The candle was already lit when I woke up.

That was the first problem.

The second problem was that I didn’t own candles.

Not really. Not like this. Not the kind that burns steady without flicker, like the flame is ignoring the air on purpose. I lay there on the couch with my coat still on, one boot half off, my body stiff from sleeping like a man waiting for a knock that never came.

And the room had that smell again.

Wax. Smoke. Old stone.

It didn’t belong in a third-floor walk-up with peeling paint and a radiator that hissed like a confession. But there it was—hanging in the air like someone else’s memory had wandered in and decided to stay.

I didn’t move at first.

I listened.

The city outside was doing its usual routine—distant traffic, a siren dragging itself across the night like a wounded animal, a couple arguing somewhere below me with the tired rage of people who ran out of love but still had plenty of volume.

But under all of it…

Static.

Not loud. Not dramatic.

Just enough to make the hair on my arms lift.

Like a radio tuned to a station that didn’t exist, whispering between channels.

I sat up slow.

The candle sat on my table like it had always belonged there. Thick wax. Old shape. No label. No store tag. The flame didn’t dance. It hovered—calm and patient, like it was waiting for me to acknowledge it.

On the table beside it, Sayuri’s package sat exactly where I’d left it.

Still wrapped in black paper.

Still sealed with red wax.

Still refusing to explain itself.

I stared at that seal. The symbol in it—sharp lines pressed into warm wax—looked the same at first glance.

But something was off.

A corner of the imprint had softened, like it had been touched.

From the inside.

My fingers itched.

Curiosity doesn’t kill you right away. It just opens the door and steps aside.

I stood, crossed the room, and held my hand over the package. Not touching. Just close enough to feel if it was warm, or cold, or humming with whatever kind of trouble it had brought into my life.

Nothing.

Except my own pulse in my fingertips.

The static thinned as I leaned in, like something was holding its breath.

I pulled back.

The static returned.

“Alright,” I muttered to the room. “We’re doing this polite?”

The flame didn’t react.

The package didn’t react.

The city outside didn’t care.

I looked around for any sign of how the candle got there. Windows were locked. Door was locked. No footprints, no smudges, no broken latch. The apartment looked like it always did—like nobody cared enough to rob me.

Which meant if someone came in, they didn’t come through the normal places.

I glanced down at the floor.

Something white near the leg of the table.

A slip of paper.

I knelt and picked it up.

A receipt.

Plain, cheap, 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.

No explanation.

Same as yesterday.

Only this time, the paper felt… wrong.

Not counterfeit. Not cursed in some theatrical way.

Wrong like it had been left too close to a fire and then cooled back down. The fibers felt brittle beneath my thumb, like ash pretending to be paper.

I held it closer to the candle.

The flame didn’t flicker.

But the ink on the receipt shimmered, subtle as a blink, and for a moment I thought the words were moving.

I lowered it.

Nothing.

I folded the receipt and slid it into my pocket.

Some things you keep because they might be evidence.

Some things you keep because you want proof you didn’t imagine the whole thing.

The static hissed softly, like it approved.

I didn’t touch the package.

Not yet.

Instead, I did something I hadn’t done in a long time.

I went looking for someone who knew about paper.

There was a guy on Ninth who fixed old registers and dead radios and anything that used to make noise but had forgotten how.

People called his shop a repair place, but it was really a graveyard. Broken cash drawers stacked like coffins. Radios with their guts open. Spools of wire. The smell of solder and cigarette smoke soaked into everything like it paid rent.

The sign in the window said: NO REFUNDS. NO QUESTIONS.

Which meant he answered questions all day, he just charged extra for them.

His name was Harlan.

He looked like someone had carved him out of exhaustion and then forgot to sand the edges.

He glanced up when I walked in, squinting through thick glasses.

“You’re early,” he said.

“Or late,” I replied.

Harlan grunted, went back to tinkering with something that looked like it belonged in a museum of bad decisions.

“You break something?” he asked.

“I’m trying not to.”

That got his attention. He set his tool down and leaned back in his chair like his spine hated him.

“Murphy,” he said, recognizing me now. “You look like you slept in your clothes.”

“I did.”

“Voluntarily?”

I didn’t answer.

He sighed. “What do you want?”

