Maxinni began to realize something was wrong when the answers started arriving too early.
— Good morning — she said to the woman at the reception desk.
— Good morning — the woman replied, before Maxinni had even finished speaking.
It wasn't the coincidence that bothered her.It was the absence of intention.
People responded as if they were fulfilling a function, not participating in a conversation. The eyes followed. The bodies moved. But something between cause and effect felt… shallow.
She tried to ignore it.
She blamed the fatigue. The insomnia that had become routine. The constant sensation that she was always a few seconds behind the world.
That morning, as she left her apartment, she noticed the building's hallway felt shorter. Not physically — it was the same distance — but her body reached the door too quickly, as if it had skipped an invisible stretch of the path.
When she looked back, nothing seemed different.
Still, her stomach twisted.
On the bus, the window reflected her face imperfectly. Not distorted. Just… slow. She moved her head slightly, and the reflection followed with an almost imperceptible delay.
She blinked.
The reflection blinked after.
— It's just exhaustion — she murmured to herself.
But the sentence didn't convince even her.
Over the past few days, small lapses had begun to accumulate. Not major lapses — that would have been too easy to notice. They were subtle flaws.
She forgot a simple word while paying for a coffee.She forgot the name of a street she had walked down dozens of times.For a few seconds, she forgot the face of the woman who insisted on calling her daughter.
The most disturbing part was that none of it came with panic.
The emotional absence was almost greater than the failure itself.
That afternoon, she found Elowen at the café.
She was behind the counter, as always, wiping a cup that was already clean. When Maxinni entered, Elowen looked up at the exact same instant, as if she knew precisely when she would arrive.
— You didn't sleep — Elowen said, without asking.
— Sleeping has been optional lately — Max replied, sitting down.
Elowen nodded slowly.
— And the world?
Maxinni frowned.
— What about it?
Elowen took a moment before answering.
— Is it… responding to you?
The question should have sounded strange. But it didn't.
Maxinni stayed silent for too long.
— Not in the right way — she answered at last.
Elowen poured the coffee. When she placed the cup in front of Maxinni, her fingers lightly touched the table — and for an instant, the wood seemed to reflect the light like a polished mirror.
It lasted less than a second.
— If something starts to disappear — Elowen said, as if commenting on the weather — don't try to hold on.
— Disappear how?
Elowen smiled, but there was tension there.
— Like things that were never meant to stay.
That night, Maxinni tried to sleep.
When she closed her eyes, she felt something strange: not dreams, but the sensation of being watched from the inside. As if her own thoughts were being reflected somewhere she couldn't see.
She got up and went to the bathroom.
The mirror returned her face.
Perfectly.
For three seconds.
Then the reflection tilted its head before she did.
Maxinni stepped back, her heart racing.
— No — she whispered. — It's not real.
The reflection smiled.
And went back to imitating her.
Maxinni turned off the light and left the bathroom without looking back.
She didn't notice when she began to forget how time passed.
She only noticed when it started to fail completely.