Saturday began with a headache.
Not a bad one.
Just enough pressure behind his left eye to make Larius reconsider whether he actually needed coffee.
He stood in the kitchen staring at the kettle.
Coffee.
Tea.
Water.
His eyes moved between them.
"Decisions."
He sighed.
"Wonderful."
He chose tea.
That felt mature.
Five minutes later he was drinking coffee.
He stared at the mug.
"...I need to work on consistency."
The lily remained silent beside the window.
Traitor.
The headache faded by the time he reached the library.
Saturday mornings were different from weekdays.
More families.
More children.
More people who had apparently decided that the best place to spend their weekend was surrounded by books.
Larius understood them.
Mostly.
He spent the first hour helping at the circulation desk.
A woman needed help finding tax forms.
A teenager couldn't remember the title of a book but remembered the cover was "kind of blue and had a bird."
A little boy asked if dinosaurs had libraries.
Larius had to think about that one.
"I don't think so."
"Why?"
"Probably because they would've eaten the librarian."
The boy stared at him.
Then laughed.
His mother apologized.
Larius waved it off.
"Fair question."
It was a normal morning.
Which was precisely why he didn't notice the backpack immediately.
It sat beneath a chair near the public computers.
Black.
Old.
The fabric around one strap had begun to fray.
Nothing unusual about it.
Half the people in the library carried backpacks.
Students.
Workers.
Parents.
The difference was that nobody was sitting beside this one.
Larius walked past it once.
Then again.
On the third pass, his eyes lingered.
The chair was empty.
The computer terminal was still logged into the library's public session.
The screen had timed out.
He looked around.
No owner.
He checked the clock.
Ten forty-three.
Maybe the person had gone to the restroom.
Maybe they'd gone outside.
Maybe they'd found a book.
Maybe they'd stepped away to make a phone call.
There were plenty of ordinary explanations.
He kept walking.
Five minutes later, he passed it again.
Still there.
He slowed.
That familiar internal mechanism began turning.
Not the strange one.
Not the thing he still couldn't explain.
Just his ordinary brain.
Observation.
Interpretation.
Possibility.
Action.
He had been learning to separate them.
At least, he thought he had.
Observation:
A backpack was unattended.
Interpretation:
Unknown.
Possibilities:
Someone had stepped away.
Someone had forgotten it.
Someone was coming back.
Someone had left it intentionally.
Or...
something else.
He stopped himself.
"Don't."
The word came quietly.
He wasn't going to turn an empty chair and a backpack into a crime scene.
He had learned better.
At least...
he hoped he had.
Another ten minutes passed.
A librarian walked by.
Larius looked at the backpack.
She didn't seem concerned.
That made him feel slightly better.
Then he noticed something.
The computer directly in front of the backpack was empty too.
The chair had been pushed back.
A notebook sat on the desk.
Open.
A pen rested across the page.
That made it look less abandoned.
Someone had clearly been using the space.
Larius looked around again.
Still nobody.
He considered leaving it alone.
Then remembered Carl's voice.
You don't need to know something is dangerous before you treat it carefully.
That was the lesson.
Not:
Everything you don't understand is dangerous.
There was a difference.
He walked to the circulation desk.
Diane was helping a mother locate a children's reading program.
Larius waited until she finished.
"Diane?"
She looked up.
"Yes?"
"There's an unattended backpack near the computers."
Her expression changed slightly.
Not fear.
Attention.
"How long?"
"I noticed it about fifteen minutes ago."
"Did you see who left it?"
"I saw someone sitting there earlier."
"Did you see them leave?"
"No."
Diane nodded.
"Okay."
She didn't immediately move.
That surprised him.
Instead she asked:
"Did anyone seem concerned?"
"No."
"Did you see anything unusual about the bag?"
Larius thought.
"No."
"Did you touch it?"
"No."
"Good."
She picked up the phone.
"I'll check the area and contact security."
Larius nodded.
Then stopped.
"I can..."
He wasn't sure what he could offer.
Diane gave him a small smile.
"You've already done the useful part."
"What?"
"You noticed it."
