Klein left the records room with measured steps.
The corridor above felt no different from before—bright, orderly, quiet—but his awareness had sharpened. Every word he heard now carried a faint echo, as if the world were registering it twice: once as sound, and once as intent.
He returned to his desk without speaking.
The rest of the afternoon passed slowly. Klein focused on copying entries from one ledger to another, the repetitive motion grounding him. Numbers were safe. Dates were safe. Names, as long as they were not commented on, were safe.
Around three o'clock, the silence broke.
"I finished the transcription," a clerk said from the adjacent desk.
The pressure stirred. Lightly. Politely.
"Well done," another replied.
Nothing happened.
Klein did not look up.
A few minutes later, a sharp intake of breath sounded from the far end of the room. Someone had dropped a stack of papers. They scattered across the floor, pages fluttering like startled birds.
"…This is a mess," the clerk muttered.
The pressure flared.
Klein felt it roll through the room like a low wave, brushing against his temples, tightening briefly behind his eyes. The clerk froze, fingers still splayed across the fallen pages. His face paled.
He said nothing else.
Slowly, carefully, he gathered the papers and returned to his seat.
Comment invites response.
Judgment invites correction.
Klein finished his work in silence.
When the end-of-day bell rang, the sound was crisp and unadorned. No one sighed with relief. No one complained of fatigue. Desks were tidied. Papers aligned. Coats were taken up with restrained movements.
Outside, the street was as bright as it had been that morning. The sky remained a clean, uninterrupted blue. Klein walked with the crowd, his steps steady, his thoughts carefully contained.
At a crossroads, he paused.
A small crowd had gathered near a lamppost. In their midst stood a young man, his clothes rumpled, his expression strained. He spoke rapidly, words tumbling over one another.
"I didn't mean it like that," the man said. "I was angry, that's all. I didn't really think—"
The pressure gathered.
It did not explode. It did not rush. It accumulated, dense and deliberate, as though the world were waiting for something precise.
"I hate him," the man said suddenly.
The pressure slammed down.
Klein staggered back, heart racing, as the air seemed to compress. The young man gasped, clutching his chest, eyes wide—not with pain, but with realization.
He collapsed to the ground, breath leaving him in a single, final exhale.
The pressure lifted.
The crowd did not scream. They did not rush forward. They stepped back in unison, creating space around the body. Someone crossed themselves. Someone else turned away.
A woman whispered, "He shouldn't have said that."
The pressure brushed past her. Light.
Forgiving.
Klein stared at the body on the ground.
Emotion was permitted.
Expression was not.
He turned away before the constables arrived. As he walked, a single thought repeated itself, slow and heavy, settling deeper with every step.
In this world, survival was not about what you felt.
It was about what you allowed to become real.