Doyun noticed the distortion before he noticed her.
It wasn't a break in movement. No one stopped. No one hesitated long enough to draw attention. It was a subtle redirection, the kind that happened when people unconsciously avoided something they couldn't articulate.
He slowed.
The sidewalk ahead remained open, but the flow leaned outward, as if a shallow curve had been introduced where none existed before.
Then he saw her.
She stood across the street, farther than she had ever been before.
Not at the edge of the block he had avoided.
Not within the range he had already mapped.
Outside it.
The distance between them was deliberate. Not excessive. Just enough that their influences did not overlap directly.
People crossed between them without adjusting. A couple walked past, their conversation uninterrupted. A cyclist rolled through the intersection, gaze forward, unbothered.
The structure held.
Barely.
Doyun stayed where he was.
The last time he had moved toward her, the response had been immediate and excessive. The structure had tightened too sharply, forcing a correction that left residue behind.
This time, he did nothing.
He watched the space instead.
The adjustments came differently now. Broader. Less focused. The flow didn't compress around a point; it redistributed across the block.
A pedestrian slowed near a storefront, then resumed.
A car hesitated before turning, then committed.
Small corrections.
They arrived early, dissipated slowly, and never fully vanished.
Doyun felt the weight behind his eyes change.
Not spike.
Diffuse.
She shifted her stance.
A single step backward.
The effect rippled outward. The tension lost its edge, spreading thinly across a wider area until it became background noise.
The structure relaxed.
Doyun understood.
She was not responding to him.
She was responding to the blind spot he had created.
The area he had chosen not to see had not stopped influencing the flow. It had simply extended its reach.
They stood like that for several minutes.
Neither approached.
Neither retreated further.
A balance formed, unstable but functional.
When she finally turned her head, it was not to look at him. It was to align herself more precisely with the boundary she was guarding.
Their eyes never met.
She did not warn him.
Did not gesture.
Did not signal.
Her position was the message.
You are already too close to the center.
Doyun felt the urge to test it.
To step forward and see how far the structure would bend.
He suppressed it.
Instead, he shifted sideways, reducing overlap rather than distance.
The response surprised him.
The flow smoothed instead of tightening. The early corrections softened, becoming less noticeable.
She remained where she was.
The space held.
This was not coordination.
It was parallel restraint.
When she moved, it was along the perimeter of the affected range. She traced the boundary without entering it, her distance from the center consistent.
Each time she passed a junction, the space adjusted.
Not correcting.
Accounting.
Doyun stayed until she disappeared from view.
Only then did the flow return to its default rhythm.
That night, he sat in the dark longer than usual.
He replayed the scene again and again, focusing not on her presence, but on her refusal to occupy the center.
She had chosen a position that minimized amplification while maximizing distribution.
Distance, he realized, was not avoidance.
It was calibration.
When he finally opened his notebook, he wrote slowly.
Proximity concentrates force.
Offset redistributes it.
He paused, then added:
Standing further away does not reduce awareness.
It changes what you are responsible for.
Doyun closed the notebook.
The range had expanded again.
And she had already adjusted.