Doyun began to notice what was missing.
It wasn't the danger. That remained, threaded through the city as it always had. What disappeared was everything around it.
The margins.
On his commute, he caught himself pausing at intersections longer than necessary. Not because the timing was unclear, but because he was evaluating fewer options. The alternatives that once surfaced instinctively no longer did.
He waited.
The light changed. He crossed.
Nothing went wrong.
The absence lingered.
At work, he rearranged his tasks.
Not consciously. He simply gravitated toward reports that fit his narrowed focus. Clusters. Patterns. Places where outcomes felt predictable, even if unfavorable.
The rest blurred.
He noticed this when his manager asked about a location he had skipped.
"I didn't think it needed escalation," Doyun said.
The answer came easily.
Too easily.
The manager nodded and moved on.
The system accepted the omission.
Doyun sat back, unsettled.
He had not chosen incorrectly.
He had chosen from a smaller set.
During lunch, he avoided the central tables without realizing it. He picked a seat near the wall, where movement thinned naturally.
The space felt manageable there.
A tray slid across the counter. A chair scraped back. Small disturbances.
He registered them, then let them pass.
There was no urge to reposition. No internal debate.
That absence concerned him more than any tension had.
In the afternoon, rain began to fall.
Pedestrians tightened their spacing. Umbrellas bloomed unevenly, narrowing sightlines. The city compressed.
Doyun adjusted automatically, staying near the edges, following paths that minimized overlap.
It worked.
Too well.
He realized he was no longer considering the center at all.
On his way home, he stopped short of a familiar shortcut.
The alley was narrow, the flow unpredictable. Once, it would have drawn his attention immediately.
Now, it barely registered as an option.
He chose the longer route without hesitation.
As he walked, the weight behind his eyes shifted again. Not heavier. More focused. Like a lens tightened too far.
At the plaza from the day before, he slowed.
She was not there.
The space behaved normally. People crossed freely. Adjustments were forgettable.
And yet, Doyun felt constrained.
He stood at the edge, aware of how few positions felt viable. The center was loud with potential. The periphery was safe but limiting.
He did not step forward.
He did not step back.
He remained still, suspended between choices that no longer felt equal.
The realization arrived quietly.
His perception had not improved.
It had specialized.
Where once he saw a spectrum of possibilities, he now saw a corridor. Clear. Efficient.
Narrow.
At home, he opened his notebook.
He flipped back through earlier pages, tracing the progression. Observation. Interference. Cost. Residue. Bias.
Each step had reduced the space around the next.
He wrote carefully.
Options are not removed by force. They erode through use.
He paused, then added:
Avoidance narrows as much as interference.
Doyun closed the notebook and leaned back.
This was the cost he had not anticipated.
Not injury. Not failure.
Constraint.
The city had not changed.
The structure had not hardened.
But his relationship to both had.
That night, he dreamed of standing in a hallway.
The walls were not closing in. They were already close. He walked forward because there was nowhere else to go.
When he woke, the sensation remained.
The narrowing was not a future problem.
It had already begun.