The cost did not arrive all at once.
It surfaced in fragments, scattered across moments too small to matter on their own. Doyun noticed it first in the gaps between actions, where nothing was supposed to happen.
He overslept by ten minutes.
Not enough to disrupt his schedule. Not enough to miss anything important. But the sensation of waking felt delayed, as if his awareness had lagged behind his body.
At the sink, he stared at his reflection longer than usual, waiting for focus to settle.
It did not.
On the street, the city moved as expected. Commuters adjusted, avoided, recalculated. The familiar choreography unfolded without friction.
Doyun walked through it.
The tightening appeared briefly at a narrow sidewalk, then faded before it fully formed. He felt the outline of it rather than the pressure itself.
A trace.
At work, the screen blurred.
Not visually. Conceptually.
Numbers aligned, but their meaning slipped, requiring him to reread lines he would normally scan once. He caught himself scrolling back, confirming what he had already seen.
No errors. No inconsistencies.
Just effort.
By midmorning, the weight behind his eyes returned.
It was not pain. It did not pulse or sharpen. It sat there, constant, making each thought feel slightly heavier than the last.
He welcomed it again.
Weight was predictable. Pain was not.
During a meeting, he missed a question.
Not because he wasn't listening, but because the sound reached him a fraction too late. He answered anyway, filling the gap instinctively.
No one noticed.
The system absorbed it.
At lunch, he chose a seat farther from the aisle. Less movement. Fewer variables. The food tasted muted, as if his attention skimmed past it without settling.
Across the room, someone dropped a tray.
The tightening flickered.
Doyun looked up too late to intervene, then stopped himself from standing.
The tray hit the floor. A mess. Mild embarrassment. No injuries.
The sensation dissipated slowly, reluctant.
Doyun's appetite did not return.
In the afternoon, he took the stairs instead of the elevator.
Halfway up, he paused.
Not from fatigue.
From uncertainty.
For a moment, he could not remember whether he had chosen the stairs intentionally or simply followed habit. The distinction unsettled him.
He continued upward, each step measured.
By the time he reached his floor, the thought had slipped away, leaving only a faint unease.
On his way home, he avoided the usual shortcuts.
He found himself preferring longer routes with fewer intersections, even when it cost him time. The choice felt reasonable in the moment.
Later, it felt automatic.
At home, the silence pressed in.
He sat at the table and waited for the accumulated tension to release, the way it sometimes did after a long day.
It didn't.
Instead, the day replayed itself in softened edges. Missed beats. Delayed reactions. Choices that arrived half a second later than they should have.
He opened his notebook.
This time, he wrote more than one line.
The cost remains even without action. It spreads into timing. Into attention.
He stopped.
Reread what he had written.
It was accurate, but incomplete.
He added one more line.
Residue is not damage. Not yet.
Doyun closed the notebook.
As he prepared for bed, he realized something that unsettled him more than the lingering weight.
None of this would appear in any record.
No report would flag it. No system would correct it.
The residue did not belong to the structure.
It belonged to him.