I pulled the receipt from my pocket and set it on the counter.

His eyes narrowed. “What’s this?”

“Paper,” I said.

He stared at me for a full second, like he was deciding whether to throw it back at my face.

Then he picked it up carefully—too carefully, like it might bite.

He rubbed his thumb across the ink.

His expression changed.

The kind of change you don’t see in men who’ve lived too long in the city. Not fear. Not surprise.

Recognition.

He held it up to the dim shop light.

“Where’d you get this?” he asked.

“From a place that doesn’t exist,” I said.

Harlan’s jaw tightened. “That’s not funny.”

“I’m not laughing.”

He set the receipt down like it burned.

“This isn’t printed,” he said.

I waited.

He pointed to the ink. “This… isn’t ink. It’s residue.”

“Residue of what?”

His lips pressed into a line. He hesitated—just long enough to let me know the answer would cost.

“Murphy,” he said quietly, “you ever tune a radio between stations? Not to music. Not to talk. Just to that thin hiss? That dead air?”

“Yeah,” I said. “When I’m trying to sleep.”

Harlan shook his head. “That’s not dead air. That’s everything you’re not supposed to hear.”

He slid the receipt back toward me without touching it again.

“This paper,” he continued, “feels like it’s been… recorded. Like a receipt is the only shape it could hold so your brain wouldn’t reject it.”

My throat went dry. “Recorded by what?”

He looked at me, and for the first time his eyes didn’t seem tired. They seemed sharp. Alert.

“By a register,” he said. “But not one made of metal. Not one in a store.”

He lowered his voice. “A register that logs transactions that aren’t money.”

I stared at him.

Harlan leaned forward. “If you’re holding one of these, you’re already in it. Whatever ‘it’ is.”

I slipped the receipt back into my pocket, slower this time.

“I didn’t ask to be,” I said.

Harlan gave a humorless laugh. “Nobody does.”

I turned to leave.

“Murphy,” he called after me.

I paused in the doorway.

“If you start hearing voices in the static,” he said, “don’t answer.”

I didn’t say anything.

The bell above the door chimed as I stepped back into the rain.

And the city swallowed the sound like it never happened.

I didn’t go straight home.

That’s another rule you learn when someone tells you you’re “already in it.”

You don’t walk back to your front door like a lost dog.

You take turns you don’t need. You loop around blocks. You watch reflections in windows. You pretend you’re just a man with somewhere to be, not a man carrying an invisible contract in his coat.

The rain had thickened, turning the streets into slick black mirrors that reflected neon like blood.

That’s when I saw him.

Across the street, under a streetlamp that flickered too fast to be normal.

A figure.

Tall. Still.

Hands in his pockets like he had nowhere else to put them.

Not hiding.

Not moving.

Just waiting.

For me.

I stopped walking.

He didn’t react.

I took a step toward the curb.

He stayed where he was.

The streetlamp buzzed.

Static crawled up the back of my neck, and suddenly I wasn’t hearing it with my ears.

I was hearing it behind my eyes.

A thin hiss, layered with something else—almost words, almost a voice, like a station trying to tune itself into my skull.

I clenched my jaw and looked away, hard.

When I looked back—

The figure was gone.

The street was empty except for rain and a stray newspaper that rolled itself into a gutter like it wanted to disappear too.

The streetlamp flickered once.

Then steadied.

I stood there a moment longer than I should have.

Then I walked.

Not fast. Not panicked.

Just… decisive.

Because whatever was happening, it wanted me to act like prey.

And I’d rather die tired than die hunted.

When I got back to my building, the hallway smelled like wet plaster and someone’s overcooked dinner.

Normal smells.

Comforting, in a way.

I climbed the stairs, my boots echoing.

Third floor.

My door.

Still locked.

I let myself in.

The candle was still lit.

The package was still there.

But the room felt different.

Colder.

Not temperature-cold. Meaning-cold.

Like the apartment had been emptied of something while I was gone.

I stepped closer to the table.

The candle flame didn’t move.

The wax hadn’t dripped.

Not a single tear down its side.

That wasn’t a candle. That was a signal pretending to be a candle.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the receipt.

And my stomach dropped.

There was a new line.

The same cheap font. The same dead certainty.