They walked toward the computer section together.
The backpack remained exactly where it had been.
Diane stopped several feet away.
She didn't touch it either.
She looked around.
"Anyone recognize this?"
A nearby student shook his head.
"No."
A woman at another computer glanced over.
"I think a guy was sitting there."
"How long ago?"
"Maybe twenty minutes?"
"Did he leave with the bag?"
The woman thought.
"I don't know."
Diane nodded.
"Thank you."
She stepped back.
Larius watched.
Nothing happened.
No dramatic alarm.
No evacuation.
No screaming.
Just two librarians standing several feet away from an ordinary-looking backpack while they tried to figure out what to do.
The lack of certainty felt strangely uncomfortable.
He had gotten used to that feeling.
Still didn't like it.
A security guard from the building arrived a few minutes later.
Larius recognized him.
Not Carl.
Another guard from the daytime rotation.
He spoke quietly with Diane.
Then they checked the surrounding area.
No owner.
The guard contacted his supervisor.
They decided to keep the immediate area clear while they made further checks.
Larius watched from behind the circulation desk.
His mind kept producing possibilities.
And eliminating them.
Maybe the person had forgotten it.
Maybe they were embarrassed.
Maybe they were outside.
Maybe they had gone to the bathroom.
Maybe they had left entirely.
Maybe...
He stopped.
There it was again.
The temptation.
His brain wanted a conclusion.
It wanted one answer.
Dangerous.
Not dangerous.
Forgotten.
Intentional.
Safe.
Unsafe.
Pick one.
Put the uncertainty away.
He hated that part of his mind.
Because it was the same part that had once wanted to understand his missing memories immediately.
The same part that hated unfinished sentences.
The same part that couldn't tolerate an empty space.
He breathed slowly.
Not the elaborate breathing exercises he'd once practiced.
Just enough.
In.
Out.
Observe.
Wait.
Twenty minutes later, the owner returned.
A young man in his early twenties hurried through the library doors.
He looked around.
Then immediately noticed the security guard.
His expression changed.
"What happened?"
The guard pointed toward the backpack.
"Is that yours?"
The young man stopped.
"...Yeah."
Diane approached.
"You left it unattended?"
"I had to take a call."
He pulled his phone from his pocket.
"Outside."
He looked genuinely confused.
"I thought I'd only be gone for a minute."
The guard nodded.
"That's fine."
He gestured toward the bag.
"Just remember not to leave valuables unattended."
"Yeah."
The young man looked embarrassed.
"Sorry."
Diane smiled.
"No problem."
He walked over and picked up the backpack.
The zipper opened slightly.
Inside were books.
A laptop.
A charger.
A plastic container.
The unmistakable smell of someone's lunch escaped into the air.
Larius almost laughed.
He quickly turned it into a cough.
The young man looked at him.
"You okay?"
"Yeah."
Larius nodded.
"Fine."
He watched the man leave.
The entire incident had lasted perhaps forty minutes.
Nothing had happened.
No crime.
No emergency.
No danger.
Just...
a backpack.
Larius returned to shelving books.
His hands moved automatically.
His mind didn't.
He kept replaying the last forty minutes.
He had noticed something.
He had reported it.
He had done what he thought was reasonable.
Nobody had been harmed.
Nobody had been accused.
So why did he still feel embarrassed?
He knew the answer.
Because somewhere inside him, he'd expected his observation to mean something.
It hadn't.
At least not in the way he'd imagined.
He glanced toward the computer section.
The chair was empty again.
This time there was no backpack.
Nothing remained.
The space looked ordinary.
Larius stared at it.
Then quietly muttered,
"Right."
He returned another book to the shelf.
"Not every empty space means something."
He paused.
Then corrected himself.
"Not every empty space means what I think it means."
That sounded better.
More accurate.
And somehow...
more difficult.
He hadn't realized how much he'd started trusting his own observations.
Maybe that wasn't the problem.
Maybe the problem was that he had started trusting his interpretations just as much.
And those...
were not the same thing.
The security office smelled like coffee, dust, and the faint plastic scent of old electronics.
