The first alert came at 8:42 a.m.
It wasn't marked urgent. It didn't need to be. A minor report from a residential intersection. A delivery van braked late. No collision. No injury.
Doyun glanced at it and kept reading.
At 8:43, another entry appeared.
A subway platform. A passenger misjudged the gap while boarding. A stumble. No delay.
At 8:44.
A parking garage ramp. A car hesitated, then rolled forward too quickly. Scraped paint. Nothing more.
Three minutes. Three locations. Three non-events.
Doyun's fingers stilled over the keyboard.
Individually, they were meaningless. The system would absorb them without comment, filing them into the long tail of everyday friction.
Together, they formed a line.
He checked the timestamps again.
Too clean.
He leaned back and closed his eyes, letting the impressions from the morning surface.
He had felt it before the first alert.
A tightening that arrived without a source. Thin. Even. Spread across the city rather than anchored to a point.
At 8:41.
He opened a city map and marked the three locations.
They did not cluster.
They did not align.
They did not share infrastructure, traffic volume, or weather conditions.
The only thing they shared was time.
Doyun highlighted the minute.
8:42 to 8:44.
He widened the window.
More entries appeared.
Not reports yet. Indicators. Minor deviations flagged by internal systems. A late turn here. A delayed response there.
All within a five-minute span.
Doyun felt the weight behind his eyes settle into a familiar pressure.
This wasn't escalation.
It was synchronization.
At lunch, he stood by the window and watched the street below.
The city moved normally. People crossed. Vehicles flowed. No sirens. No raised voices.
And yet, the adjustments were visible to him.
A pedestrian slowed at the curb, then stepped back. A cyclist corrected earlier than necessary. A car paused at a green light for a fraction too long.
All at once.
The moments passed without incident.
But the effort behind them stacked.
Doyun checked his watch.
8:43.
The time returned like an echo.
He left the office early and walked without a destination, following the sensation rather than the map.
The tightening was everywhere and nowhere. Not strong enough to force action, not localized enough to avoid.
He realized then that the structure wasn't reacting to stress.
It was aligning.
At a large intersection near the river, he stopped.
The space felt stretched, like a surface pulled taut across multiple anchors.
He did not step forward.
He did not step back.
He waited.
At precisely 6:17 p.m., it happened again.
A near-miss at the crosswalk. A sudden stop two lanes over. A dropped bag.
Three incidents.
No injuries.
No consequences.
The structure absorbed them.
But the absorption lagged by a fraction of a second longer than before.
Doyun exhaled slowly.
This was new.
That evening, he opened his notebook.
He did not draw shapes.
He wrote times.
8:428:438:44
6:17
He circled the numbers.
This is not coincidence. It is convergence.
He paused, then added:
When events align in time, space follows.
Doyun closed the notebook.
For the first time, he understood what came after range.
Not growth.
Resonance.
The city didn't need a larger trigger.
It needed simultaneous ones.
And those were already happening.