Arun did not turn toward the footsteps.
Not immediately.
Sound behaved differently here. Direction meant little. Distance meant less.
He continued walking, pace steady, hands at his sides, eyes forward. The road stretched ahead beneath streetlights that no longer hummed. Their glow existed without source — a memory of electricity.
The footsteps came again.
One step.
Pause.
Another.
Like someone testing whether the ground would remember them.
Arun stopped.
The sound stopped too.
He listened.
Nothing.
He crouched near the sidewalk and pressed his fingers to the pavement. It was cool, but not cold — like stone that had already surrendered the day's warmth hours ago.
"Not empty," he murmured.
The air shifted.
Across the street, a shop window reflected him — but not precisely. His reflection lagged, a half-second slow, mimicking him after he moved.
He raised his hand.
The reflection raised its hand late.
Arun lowered it.
The reflection held the gesture a moment longer, then dropped.
Something in that glass was still catching up.
He reached the intersection where the plastic bag had drifted before.
It now lay flat.
Still.
Beside it sat a girl's backpack, unzipped, one strap twisted. A notebook had fallen partly out, pages ruffled as if they had once known wind.
Arun knelt and opened it.
The last written line read:
"If tomorrow feels wrong again, don't stay after the signal."
The handwriting grew faint toward the end, ink pressure weakening as if the writer had been pulled away mid-sentence.
Arun checked the page beneath.
Blank.
Every page after that.
Erased, not unused.
The footsteps returned.
Closer.
Arun stood.
"I know you're there," he said calmly.
No echo.
No answer.
But a shadow stretched across the road ahead of him — long, thin, human-shaped. It did not connect to any body.
It moved when he didn't.
A delayed existence.
Another late arrival.
"Which day are you from?" Arun asked.
The shadow twitched.
Then pointed.
Not with a hand — with its entire form, bending slightly toward the overpass ahead.
A place where the road dipped into darkness.
Arun walked.
The shadow followed, keeping distance like a cautious animal.
As he passed a parked car, he saw movement inside.
In the rearview mirror.
Someone sitting in the back seat.
He turned.
The car was empty.
Mirror-world lag.
Residual recordings.
This place wasn't just leftover time.
It was imprint.
Moments that had nowhere else to go.
Under the overpass, the air felt denser.
Not colder.
Heavier.
On the concrete pillar ahead, words were scratched deep into the surface:
"DON'T LET THEM NOTICE YOU."
Below it, dozens of lines carved over one another:
"STAY QUIET"
"THEY WALK BETWEEN DAYS"
"IF YOU HEAR YOUR NAME, DON'T ANSWER"
Arun studied the marks.
Different handwriting.
Different depths.
Many people had been here.
Or the same person, many times.
The footsteps stopped directly behind him.
Closer than before.
Close enough that, in a normal world, he would feel breath.
He did not turn.
Instead, he spoke softly.
"This layer… it's not dead time."
Silence pressed around him.
"It's where unfinished moments wait."
A faint sound came — not a step.
A shift.
Like someone leaning in to listen.
Arun's reflection appeared on the concrete pillar.
But he wasn't facing it.
The reflection was.
And it was not alone.
Behind it stood a figure shaped like a person but blurred at the edges, as if resolution had failed.
Its head tilted.
Observing him.
Not hostile.
Not friendly.
Just aware.
The reflection-Arun spoke.
But he had not.
"We shouldn't stay long."
The voice was his.
Delayed.
Or ahead.
The air pulsed.
Far above, somewhere beyond this layer, a car horn blared — faint, distant, belonging to a world still moving forward.
A reminder.
Time was continuing somewhere.
Without him.
The figure behind his reflection stepped forward.
The footsteps this time were real.
Arun closed his eyes for a moment.
Then opened them.
"Alright," he said quietly.
"Show me where the rest of the day went."
The shadow moved toward the deeper darkness beneath the bridge.
Arun followed.
And above them, unnoticed, the traffic light changed color —
in a world they were no longer inside.