Larius had never understood why every security office seemed to possess the same three smells.
Maybe it was a universal law.
Maybe security guards were simply cursed to drink coffee beside machines that had been manufactured before they were born.
He sat across from Carl after clocking in.
Carl was reviewing the shift log.
Larius was unusually quiet.
Carl noticed.
He always noticed.
"You look like you're about to confess to a crime."
Larius blinked.
"What?"
Carl looked up.
"That face."
"What face?"
"The one people make when they're about to tell me they broke something."
"I didn't break anything."
"Good."
Carl returned to the paperwork.
"So?"
Larius hesitated.
"There was an unattended backpack at the library."
Carl's pen stopped.
"Was?"
"It belonged to someone."
"Did you touch it?"
"No."
"Good."
"Security checked it."
"Good."
"It was nothing."
Carl nodded.
"Also good."
Larius leaned back.
"That's the problem."
Carl raised an eyebrow.
"The problem is that it was nothing?"
"The problem is..."
Larius searched for the right words.
"I thought it might be something."
Carl waited.
"Then it wasn't."
"That's generally how possibilities work."
Larius frowned.
"I'm being serious."
"I know."
Carl put the pen down.
"Tell me what happened."
So Larius did.
He explained the backpack.
The empty chair.
The computer.
The waiting.
The security guard.
The young man returning.
The books.
The laptop.
The sandwich.
Carl listened without interrupting.
When Larius finished, Carl leaned back.
"What did you think?"
Larius answered immediately.
"That it could be dangerous."
Carl nodded.
"Why?"
"Because it was unattended."
"Anything else?"
"No."
"Did you see anyone acting suspiciously?"
"No."
"Did you see someone behaving strangely?"
"No."
"Did the bag itself look unusual?"
"No."
"Did you hear anything?"
"No."
Carl folded his arms.
"So..."
Larius waited.
"You had an unattended bag."
"Yes."
"And you didn't know why it was unattended."
"Correct."
Carl nodded.
"Then you did the right thing."
Larius relaxed.
Then Carl added:
"But you were wrong."
The relaxation disappeared.
"...What?"
Carl smiled slightly.
"You were right to be cautious."
He tapped the desk.
"But you were wrong to be suspicious."
Larius stared at him.
Those sounded like the same thing.
They weren't.
Carl seemed to know that.
"Explain."
"Gladly."
He leaned forward.
"Imagine you see smoke coming out of a building."
Larius nodded.
"You don't know whether there's a fire."
"Right."
"So what do you do?"
"Check."
"Exactly."
Carl pointed toward him.
"That's caution."
Then he pointed toward the imaginary building.
"Suspicion is deciding there's a fire before you have enough information."
Larius thought about it.
"But smoke usually means..."
"Usually isn't always."
Carl stood and walked toward the office window.
"That's where people get themselves into trouble."
He looked outside.
"They see one thing."
"They attach a story to it."
"Then they start treating the story as fact."
Larius remained seated.
"Observation."
"Interpretation."
"Assumption."
Carl nodded.
"Exactly."
Larius stared at the floor.
He had written those words before.
He'd talked about them.
He'd studied them.
But hearing them in this context felt different.
Because he'd done exactly that.
He had observed a backpack.
Then created a story.
The story had been reasonable.
But it had still been a story.
Carl returned to the desk.
"There's another problem."
"What?"
"People often think being cautious means expecting the worst."
Larius looked up.
"It doesn't?"
"No."
Carl shook his head.
"Being cautious means preparing for possibilities without pretending you know which possibility is true."
That sentence hit harder.
Larius sat quietly.
He remembered his psychology notes.
Probability.
Confirmation bias.
Availability.
Pattern recognition.
Threat perception.
He had studied these things.
But knowing their names didn't make him immune to them.
Apparently...
his brain could still be a spectacular idiot.
Carl grabbed his coffee.
"Don't beat yourself up."
"I'm not."
"You are."
"I'm evaluating."
"You're beating yourself up academically."
Larius looked offended.
"I don't do that."
Carl raised an eyebrow.
"You absolutely do."
