Scroll 3: The Collision Chain
The shadow became a man or rather, the faint suggestion of one.
He was rail-thin, dressed in a beige windbreaker that looked like it had lived through several presidential terms. His hair was a wispy crown of white, and his steps were so slow, Ethan half-suspected the old man was on a different time zone entirely.
Ethan tried to sidestep, but the man drifted into his path with the eerie precision of someone who absolutely knew where you were going before you did.
"Ah sorry, sir," Ethan muttered, ducking sideways.
Too late.
Their shoulders clipped harder than expected and Ethan's own momentum ricocheted him to the right, straight into someone who smelled like they bathed in expensive fabric softener.
A young woman in sleek black sportswear glared at him like he'd just coughed on her bank account. The words Limited Edition were printed down her leggings in a font that screamed, I paid more for this than you make in a week.
"Watch it!" she snapped, stepping back as if avoiding contamination.
"I said sorry" Ethan began, but movement behind her made his stomach sink.
The boyfriend.
If the woman looked like a commercial for upscale athleisure, the man looked like the ad for the gym membership that came with it. His tracksuit jacket strained at the seams, his jawline was sharp enough to slice sashimi, and the frown on his face could've been registered as a deadly weapon.
Before Ethan could process, the guy's fist was already in motion a short, clean hook that connected with the side of Ethan's face.
"Hey!"
It wasn't so much the pain that stunned him, but the sheer efficiency of it. No shouting, no posturing, just wham.
His head whipped left, and the world tilted. A fresh surge of bodies in the market pressed against him, and suddenly his feet weren't on solid ground anymore.
The boyfriend barked something Ethan couldn't hear it over the ringing in his ears but the crowd was already sweeping him sideways. He stumbled, catching glimpses of wet pavement, neon puddles, and the blurring outline of the sportswear woman's disbelieving face.
Then the crowd spat him out.
Right off the curb.
The street yawned wide before him, slick black asphalt glistening under the drizzle like the surface of some bottomless lake.
And cutting through it, bearing down fast, was a truck.
Not the kind you saw delivering bottled water or crates of cabbages. This one was a squat, mean thing, plated with steel the color of gunmetal and humming with a low, throaty growl. Along its grill, faint veins of blue light pulsed the telltale mark of a spirit-powered engine, the kind they used for heavy freight and, apparently, pedestrian annihilation.
The driver's face was a blur behind the rain-streaked windshield. Ethan couldn't even tell if the man was braking.
Time slowed, as it often does when your brain realizes you're about to be erased.
First came the smell a mix of ozone from the truck's enchanted coils and the sharp tang of wet rubber burning against pavement. It was overlaid by the fainter, more human scents from the market behind him: fried squid, cheap cologne, the damp wool of his hoodie.
Then the sounds. The distant chatter of hawkers muffled under the hiss of rain, the roar of the truck swelling like an approaching storm, and somewhere behind him, the woman's high-pitched gasp.
Ethan's mind fired off a sequence of rapid, absurd thoughts:
Should've taken the other bus.
That guy's punch technique wasn't half bad.
Mom's gonna kill me for not buying the supplement.
And then the one thought that stuck, cutting through the rest with bitter clarity:
If I'd been born in that novel's world, maybe fate would've let me win…
That was it. No epic last words, no heroic pose. Just that single, petty, unshakable truth.
The truck's metallic plating filled his vision.