Elara could not rid herself of the receipt. It weighed in her pocket like a coin from another country, foreign and bright. When she finally laid it upon the counter, the inked words stared back with unnerving persistence: Do you see this too?
Across the city, Kieran unfolded his diary page again, reading Are you real? until the letters seemed to pulse with life.
Both began small experiments. Elara slipped a torn scrap of paper beneath the till at closing, marked with a hesitant question mark. In the morning, the scrap was gone. In its place lay another: Yes.
Kieran, emboldened, left a pencil shaving in the drawer of his desk. The next day, it had vanished. A pressed flower appeared instead, dried lavender, its scent ghosting through the room.
No footsteps in the night. No rattling of locks. Objects simply exchanged places, as though carried on a current invisible and deliberate.
Neither dared to say it aloud, yet both understood: something impossible had reached for them.