Larius opened his mouth.
Closed it.
"...Fine."
Carl smiled.
"That's better."
He took a drink.
"You want to know the important part?"
Larius nodded.
"You didn't touch the bag."
"You didn't accuse the owner."
"You didn't cause a panic."
"You told someone responsible."
"You waited."
He counted each point on his fingers.
"That's good judgment."
Larius considered that.
"So being wrong wasn't necessarily bad."
"Correct."
"But being certain would've been."
"Much worse."
Carl sat down again.
"Experience isn't learning how to never be wrong."
"Experience is learning how to be wrong safely."
Larius stared at him.
That was going into the notebook.
He could already tell.
The shift continued.
A customer complained about a parking space.
A delivery truck arrived late.
Someone left a shopping cart in the middle of an aisle.
A child dropped a drink.
The world continued producing tiny problems.
Larius dealt with them.
Nothing important happened.
Until seven thirty.
He was walking along the outer edge of the plaza when he heard raised voices.
He stopped.
Two people stood near the convenience store.
A man.
A woman.
They were arguing.
The woman had her arms crossed.
The man was gesturing sharply.
Larius watched.
His first thought came immediately.
Argument.
His second came faster.
Potential escalation.
He remained at a distance.
The woman said something he couldn't hear.
The man responded louder.
Larius' attention sharpened.
His body didn't move.
His brain did.
Possible domestic dispute.
Possible relationship conflict.
Possible threat.
Possible nothing.
He caught himself.
Nothing.
He didn't know.
He watched for another few seconds.
The woman stepped backward.
The man stepped forward.
Larius' shoulders tightened.
The man raised his hand.
Not toward her.
He pointed toward the store.
"That's what I'm talking about!"
The woman shook her head.
"You can't keep doing this!"
Larius frowned.
There was something about the scene that didn't fit his first interpretation.
He waited.
The woman suddenly covered her face.
She wasn't frightened.
She was crying.
The man stopped.
His posture changed completely.
The anger drained from his face.
He lowered his voice.
"I'm sorry."
The woman shook her head.
"No."
He stepped closer.
She didn't move away.
Then...
she hugged him.
Larius froze.
"...Oh."
He immediately felt ridiculous.
The man wasn't attacking her.
The woman wasn't trying to escape.
They were simply two people having a terrible conversation.
Maybe family problems.
Maybe money.
Maybe something else.
He didn't know.
And that was the point.
He had almost built an entire situation from three observations.
Raised voices.
Hand gestures.
Distance.
That was it.
He slowly stepped backward.
He wasn't embarrassed because he'd considered the possibility of danger.
He was embarrassed because he'd almost treated his interpretation as evidence.
He turned away.
Then stopped.
Because another sound reached him.
A sharp crash.
Across the street.
This time...
it sounded different.
He looked.
Two men stood near a parked vehicle.
One had shoved the other.
The second man stumbled backward.
Larius stared.
His first instinct was to move.
His second...
was fear.
What if I'm wrong again?
The question stopped him for half a second.
And that half second mattered.
He looked again.
One man shoved the other a second time.
This wasn't an argument he needed to interpret from a distance.
There was physical aggression.
That was an observation.
Not a theory.
Larius reached for his phone.
He didn't run toward them.
He didn't try to become a hero.
He stepped farther away from the two men and called for assistance.
Then he warned a nearby pedestrian to move away from the area.
The situation lasted less than a minute before other people began reacting.
A security employee from a nearby store came outside.
Another person called emergency services.
The two men separated.
One walked away.
The other remained beside the vehicle.
Larius stayed where he was.
His heart was beating harder than he liked.
But he hadn't frozen.
And he hadn't charged in.
He had simply done the safest useful thing he could think of.
Carl arrived several minutes later after being notified.
He looked at Larius.
"You alright?"
"Yeah."
"You involved?"
"No."
"You touch anyone?"
"No."
Carl nodded.
"Good."
Larius looked across the street.
"That one was actually dangerous."
Carl followed his gaze.
"Yes."
Larius swallowed.
"And I almost didn't act."
