, almost rehearsed.
The structure wasn't straining.
It was settled.
That unsettled him.
Since the separation, he had grown used to imbalance. Late corrections. Minor overshoots. Places where effort showed.
Today, there was none of that.
The city flowed like it had learned something.
Doyun checked the time.
9:12 a.m.
He felt the tightening then—not sharp, not directional. A low, even pressure spread across the area.
No focal point.
No signal telling him where to look.
He scanned the plaza.
Nothing stood out.
People moved. Vendors opened stalls. A bus pulled in and out.
Everything behaved.
Too well.
Doyun stepped forward, then stopped.
The pressure didn't increase.
It didn't respond at all.
That was wrong.
He shifted sideways.
Still nothing.
The structure wasn't reacting to him.
It had already adjusted.
At 9:14, the first report came in.
A maintenance vehicle had clipped a temporary barrier at a construction site several blocks away. No injuries. Minor damage.
Doyun barely registered it.
At 9:15.
A cyclist swerved to avoid a pedestrian and fell. Scrapes. No ambulance.
At 9:16.
A delivery worker dropped a crate from a loading dock. Contents damaged. No one hurt.
Three minutes.
Three incidents.
He felt no spike.
No lag.
The adjustments had arrived early—before the events.
Doyun's breath slowed.
This wasn't reaction.
It was anticipation.
The structure wasn't compensating after strain.
It was pre-loading correction.
He pulled up the map.
The incidents didn't cluster.
They didn't align spatially.
But the timestamps matched too closely.
The structure had distributed effort in advance, smoothing the surface.
And in doing so, it had removed friction.
Doyun understood too late.
Friction had been his signal.
The place where effort showed was where he could intervene.
Now, there was none.
At 9:18, it happened.
Not nearby.
Not where he stood.
A pedestrian at a narrow crossing hesitated at the curb. A bus approached, already decelerating earlier than necessary.
The system had anticipated delay.
It hadn't anticipated choice.
The pedestrian stepped forward, assuming the bus would stop completely.
It didn't.
Not fast enough.
The impact wasn't violent.
It was final.
The plaza went silent in a way Doyun felt before he heard it.
He turned.
People were already running.
The pressure vanished.
Not dispersed.
Gone.
Doyun stood frozen.
He hadn't felt it coming.
Because the structure had done its job.
It had smoothed, aligned, pre-adjusted—until the moment human choice cut across it.
By the time sirens arrived, the flow had already rerouted.
The system adapted instantly.
Too instantly.
Doyun didn't approach the scene.
He didn't need to.
He could feel the absence where effort should have been.
The hollow where friction used to collect.
At home that night, he sat with his notebook open and empty.
For once, he didn't know what to write.
He replayed the morning again and again.
The calm.
The smoothness.
The lack of resistance.
He had mistaken stability for safety.
Eventually, he wrote a single line.
When correction arrives too early, warning disappears.
He added another.
What cannot be felt cannot be avoided.
Doyun closed the notebook.
This time, it wasn't that he had been too far away.
It was that he had been exactly on time.
And that had made him late.