Rahim saw the notebook first. His eyes were glued to the notebook. Suddenly he heard a sound and snapped back to reality. That's when he noticed the body was gone.
The dock had returned back to its usual routine.
Someone laughed too loudly. Another grumbled about the heat. A cart went by its wheels, squeaking in that tired yet familiar sound that Rahim had heard all his life.
But the assistant hadn't moved. He just stood there, almost at the dock's edge, flipping through the notebook like nothing else in the world mattered. With each turn, he was becoming more and more careful as if the notebook itself was something delicate, dangerous.
The notebook bent slightly under its own weight, corners curled, spine strained. Its leather cover bore the scars of countless journeys, but the assistant used the heavy notebook filled with secrets with utmost respect.
Rahim watched him from across the wooden planks, pretending to busy himself with the contents of a crate, Assistants were meant to be invisible — hands that wrote, mouths that did not speak.
He realized, with a flicker of surprise, that he had never paid attention to the assistant before now. Weren't assistants supposed to be blend into the background, weren't they supposed to be invisible? Despite all distracting noises, he just writes down the necessary things while keeping the mouth shut. They were trained to stay silent and shadows that faded as soon as the ink dried.
But yet in this moment, watching the assistant, being so absorbed, made him feel uneasy. Rahim wondered what thoughts might be hidden behind that quiet exterior, what stories the assistant might carry that no one would ever ask to hear.
Yet now Rahim could not look away.
The assistant turned a page.
Then another.
Another.
Too many.
Out of habit, Rahim began to count. The way he always did. The turning was fast, too fast. But in his mind, the world had become slow and everything turned in numbers.
Two deaths.
Even with excessive detail and all the fancy writing, the notebook shouldn't have reached half of its thickness.
But it did.
That evening, he couldn't shake the image. It followed him home, clinging to him like a stain, refusing to be washed out by conversation or sleep.
His mother chattered about rice prices. About a neighbor's married daughter. About the tides pulling so far back that fisherman came home with nets torn and empty. Her words filled the small kitchen, but Rahim's mind was elsewhere.
Rahim answered when required. Nodded when expected.
But his mind stayed on paper.
Later when the house was quiet and everyone was asleep. Rahim sat down on the floor. He pulled out some papers from an old ledger. He stacked them. Counted their weight in his hands.
He imagined writing reports. He imagined writing conclusions.
He imagined writing the same conclusion over and over again.
Resolved.
His fingers twitched.
At dawn, Rahim returned to the docks. Much earlier than before. The harbor was unnaturally calm.
As if the city had finished all its work that it supposed to do today.
Amina stood near Warehouse No. 3, watching the water which was unusually calm today.
She did not look surprised to see him as if she was expecting him.
"You came back," she said.
"I never left," he replied, then frowned. "No, that's not true."
She gave a faint smile. "Yes, none of it feels true."
They stood side by side. Close enough to feel each other's presence. Far enough to pretend it didn't matter.
"Do you know how many reports are written for a single death?" Rahim blurted out, unable to hold the question back.
Amina blinked. "What?"
"At the docks," he clarified. "How many pages do they fill?"
She thought for a moment. "I don't know. I guess enough to satisfy the inspector?"
"Enough to make forgetting easier," Rahim murmured, in a low voice.
She looked at him carefully. "You saw something, didn't you?"
"I saw something that shouldn't be heavy," he said. "But it was."
A pause.
Then Amina said, "The records office."
He turned to her sharply.
"You know about it?"
"Everyone knows where it is," she replied. "But nobody goes there unless they're told to"
Rahim exhaled slowly.
Rahim let out a slow breath. That was it. The missing piece of the puzzle.
The records building stood where it always had — close to feel relevant, far enough to pretend neutrality. Colonial architecture. Narrow windows. Thick doors that swallowed sound.
The records building was right where it had always been enough to the docks. So that people would think it was close to feel relevant, far enough to maintain its pretense of neutrality. It was built in the style of the colonies. The windows were really narrow. The doors were thick to swallow up all the sound.