Carl turned toward him.
"Why?"
Larius hesitated.
"Because I thought I might be wrong again."
Carl was silent for a moment.
Then:
"That's the other side of the lesson."
Larius looked at him.
"You don't stop making decisions because you're afraid of being wrong."
Carl pointed toward the scene.
"You gather what information you can."
"Then you act according to what you actually know."
"Not what you fear."
"Not what you hope."
"What you know."
Larius nodded slowly.
The distinction was becoming clearer.
Not perfectly.
But clearer.
Carl looked at him.
"You called for help."
"Yes."
"You kept your distance."
"Yes."
"You warned someone else."
"Yes."
"Then you made a reasonable decision."
Larius looked down.
"Even though I hesitated."
Carl shrugged.
"You're human."
That answer somehow made Larius feel better.
The rest of the evening passed without another incident.
But the lesson followed him home.
Not the backpack.
Not the argument.
The difference between them.
Two situations.
Two interpretations.
Two very different realities.
And his brain had been capable of getting both wrong.
One time...
he had almost seen danger where there was none.
The other...
he had nearly allowed his fear of being wrong to delay action when there actually was danger.
That balance was harder than he had expected.
Much harder.
At home, Larius opened his notebook.
He stared at the blank page for several minutes.
Then wrote:
Today I learned two opposite mistakes.
He paused.
Added:
Seeing danger everywhere is a mistake.
Another pause.
Then:
Seeing danger nowhere is also a mistake.
He leaned back.
The sentence looked almost too simple.
But simple didn't mean easy.
He added one final line.
Uncertainty is useful only if I can still make a decision inside it.
He read it twice.
Then closed the notebook.
For once...
he didn't try to analyze it further.
He had spent enough time inside his own head today.
Outside his window, Los Angeles continued moving.
Cars passed.
A siren sounded somewhere distant.
People argued.
People laughed.
People went home.
People stayed out.
People made mistakes.
People corrected them.
And Larius finally understood something uncomfortable.
Learning how to observe wasn't going to make him better because he would become incapable of being wrong.
It would make him better because, eventually...
he would become less afraid of being wrong.
That was going to take time.
Probably a lot of it.
He looked toward the lily.
"You're lucky."
The leaves moved slightly in the evening breeze.
"You don't have to interpret people."
He smiled.
"Just sunlight."
The flower remained silent.
For once...
Larius envied it.
The next morning, Larius woke up thinking about the backpack.
Not the incident itself.
The mistake.
He lay on his back for several seconds, staring at the ceiling.
There had been nothing dangerous about the bag.
He had known that eventually.
But his first reaction had still been to construct possibilities around it.
That bothered him.
Not because caution was bad.
Because he had started realizing just how quickly his mind could turn incomplete information into a story.
He sat up.
"Wonderful."
His voice sounded tired.
"Another thing to worry about."
He stopped.
Then laughed quietly.
"That's probably the opposite of what I'm supposed to do."
He made breakfast.
Eggs.
Toast.
A little bacon.
He was still nowhere near Sofia's level of cooking, but at least he no longer considered burning bacon an unavoidable part of adulthood.
He ate standing beside the kitchen counter.
His eyes wandered toward the blue notebook.
He had left it open the previous night.
The final sentence stared back at him.
Uncertainty is useful only if I can still make a decision inside it.
He read it again.
Then looked away.
There was something almost irritating about the sentence.
It sounded wise.
He disliked sentences that sounded wise.
They usually meant more work.
Later that morning, he walked to the library.
The streets were busy.
A bus stopped ahead of him.
A cyclist crossed the road.
A delivery driver double-parked for thirty seconds before moving again.
A woman hurried across the sidewalk while looking at her phone.
Larius noticed all of it.
Then deliberately stopped noticing.
Not literally.
He simply stopped trying to assign meaning to every movement.
The woman wasn't necessarily careless.
The driver wasn't necessarily inconsiderate.
The cyclist wasn't necessarily reckless.
They were simply...
people.
He continued walking.
That felt strangely freeing.
At the library, Diane was rearranging a display near the entrance.
