It didn't feel like a decision.
That was the strange part.
There was no moment where he sat down and chose a direction. No mental checklist. No pros and cons.
Just a small pull.
A curiosity that refused to disappear.
It started with a question he couldn't stop thinking about:
Why had that room felt different?
Not the people.
Not the words.
The quality of attention.
He went back the next week.
Same place. Same simple sign in the window.
Different people.
Same feeling.
This time he stayed longer.
He listened to a man talk about trying to rebuild something that had failed once already — not because he thought he could succeed this time, but because he wanted to understand why it had mattered the first time.
He listened to a teenager talk about wanting to leave their hometown but not knowing what they were leaving for.
He listened to a woman talk about missing a version of herself she no longer recognized.
None of it was dramatic.
All of it was honest.
On the way home, he realized he felt… full.
Not stimulated.
Not entertained.
Connected.
That word surprised him.
He hadn't been looking for connection.
He'd been looking for alignment.
But maybe those weren't as different as he'd thought.
He started carrying a small notebook with him.
Not to take notes on what people said.
To write down what it stirred in him.
He noticed patterns.
Moments where he leaned in.
Moments where he drifted.
He wasn't judging them.
Just noticing.
One night, he wrote a single sentence and stared at it longer than any of the others:
I pay attention when people are trying to become themselves.
The sentence felt dangerous.
Not because it was wrong.
Because it was specific.
Specificity creates direction.
And direction creates consequences.
The record stayed quiet.
It always did when he was close to something real.
Before sleep, a line appeared.
Signal detected.
He exhaled.
"So that's what this is," he whispered.
Not a path.
A signal.
A thread.
Something faint but persistent, running through the noise of everything else.
He didn't know where it led.
But he knew he wanted to follow it.