Nothing happened the day the record began.
That was the problem.
No sudden noise. No dramatic interruption. No moment that would have made a good story later. If anything, the day felt aggressively normal—the kind of normal that slowly wears you down without ever announcing itself.
The alarm didn't go off.
Or maybe it did, and he shut it off in his sleep. He couldn't remember. All he knew was that he opened his eyes to a dull gray ceiling and the familiar weight in his chest that told him he was already behind.
Again.
He lay there longer than he should have, staring at the thin crack running across the plaster above his bed. It had been there for years. Easy to ignore if you didn't focus on it. Hard to unsee once you did.
A lot like his life.
He rolled out of bed and shuffled toward the bathroom, feet cold against the floor. The mirror above the sink reflected a man who looked… fine. Not exhausted enough to deserve sympathy. Not energized enough to inspire confidence.
Late twenties. Clean. Forgettable.
He brushed his own teeth while scrolling through his phone with one hand. Messages he didn't want to answer. Headlines he didn't finish reading. Notifications that felt louder than they deserved.
Nothing urgent. Nothing meaningful.
He leaned forward to spit into the sink—and froze.
Something hovered at the edge of his vision.
Not bright. Not blinking. Not centered.
Just text. Flat, neutral, unmistakably there.
Record initialized.
The toothbrush slipped from his fingers and clattered against the porcelain.
He blinked once. Then again.
The words stayed.
His pulse picked up—not panic, not fear, but that sharp awareness you get when something in reality doesn't line up the way it's supposed to.
He leaned closer to the mirror, squinting, half-expecting the reflection to distort or the text to vanish once he focused on it directly.
Nothing changed.
No glitch. No shimmer.
Just those two words, steady and indifferent.
"Yeah, no," he muttered, straightening. "Not today."
He splashed cold water on his face. Let it drip down his neck. When he looked up again, the text was still there.
Same size. Same position.
Same quiet certainty.
He stepped back, irritation starting to edge out the unease. His first instinct was simple: he was tired. Too little sleep. Too much screen time. Brain misfiring.
That explanation was safe.
Hallucinations didn't mean anything if you didn't engage with them.
So he didn't.
He grabbed a towel, dried his face, and walked out of the bathroom without another glance.
The text followed.
Not physically. It didn't move through space. It simply remained wherever his attention drifted, like a thought he couldn't quite shake.
He dressed faster than usual, tugging on jeans and a hoodie, tying his shoes with more force than necessary. The words never left.
Record initialized.
No countdown. No instructions.
No explanation.
"Great," he said to the empty room. "Exactly what I needed."
He grabbed his keys and left the apartment, locking the door behind him. The hallway smelled faintly of old carpet and cleaning chemicals. Somewhere down the hall, someone had their music up too loud, bass bleeding through the walls.
Normal.
Outside, the city moved the way it always did. Traffic. People. Noise layered on noise.
The record didn't react.
It didn't care that he barely caught the light. Didn't acknowledge the coffee shop he skipped because the line was too long. Didn't comment when he took the stairs instead of the elevator at work.
It just existed.
By the time he sat down at his desk, the initial rush of adrenaline had faded into something heavier. Annoyance, maybe. Or unease.
He logged in, stared at his screen, and waited for focus to show up.
It didn't.
Tasks lined up neatly in rows. Deadlines that once felt urgent now hovered somewhere in the background, dull and distant.
That was the pattern.
Everything urgent eventually became noise.
Minutes passed. Maybe more.
Then the text updated.
A second line appeared beneath the first.
Consistent behavior detected.
His jaw tightened.
"That's not funny," he murmured, glancing around. No one was paying attention. Keyboards clicked. Someone laughed quietly at something on their screen.
The record remained unmoved.
Consistent.
Predictable.
Stuck.
The word settled in his chest with more weight than he expected.
He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, staring at the screen without seeing it.
The record hadn't insulted him.
It had simply noticed.
And somehow, that felt worse.