She looked up.
"Morning."
"Morning."
She held up a book.
"Where would you put this?"
Larius looked at the title.
"Psychology?"
"Wrong."
He frowned.
She laughed.
"It's self-help."
"That's basically psychology."
"Tell that to the cataloging system."
Larius sighed.
"Fine."
He took the book.
"Self-help."
"Good."
He walked away.
Then turned around.
"Diane?"
"Yes?"
"Do you ever get tired of being wrong?"
She stared at him.
"Constantly."
He blinked.
"Really?"
"Of course."
She returned to arranging the display.
"Being wrong is normal."
"What's difficult is admitting it before you've wasted an hour defending yourself."
Larius smiled.
"That's annoyingly reasonable."
"I've had practice."
Around noon, Walter's empty chair remained empty.
Larius noticed.
This time...
he didn't immediately wonder why.
He simply hoped.
There was a difference.
He had started to understand that.
Hope didn't require certainty.
It didn't even require evidence.
Sometimes it was simply the direction you wanted reality to move.
He went back to work.
The afternoon brought another small lesson.
A young man approached the circulation desk carrying three books.
He looked frustrated.
"I was charged a late fee."
Diane checked his account.
"You returned these yesterday."
"I know."
"The system says they were due last week."
"They weren't."
Diane looked at the screen.
The young man crossed his arms.
Larius stood nearby, sorting returns.
His first instinct was to assume the man had forgotten the due date.
Then he remembered the backpack.
Observation.
Interpretation.
He watched.
Diane checked the barcode.
Then the original checkout record.
Then the computer.
She frowned.
"You're right."
The young man blinked.
"What?"
"The due date was entered incorrectly."
She corrected it.
The fee disappeared.
"I'm sorry."
The man looked embarrassed.
"I thought I was losing my mind."
Diane smiled.
"Computers are very good at making people question themselves."
He laughed.
"Apparently."
He left.
Larius looked at Diane.
"You were wrong."
"Yes."
"You didn't know."
"No."
She shrugged.
"And then I checked."
That was it.
No shame.
No elaborate defense.
No attempt to pretend she'd been right all along.
She had simply been wrong.
Then corrected it.
Larius found that strangely comforting.
By evening, the lesson had settled into something quieter.
He was beginning to realize that being wrong wasn't the frightening part.
The frightening part was being wrong and refusing to update.
That was where mistakes became dangerous.
A person could misread someone.
A security guard could misunderstand a situation.
A police officer could make an incorrect assumption.
A doctor could initially suspect the wrong illness.
A librarian could enter the wrong date.
A friend could misunderstand a sentence.
Everybody had incomplete information.
The difference was what happened next.
Did they check?
Did they listen?
Did they update?
Or did they protect their original conclusion simply because they had already committed to it?
Larius thought about his own memories.
His first day.
The bench.
The apartment.
The headache.
The word LAPD.
The strange flashes.
For months he'd desperately wanted one explanation.
One answer.
One clean story.
Maybe he had been doing the same thing.
Maybe his obsession with finding an explanation had been another version of the same mistake.
He didn't know.
And for once...
he didn't feel compelled to force an answer.
After work, he stopped at Sofia's flower shop.
The bell above the door chimed.
Sofia looked up from arranging a bouquet.
"You're early."
"Is that bad?"
"No."
She looked at him carefully.
"You look like you've been thinking too much."
"I've been told that's a problem."
Fabian was sitting at the small table near the window.
He immediately looked up.
His hands moved.
Larius recognized one sign.
Thinking?
Larius nodded.
Fabian made another sign.
Larius stared.
"...I have no idea."
Fabian rolled his eyes.
Sofia laughed.
"You still need to learn."
"I know."
Fabian pointed at the chair.
Then made another gesture.
Larius guessed.
"Sit?"
Fabian nodded enthusiastically.
"Yes!"
Larius sat.
Fabian looked pleased.
Sofia shook her head.
"One word."
"Progress."
Fabian gave him a thumbs-up.
Larius smiled.
He liked this place.
Not because everything was easy.
Because nobody expected him to already know everything.