Inside, the air had that dusty, old-book smell.
Filled with paper, salt and dust.
A clerk sat near the entrance, glasses sliding down his nose. He looked up, gave them a quick glance then returned to his work without comment.
No questions.
No challenge.
The silence felt like permission. Rahim felt a shiver throughout his spine.
"They are expecting us," he whispered.
Amina said nothing, just followed him.
They moved through the shelve.
Incident reports. Shipping disputes. Injury logs. Labor complaints.
Both of them scanned the shelves thoroughly.
Then he found it.
Dock fatalities.
The older volumes were detailed. Names, dates, causes everything was recorded carefully
But the later ones gradually became thin, short, abrupt.
And then
Resolved.
Resolved.
Resolved.
Amina frowned. "They stopped caring."
"No," Rahim shook his head and spoke. "No. They just stopped doubting."
They moved deeper into the years
The handwriting changed. It wasn't obvious at first, just a bit firmer and more deliberate. But then the words were pressed harder into the page, like the writer of the words did not trust the paper to hold the words.
A name appeared once.
Morrison.
Only once.
Not as an author, but as a note scribbled in the margin.
Amina ran her finger over it lightly. "Who was he?"
Rahim leaned in, reading every word carefully.
Morrison's notes weren't guesses or big ideas. They were observations written by someone who had been watching too long.
Every time someone died, things ran smoother.
Fewer incidents reported.
The city stayed calm for a bit, as if exhaling after holding its breath for days.
Public disorder goes down for a while.
A pause in the notes. Then-
Deaths also function as corrections.
When someone dies it's like a correction is being made.
Amina tensed up, her shoulders tight, voice barely above a whisper. "That's …"
Then she just stopped talking. She was going to say something but the words did not come out. she just stood there frozen, thinking about what she had seen.
"… really something,"
The notes got even more sharper after that.
If correction stabilizes the system, then the process will repeat.
Pattern persists regardless of intent.
Intervention does not stop correction. speeds up the correction.
There was a long gap.
Then one final entry, written even more fainter than the others.
Do not interfere unless you are willing to replace what is removed.
"That doesn't mean killing," Amina whispered.
"No," Rahim replied. "It means the city doesn't care who's affected. It only wants the gap to be filled."
The pages after that were blank.
Not torn out.
Not censored.
Just empty.
"He gave up writing," Amina said.
Rahim shook his head. "No. He reached the point where writing wasn't helping him anymore."
They left without speaking.
At home, Rahim's mother watched him too closely, her gaze sharp and worried.
"You're counting again," she said.
"What?"
"The space between things," she replied. "Your father used to do that before storms."
Rahim froze.
His father had died long time ago.
"I dreamed of him," his mother murmured, her gaze distant, drifting off into the distance. "He asked if the house was still standing."
Her voice was shaking. "Why would he ask that?"
Rahim did not know what to say. He was completely silent.
That night, Rahim wrote everything down. Every single word, every weird thing that had happened.
Notebook.
Archive.
Morrison.
The next day, the inspector stopped him on his way.
"You read reports," the inspector said.
"Yes."
"Then explain why do I feel like… I just copied them from somewhere"
Rahim thought for a moment before he said anything
"Do you remember writing them?"
"Can't say. But I remember finishing them," the inspector said, a sigh of relief in his voice. "I remember the feeling of relief that came after that."
"That's not the same thing," Rahim replied.
The inspector glanced towards the sea. "The city becomes better when I solve a case, like this the city really behaves when I wrap up a case"
Rahim understood.
The word Resolved wasn't a record. It was a message, a signal to something bigger.
That night, the tide went farther than ever before, leaving all sorts of weird stuff on the sand.
Rahim added one final line beneath his mat.
Someone figured out how to speak to the city.
The city also learned what to erase.
And somewhere between what was written down and what managed to last, that weird, unsettling cycle just kept getting tighter and tighter.