The feeling had started small, which was the annoying part.
Not small like something unimportant. Small like a sound you keep mishearing and you can't find out if it's real or if your brain has just gotten bored and started making up things. Kaelen noticed it on a Tuesday evening. He was midway on a design doc, the cursor seemed to be blinking at him in that passive-aggressive way cursors had, and the thought that just arrived had fully formed: I have done this work before.
Not this exact task or this exact moment. The shape of it. The mild irritation with work he wasn't in the mood for, the hunger he'd ignore for another forty minutes, the way the monitor light would eventually start hurting his eyes and he'd still keep going anyway.
He had that thought before as well. Everyone had. That is what he told himself.
It held for about three days.
Then it stopped holding.
The problem wasn't the repetition — life was repetitive, he wasn't an idiot. The problem was the precision. The feeling that whatever was repeating had started to be too precise. The sequence of small events in his days had a kind of reliability to it now that felt less like habit and more like something following a schedule he never knew of.
He never mentioned it to anyone. There wasn't anyone to mention it to, not really. His social life had thinned out ever since he got a job the way these things did — faintly, with no single event to blame, everyone just gradually became a contact he texted less and less until texting felt like the kind of effort that required a reason, and the reason never quite materialized.
He made games. That was his job. Not for some big AAA game studio but an indie one he got the job because the creator was one of his friends he made in college. Turn-based games mostly, ones that required high precision—one wrong turn and you lose.
He was too good at it, ever since he was a kid he was always treated as a genius. He was good at maths, logical thinking; sometimes it felt worse than being bad at those things.
He genuinely liked the problem-solving part. It always seemed so interesting to him how someone would sink hours into what he built and wonder if he'd given them anything real or just another drain on their evening that they'd mistake for fun.
He pushed back from his desk and looked around his room. Same desk, obviously. Same chair. Same glass of water he'd been meaning to refill since the afternoon. A hoodie on the chair in the corner that wasn't a chair anymore—for six months it had been hoodie structural support.
The room was filled with the aroma of electronics and a slight hint that someone had stayed inside for an extended time.
He glanced at his image in the dark window across the room. There he found it—that subtle detail he had been picking up on. A lag. Small, probably nothing, yet unmistakable once noticed. When he moved, his reflection followed, but the timing felt wrong, as if the mirrored image was getting the cue just a split second behind. It was like watching himself through a video call with bad internet connection, only it was his own face.
He'd been trying to find out whether this was worth worrying about for some time now.
He picked up a book from his desk — The Hidden Part of the Brain, which he'd been thinking of reading for a long time. The writing pretended to be calm about something that was clearly bothering them. He didn't complain about it, even when it was annoying.
He found the page he'd bookmarked. Actually, he'd folded the corner down, which he never did, but since he'd lost his bookmark somewhere in the blankets and never seen it since.
Repeated actions do not convey any meaning; instead, they produce conditions. Perception shapes the way information can exist. What we call imagination might simply be a form of access beyond language.
He read that last line twice.
Then he closed the book and put it on the desk, and that was when his room got too quiet, the same quietness that comes after your friends or relatives leave.
He noticed his breathing. Then realized it felt off—not painful, not panic, just unfinished. As if each breath failed to complete. He tried taking a deeper breath. The feeling remained the same.
He stood up.
At least he tried to. There was a delay.
A real one. Not the same as the reflection thing—not the faint perceptual flicker he had blamed on poor sleep and dehydration. He had made up his mind to stand, but his body responded a bit later than he expected. Like the message crossed more distance than it used to.
He stared at his hand. Raised it. Watched it come up.
The movement belonged to him, he could feel that, but it belonged to him too late, arriving to him from somewhere just outside himself.
He lowered his hand. Tried again.
Same.
Okay, he thought. Either this is something boring or, in another word, medical, or it's something I don't know the word for yet.
He grabbed his hoodie off the chair that wasn't a chair and went outside, because sitting on his chair doing internet research on "why does my body feel delayed" at midnight was not something he was interested in doing.
The cold hit him when he stepped outside, but slowly. The feeling traveled a distance before reaching him. He stood under the porch light and raised his hand one more time, just to check.
Still wrong.
He stood there for a moment feeling genuinely stupid, one hand in the air, and thought: at least it's not as boring as what he was gonna do otherwise.
Then he walked toward the street.
The convenience store was ten minutes away, which gave him enough time to feel like the hand thing was too embarrassing and enough time to notice it wasn't unnoticed.
