Their life is a patchwork of normalcy. They drift in uniform rows, quiet, heads down, eyes glazed over. They wear gray, beige, muted colors that blur together—a spectrum of neutrals, each one like a shade of fog or rain. No one stands out. This is normcore perfected, a place where difference itself is suspect, and where meaning has been bleached out like color from old photos.
A visitor appears. S/He’s barely distinguishable, dressed like everyone else, in a nondescript coat and scuffed shoes, only a faint light pooling around them, pale as dawn. S/He stands, watching, blending in and yet somehow... present.
As others pass, they feel it—just barely. A shiver. A prickling at the neck. Something foreign brushing against their usual routine, something that nags and lingers even after they leave, vanishing into the mass of gray.
Another visitor sits alone, eating. Their gaze is fixed on a point in the distance, unfocused. S/He feels something shift inside, a small, delicate fracture in their routine. Their hand pauses mid-bite, and their mind wanders for the first time in months, perhaps years.
The visitor touches their shoulder lightly—just a brush of fingers—and s/he feels it: a pull, an almost physical force, urging them to look up. S/He does, meeting their eyes. They are blank, unreadable, but there’s something in them that s/he recognizes. A spark, a shared understanding of what it feels like to be lost, to wander without a map. In that instant, s/he knows. S/He’s not alone.
Wordlessly, s/he moves on. Their presence ripples through the crowd like a quiet tremor, sparking tiny awakenings here and there.
As the whir fades, s/he fades with it, merging back into the haze of normalcy. They carry on, the same yet changed, haunted by a faint, lingering sense of wonder.