By the following week, Arjun understood that attention itself was a variable.
He had stopped asking questions, yet the system had not relaxed around him. If anything, it had become more attentive, like a mechanism waiting to see whether a correction would hold.
On Tuesday morning, his manager called him again.
"This is not formal," she said, closing the meeting room door behind them. "I just wanted to check how you are holding up."
"I am fine," Arjun replied. He meant it.
She nodded. "Good. You have been handling additional responsibility well. We want to make sure you do not burn out."
There it was again. Burn out. The word used when concern and warning shared the same sentence.
"I appreciate that," Arjun said. "But my workload is manageable."
"I am glad to hear that," she said. "If it ever stops being manageable, speak up early. These things can escalate quietly."
When he returned to his desk, he found a revised project timeline waiting in his inbox. One of his deliverables had been pushed forward. Another had been marked flexible. The net workload remained the same, but the pressure points had shifted.
That evening, Arjun met Shreya for dinner outside. A small place they liked because no one rushed them.
"You are being managed," she said halfway through the meal.
He looked up. "That is literally what companies do."
She shook her head. "Not like this. This is not oversight. This is calibration."
He waited.
"They are not trying to stop you," she continued. "They are making sure you stay within acceptable limits without ever feeling restrained."
Arjun thought of the meeting. The wellness notification. The rebalanced deadlines.
"Do you think I imagined it?" he asked.
"No," she said. "I think you noticed something real, and now the system is responding."
Later that night, Arjun received another message from Meera.
"I think I scared my editor today," she wrote. "Not intentionally."
He called her instead of replying.
"I pitched a story about stress related exits," she said. "No names. No accusations. Just a trend piece. He said it was interesting, then suggested I focus on lifestyle content for a while."
"What did he say exactly?" Arjun asked.
"He said, quote, this is the kind of thing that makes legal nervous without giving readers anything actionable."
That sentence stayed with Arjun after the call ended.
Actionable.
He began to understand the real boundary. It was not legality. It was usefulness. Harm was tolerated as long as it could not be converted into instruction.
The next day, Arjun noticed something small and decisive.
His access to a shared analytics folder had been changed. Not revoked. Just limited. He could still see summaries, just not the raw logs.
He checked the change history. Approved. Documented. Justified under data hygiene.
He did not protest.
That evening, he opened the notebook again.
The system does not silence you. It teaches you what not to say.
He closed it quickly, as if the words themselves could be overheard.
On Friday, Nikhil called him unexpectedly.
"I ran into someone from our old team," Nikhil said. "They asked about you."
"What did they ask?" Arjun said.
"Whether you were doing okay," Nikhil replied. "Health wise."
Arjun felt something tighten in his chest, then release.
"I am fine," he said.
"I know," Nikhil replied. "That is why it bothered me."
After the call, Arjun stood at his balcony and watched the city settle into night. Lights came on in patterns that made sense if you did not think about who controlled the switches.
For the first time, he considered the possibility that nothing he had noticed was accidental.
And that noticing had already placed him somewhere he had not agreed to be.
Not outside the system.
Inside its field of vision.