The apartment carried a certain warmth that morning, not from sunlight streaming through the curtains but from the simple, homely smell of freshly baked bread drifting out of the open kitchen. A faint sizzling followed, punctuating the silence. The place felt alive in a way Dylan rarely allowed it to, and yet he sat apart from it all—still, rigid, lost.
His elbow rested against the wooden table, hands steepled into a triangle before his face, eyes fixed on some distant, unreachable point. He looked as though he were trying to hold onto a world invisible to others. The noise, the aroma, the hum of the apartment—they did not touch him. He was in his own mind, wandering through something heavier than the present moment.