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

I stared at it until the words blurred.

One name.

What name?

Mine?

Sayuri’s?

Something older?

Something the city didn’t want spoken?

I glanced at the package.

The wax seal gleamed.

Warm.

Like it had heard my thoughts.

“No,” I said out loud.

The static in the room thinned again, like a grin widening in the dark.

I stepped back.

My eyes caught the window.

Rain streaked the glass in crooked lines. City lights beyond. My own reflection layered over the night.

And in the reflection—

She was there.

Not behind me.

Not in the room.

In the glass.

Sayuri Shiranami, standing in the rain outside as if weather couldn’t touch her.

I spun around.

The apartment was empty.

I looked back at the window.

Her reflection remained.

Her eyes met mine through two realities at once.

“Don’t open it,” her voice said—soft, steady, like she was speaking from the bottom of a well.

My throat tightened. “Then tell me what it is.”

Her gaze flicked toward the candle.

Then back to me.

“You’re hearing it,” she said.

“I’m seeing receipts,” I snapped. “And people who disappear when I look at them. I’m being followed by a radio station.”

Sayuri didn’t flinch.

“That package isn’t being carried by you,” she said.

Her words slid into the room like smoke.

“You’re being carried by it.”

I gripped the edge of the table. “Why?”

The reflection hesitated, just a fraction. The only crack in her calm.

“Because you said yes,” she replied. “And the city heard you.”

“I said yes to you,” I said.

Sayuri’s eyes softened in a way that didn’t feel safe.

“No,” she whispered. “You said yes to the light.”

The candle flame remained perfectly still.

The receipt in my hand felt heavier.

My fingers tightened until the paper creased.

“Tell me what name it wants,” I said.

Sayuri’s reflection dimmed, like the rain outside was swallowing her.

“You already know,” she said. “You’re just refusing to say it.”

And then the glass held only my own tired face again.

No Sayuri.

No answers.

Just rain and neon and the soft hiss of a station between stations.

That was when I made a decision.

Not a smart one.

Not a safe one.

But the kind you make when your life stops being yours and becomes someone else’s ledger entry.

I blew out the candle.

For the first time, the flame reacted.

It shuddered, as if surprised.

It went out with a sound I swear was almost a sigh.

The room went darker.

The static didn’t stop.

It got clearer.

I grabbed my coat, shoved the receipt into my pocket, and left the package where it was.

If it wanted to be opened, it could wait.

If it wanted a name, it could chase me for it.

I stepped into the hallway.

The building was quiet.

Too quiet for a city that never sleeps.

My footsteps echoed down the stairs.

Second floor.

First.

The front door.

Outside, the rain hit me like a verdict.

And the static pulled.

Not behind me.

Not inside my head.

Ahead.

Down the block.

Into an alley I’d walked past a hundred times without noticing.

I followed it.

The alley was narrow, lined with brick and trash and the smell of wet metal. Neon from a sign somewhere nearby bled into puddles, turning them the color of old bruises.

Halfway down, the static spiked.

My teeth vibrated.

I stopped.

There was a door.

That was the problem.

There hadn’t been a door there yesterday.

There hadn’t been anything there but brick.

But now—

A steel door sat flush against the wall like it had always belonged, like the building itself had grown an extra mouth overnight.

No handle.

No keyhole.

Just a symbol carved into the metal.

The same symbol from the wax seal.

My chest tightened.

Behind the door, something shifted.

Not footsteps.

Not voices.

A pressure change.

Like a room full of air inhaling.

I stared at the symbol until it felt like it was staring back.

Then I did the stupidest thing a man can do in a city like this.

I raised my hand.

And I knocked.

Once.

The sound was dull, swallowed by rain.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then—

A knock answered from the other side.

Perfectly timed.

Perfectly calm.

Like whoever was inside had been waiting for me to remember the way.

The static faded into silence.

And in that silence, the city felt far away.

Like I’d stepped out of its rules.

The symbol on the door seemed to darken, as if pleased.

I leaned close, my breath fogging the cold metal.

“Alright,” I whispered, to the door, to the station, to whatever had been writing receipts with ash.

“Let’s see what you’ve been logging.”

And the door—without a handle, without a lock—began to open.

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