The change didn't stay clean.
It never does.
What started as a quiet shift began to pick up edges.
Not sharp ones.
Blurred ones.
People began to misunderstand what was happening.
Not maliciously.
Imprecisely.
Someone started calling the gatherings "his thing."
Not in front of him.
Around him.
He heard it in passing.
"Are you going to his thing tonight?""He's doing something over there, right?"
He flinched the first time.
Not because it was wrong.
Because it was incomplete.
He wasn't doing it.
He was just not interfering with it.
But language has a way of turning space into ownership.
He hadn't meant to create a role.
But one was forming around him anyway.
At work, someone joked that he was "the calm one now."
Not unkindly.
Not mockingly.
Just… labeling.
It made him uncomfortable.
He felt himself being shaped again.
Not by pressure.
By interpretation.
The record stayed quiet.
That felt intentional.
That night at the community space, someone waited for him to arrive before starting.
He noticed.
He didn't like it.
He almost said something.
He didn't know what.
The pause hung awkwardly.
Then someone else spoke.
The room relaxed.
He exhaled.
Afterward, a man approached him.
"Thanks for running this," he said.
"I'm not," he replied.
The man looked confused.
"Well… you kind of are."
He shook his head.
"No. I'm just here."
The man frowned slightly.
Then nodded.
But the idea had already taken shape.
On the way home, the weight of it followed him.
Not heavy.
Sticky.
The way expectations attach themselves without asking.
The record finally spoke when he was alone.
Signal distortion detected.
He closed his eyes.
"Of course," he whispered.
Distortion.
Not destruction.
Not corruption.
Just… bending.
Every signal bends when it passes through other people.
He lay in bed staring at the ceiling, feeling the quiet discomfort settle in.
Not regret.
Responsibility.
Not for the thing.
For what people thought the thing was.
He didn't know yet what he would do about that.
But he knew he couldn't ignore it.
Not anymore.