The rain didn’t let up.

It never does after a night like that. The city knows when you’ve made a choice. It follows you home, taps on your windows, waits to see if you’ll regret it.

I walked instead of taking a cab. Bad habit. Or maybe a penance. The package sat heavy inside my coat, right over the heart—like it knew where to settle. I didn’t open it. Not once. Curiosity is how you end up bleeding in alleys with questions still in your mouth.

My apartment was where I’d left it. That’s never guaranteed.

Third floor walk-up. Paint peeling like old sunburn. A radiator that hissed all night like it wanted to confess something. I locked the door behind me, double-checked it, then checked it again. Another habit. Some habits keep you alive. Some just make dying take longer.

I set the package on the table. Didn’t turn the light on.

Candlelight felt wrong here. Too honest.

I poured a glass of water. Let it sit. Watched the ripples die down. The city outside crackled with late-night electricity—sirens far away, voices closer than they should be, radios bleeding through walls tuned to stations nobody remembered choosing.

That’s when it started.

A sound. Soft. Almost polite.

Static.

Not from my radio. I didn’t own one. Not from the walls either. This was closer. Thinner. Like a whisper trying not to be heard.

I froze.

The package wasn’t moving. But the wax seal—red, unfamiliar—caught a sliver of streetlight and glimmered like an eye opening.

I didn’t touch it.

“Not tonight,” I muttered to the room.

The static stopped.

Silence filled the apartment so fast it felt staged. I stood there longer than I should have, waiting for something else to break. It didn’t. That was worse.

I slept on the couch, coat still on, shoes by the door. When sleep came, it didn’t ask permission. It never does.

I dreamed of candles.

Not the café. Older ones. Bent, half-melted things lining stone walls. Symbols scratched into the wax. The same symbol from the seal, repeated until it lost meaning. Until it became language.

I woke before dawn.

The package was still on the table.

So was something else.

A receipt.

Plain white. Cheap paper. Still damp at the edges, like it had been torn from a register too recently to be possible.

Item: One Candle
Time: 3:17 AM
Location: UNKNOWN

No price.

No signature.

I checked the door. Still locked. Windows too. No signs of a break-in. No footsteps in the dust. The city hadn’t let anyone in.

Which meant it hadn’t kept them out either.

I folded the receipt and slipped it into my pocket. Some things you keep not because they’re useful—but because throwing them away feels like an answer.

By morning, the static was gone. The package stayed quiet. The city went back to pretending it was just concrete and regret.

I went out anyway.

You don’t stay home when something’s decided it knows your address.

I walked past the café. Daylight made it uglier. The sign was dark now. No candles. No Sayuri. Just another place that didn’t want witnesses.

I stood there longer than I meant to.

A woman passed me on the sidewalk. Brushed my shoulder. Too close for the space we had. She smelled like rain and ink.

“You should stop listening between stations,” she said, without slowing.

Then she was gone.

I didn’t follow her.

Didn’t chase answers either.

Some jobs don’t move forward. They wait. They see what you’ll do when nothing happens. Whether you’ll crack the seal. Whether you’ll call a name into the dark and hope it answers back.

I went home.

Set the package back on the table.

And this time, I lit a candle.

Not to open it.

Just to see what chose to stay in the light.

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