Erika arrived early because the bell had rung early.
It used to ring once. Now it rang once and then again, softer, like it wasn't sure it should have. She waited for the second ring out of habit, then realized it had already passed.
She checked her list at the gate. Names, marks, tallies from yesterday copied forward. Everything looked familiar until she reached the bottom and noticed the spacing was off. One name sat closer to the margin than the others.
She nudged it right with her thumb, smearing the charcoal slightly. Better.
Inside the yard, the air felt lighter. Not cleaner—just thinner, as if something had been moved without telling anyone. Carts rolled through without stopping. People nodded and kept going.
Erika counted sacks as they passed.
Ten. Twenty. Thirty.
She stopped at thirty-one.
There should have been thirty-two.
She counted again. Slowly. Still thirty-one.
"Did we lose one?" she asked the man beside her.
He glanced once, barely slowing. "It evens out."
"That's not—"
"It evens out," he said, already looking past her.
Erika wrote thirty-two anyway. The chalk felt wrong in her hand, like she was borrowing it. She told herself she would check the ledger later.
At midmorning, a crate arrived without a tag. She set it aside where untagged things went. When she looked back, it was gone.
She didn't remember seeing anyone move it.
By noon, the line flowed smoother than usual. Fewer stops. Fewer questions. People worked as if they had practiced this version of the day before.
Erika felt behind, though her hands kept pace.
During the break, she sat on an overturned crate and ate bread that tasted thinner than it should have. Across the yard, someone laughed and stopped abruptly, like they had remembered something else they needed to do.
She finished eating and stood, brushing crumbs from her palms. The gate bell rang again—just once this time.
Good, she thought. Back to normal.
But as she took her place, she noticed the mark she'd fixed earlier had shifted back toward the margin. Not erased. Not wrong.
Just closer than it used to be.
Erika stared at it for a moment longer than necessary.
Then the next cart arrived, and there was no time to ask what had moved it.