Sofia handed him a small cup of tea.
"So."
She sat across from him.
"What happened?"
Larius hesitated.
He explained the backpack.
Then the argument.
Then the second confrontation.
He left out nothing important.
When he finished, Sofia considered it.
"You were wrong."
"Thank you."
She smiled.
"But..."
She lifted one finger.
"You were also careful."
Another finger.
"You didn't hurt anyone."
Another.
"You corrected yourself."
She lowered her hand.
"That's not failure."
Larius looked at her.
"What is it?"
"Practice."
He smiled faintly.
"You and Carl are becoming annoyingly similar."
"He's right, then."
"Unfortunately."
Fabian suddenly started laughing.
Larius looked at him.
"What?"
Fabian pointed toward him.
Then made an exaggerated gesture.
Sofia laughed.
"He says you're making the same face you make when the lily does something you don't understand."
Larius looked offended.
"My face does not do that."
Fabian nodded vigorously.
Sofia was laughing harder now.
"Apparently it does."
Larius sighed.
"Great."
He looked at Fabian.
"Can you at least teach me the sign for 'stop making fun of me'?"
Fabian grinned.
Then began demonstrating.
Larius copied the movement.
Wrong.
Fabian corrected him.
Larius tried again.
Still wrong.
Fabian shook his head dramatically.
Sofia covered her mouth.
Larius looked between them.
"This is humiliating."
Fabian laughed.
Larius couldn't help laughing too.
For several minutes, the uncertainty disappeared.
There was no mystery.
No powers.
No LAPD.
No complicated psychology.
Just a ten-year-old boy teaching him a hand sign badly enough that Larius couldn't tell whether the mistake was intentional.
He suspected it was.
He didn't mind.
When he finally left the flower shop, the sky had darkened.
He walked home beneath streetlights.
For once, he didn't try to predict what would happen next.
He didn't examine every stranger.
Didn't assign meaning to every raised voice.
Didn't wonder whether every parked car belonged to someone suspicious.
He simply walked.
Halfway home, he noticed a man sitting on a bench.
Larius slowed.
The man looked tired.
Maybe homeless.
Maybe waiting for someone.
Maybe simply resting.
Three weeks ago, Larius might have wondered.
Tonight...
he kept walking.
Not because he didn't care.
Because he didn't know.
And not knowing was acceptable.
At home, he opened his notebook one final time.
He added something beneath yesterday's entry.
Observation gives me information.
Interpretation gives me a possibility.
Action should depend on what I can actually justify.
He stared at the three lines.
Then added:
And if I'm wrong, I update.
He put the pen down.
That was enough.
He closed the notebook.
Before bed, he checked the lily.
The leaves were healthy.
The soil was slightly damp.
No overwatering.
No disaster.
He smiled.
"You're doing better than me."
He switched off the light.
The room became dark except for the faint glow coming through the window.
Larius lay down.
His mind wandered.
The backpack.
The argument.
The fight.
Carl.
Diane.
Sofia.
Fabian.
So many small lessons.
None of them extraordinary.
Yet somehow...
they were changing him.
He was becoming more careful.
Not more fearful.
More comfortable with uncertainty.
Not more indecisive.
More willing to act when action was justified.
The distinction was small.
But important.
And somewhere beneath all of that...
another thought appeared.
A quiet one.
Almost too quiet to notice.
For months he'd wanted to understand why he had woken up on that bench.
Why his memories were wrong.
Why certain words hurt.
Why his mind sometimes felt like it contained pieces of another life.
But tonight...
he realized something.
He didn't have to solve everything immediately.
He could live while not knowing.
He could learn.
Work.
Train.
Make friends.
Grow flowers.
Make mistakes.
Laugh.
Get embarrassed.
Help people.
Be wrong.
Correct himself.
Maybe that was what being human was supposed to feel like.
Incomplete.
Messy.
Still moving.
His eyes closed.
For once...
the unanswered questions didn't feel like they were chasing him.
They could wait.
Tomorrow would come.
And when it did...
he would simply observe what was there.
Then decide what to do with it.