He pushed through the automatic doors and stood in the refrigerator aisle trying to figure out what he wanted. Four shelves of drinks that didn't occur in nature. Energy drinks promote themselves as genuinely healthful. Something in the most typical green can claiming to be a "wellness shot," . He looked at all of it without really looking at any of it.
All he needed was something to disrupt the night's shape. Something that didn't fit his workstation, monitor, silent room, and delayed reflection thingy. That was the entire strategy. That there was no strategy.
A hand landed on his shoulder.
He turned fast. Too fast, probably. The cashier was standing behind him— Kaelen had seen him here before, One of those faces you unintentionally gathered, as familiar as a corner you pass through on a daily basis. He was composed in a way that didn't appear usual. As though he had intentionally made the decision to stay calm in this convenience store this time.
"What are you looking for?" the cashier asked.
Kaelen looked back at the drinks. "i really don't have an idea."
The cashier waited. He was used to it.
"Not sweet," Kaelen said. "Not — I don't need the same kind of energy drink. Just something unusual. I don't know."
He knew this was not a helpful answer. The cashier didn't seemed to be bothered by it. He opened the refrigerator, reached for the back — not behind the drinks, actually to the back, deeper than Kaelen had have expected the shelf to be — and pulled out a can he hadn't noticed or ever seen before.
He took it out and passed it to kalen.
Kaelen took it . The design was plain. Almost aggressively plain, like someone had decided to remove everything that usually cluttered these things. Muted color, clean font, no logo working hard to show you who you'd be if you drank it. It appeared as if it had been designed for consumers who were tired with having to buy something to go with their drink.
"What is this?" Kaelen asked.
"You can read," the cashier said.
Something about the delivery ,completely without edge or apology — got Kaelen and a laugh got out before he could decide not to let it. "Fair."
He grabbed a few other things more or less at random to not run out of drinks, paid, and stepped back out .He leaned against the wall beside the entrance and cracked the can open.
The first sip was. Hmm.
He looked at the can. Light and Clean. Faintly sweet but not pushy about it. No aftertaste doing damage. No chemical kick trying to make him believe it was energy rather than caffeine and hope. It tasted like someone had found the right balance and then . the impressive part was that that person had resisted the urge to add one more thing.
He stood there drinking it and feeling marginally less like the night was a problem.
Marginally.
He was looking for a bin to throw the can into when he felt someone approaching. Not aggressively. Not hesitantly either. like someone had decided their but hadn't find concept of obstacle which was relevant.
He looked up.
The man was — a lot. Dark coat, everything carefully chosen without making it look like it was carefully chosen, which takes more effort than it looks. He had the quality of someone accustomed to being looked at and was fine with it. Not vain, exactly. More like: aware that presentation was a form of argument, and he'd made his.
"Would you like to see a magic trick?" he asked.
Kaelen wanted to say no .He said: "Sure."
The magician well what else was he . reached into a bag and took out a square of black cloth. His movements had that particular smoothness Kaelen immediately suspected something Not because it seemed suspicious. Because it looked rehearsed in a way that real casualness never is. One hand was covered by the cloth. A rhythm. Two. Three.
He snapped it away.
Gun. A real one. Not a prop, not a novelty, just an actual handgun, present in the man's hand as if it had always been there.
Kaelen looked at it. Then at him.
His survival instinct kicked in quick.
"Cash or card?" Kaelen said.
The magician smiled. "ooh then sir i prefer cash."
That should have been funny. It should have cut the tension and become a story he'd tell later to his kids or while drinking. For that, the parking lot was too motionless. It was too quiet at night. Too much of the gun was there.
Kaelen pulled out his wallet and handed it over.
The magician went through it quickly of someone looking for a specific thing. He found it — it was the twenty Kaelen had from an ATM last week and returned the wallet with a small card tucked inside alongside the bill he'd left.
"This is enough," he said.
Kaelen took the card out. Old Theater. Three days. Eight o'clock.
"Do you rob everyone into coming," Kaelen said, "or am I getting premium treatment?"
"The experience of observing true magic is priceless." The slight widening of the smile. "faith costs more."
"Worth it?"
"That depends what you're hoping to see."
And he left. No cab, no car, only the sound of his footsteps becoming the sound of the street. Kaelen watched the space where he'd been and then looked down at the card.
He should throw it away. He knew that. He was also aware that he was putting it in his pocket, so.
the part of him — the part that was watching his hand move wrong all night, the part that had read that sentence about imagination being access without language and not been able to shake it — that same part wanted to know where this one went.
He walked home. The delay in his movements had stopped. He didn't know if that was better or worse.