The thought stayed with me overnight.
Not the urgent, sleepless kind — more like something placed on a shelf that I kept walking past. During the quiet before sleep, it would surface, stay for a moment, and then I'd tell myself it was nothing, turn over, and fall asleep. But in the morning when I woke up, it was still in the same place, untouched.
I didn't tell anyone.
Not because I didn't trust anyone. Because the thing, stated plainly, didn't sound like anything worth taking seriously. "My friend brought me the exact dish I was thinking about without me saying it" — the first response from anyone would be: coincidence. That was my first response too. The problem was that coincidence was where I'd been leaving it, and it kept not quite fitting.
The first test was in class the next morning.
The thinking went: if this is only coincidence, it won't keep happening. If it isn't coincidence, I should be able to repeat it. The method was simple — think of something specific and small, something ordinary enough that it could plausibly happen by chance, but specific enough that chance would be a stretch. Say nothing. Wait.
I chose: no vocabulary test in history class today.
The history teacher ran spot checks nearly every lesson — it was his established pattern, had been since the term started. No particular reason for today to be different. I held the thought in my mind without expressing it, let it stay there, and went back to my notes.
The history teacher came in, set his book on the desk, and spoke. "No test today — we'll go straight to new material. Review last week's content at home."
Someone nearby let out a quiet sound of relief. Ashly raised an eyebrow at me. I gave her a small smile, then looked back down at my notebook.
In my mind, I took the thing apart.
History teachers skip tests. It's happened before — last week, even. I happened to think about it beforehand. The timing was close. That's not the same as causation. There's a term for this: confirmation bias. You start paying attention to something and your brain starts filtering for the instances that match. The ones that don't match, you don't hold on to. The effect is that you see what you're looking for, not because it's there more, but because you've started noticing it.
I picked up my pen and kept writing.
But I didn't stop testing.
The second one was after lunch. I lay in the classroom during the break with my eyes closed, and held a thought clearly: the first period of the afternoon is going to become a free study period. The afternoon's first class was English. The English teacher hadn't done this once all term — there'd been no cancellations. I focused the thought, held it there, and let it rest.
Ten minutes later, the class monitor came in. "English teacher is unavailable this afternoon. First period is self-study. Complete the exercises on page—"
I opened my eyes.
Stared at the monitor finishing the announcement. Listened to him walk back out.
This was harder to explain. The English teacher missing a class was real — that wasn't something I'd caused. But I'd thought it before it happened, with a gap of only ten minutes. I tried to construct the sequence: the teacher already knew before lunch that something had come up, so the information was already in the system. It had nothing to do with what I'd been thinking. The timing was close, but closeness isn't connection. Still confirmation bias. Still holding.
I took the explanation, accepted it, and pulled out the English exercise book.
The third one wasn't planned. It came on the walk home.
I was at a junction, waiting for the lights. Standing there, I had a thought — if that white car across the road turns left before the light changes, that's the third instance.
The condition was arbitrary. I'd chosen it with no basis — the car was parked in a position where going straight ahead made more sense, a left turn would add distance, there was no visible reason to expect it. I watched. The light was still red. Maybe fifteen seconds left.
In the last moment before the light changed, the white car turned left.
I crossed the road when the signal changed and kept walking at the same pace. My face remained as it was.
But something had settled internally — quiet and steady, like a reading finally coming in. Not frantic. More like the particular feeling of a result you've been waiting on arriving.
Back home, I put my bag down and sat at my desk for a long time doing nothing.
Three times.
History class, English period, the car. For the first two, I'd been able to construct explanations. They held, logically — I hadn't been able to immediately contradict them. The third was harder. The condition was arbitrary. It was something I'd decided on the spot, known to no one. The car had no reason to go that direction. And it did.
I turned my chair to the window and looked at the street below. The evening light was setting the pavement in warm orange. Someone on a bicycle. A child running near the kerb. Everything ordinary, everything recognisably real.
But a question had stopped being avoidable.
If this isn't reality, then what is?
I let that settle for a moment, felt its weight, then drew my gaze back from the window and looked at my hands in my lap.
I needed a test that this place couldn't reach. Something existing only inside my mind, with no contact with anything external. Something that couldn't align by coincidence, no matter what.
I held that thought, and started thinking about what that test would be.