Doyun decided not to interfere.
The decision did not feel deliberate. There was no sense of restraint or discipline attached to it. He simply did not make the movement he would have made before.
The city continued to offer moments regardless.
Near the station, the flow tightened faintly as he approached a corner. Pedestrians slowed, their spacing uneven. The sensation arrived early enough to matter.
He kept walking.
Nothing broke. Nothing demanded attention.
The tightening dissolved behind him, redistributed among others. Someone paused to adjust a bag strap. Another stepped aside to avoid a near contact.
The moment passed.
A thin relief surfaced, sharp enough for Doyun to notice.
At work, he stayed at his desk.
A report flagged a location he recognized. Minor incidents over the past month. Nothing statistically significant. Data that blended smoothly into background noise.
He closed the file without following up.
The sensation lingered.
It was faint but persistent, like a sound held too long. He noticed it most when he stopped moving. Waiting for the elevator. Standing in line for coffee. Sitting through a meeting without speaking.
The tightening arrived. He did nothing. It moved on.
The pattern repeated.
By lunchtime, his shoulders felt heavy.
Not painful. Just tense. The kind of tension that never fully released. He rolled his shoulders once, then stopped, the movement feeling unnecessary.
Outside, the street was crowded.
He chose wider sidewalks. Fewer intersections. Places where the flow corrected itself without requiring negotiation.
It worked.
Mostly.
At a crosswalk, the hesitation bloomed early, then faltered. A cyclist slowed. A car edged forward, then stopped. The space wavered, undecided.
Doyun stood at the edge and waited.
The light changed. People crossed. The moment resolved without incident.
The tightening remained longer than before.
He exhaled slowly and moved on.
That afternoon, the headache receded, replaced by a weight behind his eyes. Less painful, more present. Thoughts felt thicker, as if each one had to push through resistance.
He welcomed it.
Pain demanded attention. Weight could be ignored.
On his way home, he passed the intersection from two days ago.
He did not stop.
The seam in the asphalt caught another bicycle's wheel. The rider corrected smoothly and continued on.
Doyun kept walking.
His phone vibrated.
A routine notification. The earlier report had been reviewed and archived. No action required.
The system had adjusted.
A flicker of satisfaction surfaced, brief and contained.
At home, Doyun sat at the table and waited for the day to settle.
It didn't.
The moments he had deferred returned, not as images, but as pressures without direction. Each one stacked onto the next, compressing instead of dissipating.
He opened his notebook and wrote a single line.
Deferred does not mean resolved.
He closed it.
Later, lying in bed with the city's noise filtering through the window, Doyun realized what unsettled him most.
Nothing had gone wrong.
No accidents. No injuries. No irregular records.
And yet, the sense of alignment had not disappeared.
He had not stopped the flow. He had only delayed where it would settle.
Doyun stared at the ceiling.
Avoidance, he understood now, was not neutral.
It was accumulation.