Kring! Kring! Kring!
The alarm cut through the silence of Raka's room.
He opened his eyes slowly and stared at the faded ceiling above him. For a few seconds, he lay still, trying to remember what he had been dreaming about. The details were gone, but the feeling lingered — a faint impression that something had been there, watching, just before he woke up.
His hand fumbled for the phone beside his bed. The vibration stopped.
Silence returned.
Not the comfortable kind.
This sort of quiet had been happening more often lately. Raka couldn't tell when he first started noticing it, only that it felt different now.
He stayed in bed a little longer than usual. It wasn't fear. Not anxiety either.
Just a strange awareness.
Like the world had acknowledged him before he was fully awake.
He let out a slow breath and sat up.
"I'm going to be late," he muttered to himself.
Routine took over after that.
Cold water splashed against his face. The sting helped. He brushed his teeth and looked at himself in the mirror. Black hair, slightly messy. Brown eyes, awake enough to get through the day.
Nothing special.
Just Raka.
He dressed in his usual work clothes — shirt, trousers, light jacket — movements automatic from repetition. Before leaving, he paused near the door and glanced at the mirror one more time.
Today will be normal.
It always is.
Nexra was proud of its precision.
Public transport arrived exactly on time. Doors slid open without a sound. Inside, soft ceiling panels displayed routes and arrival times in thin, glowing text. The vehicle moved so smoothly it barely felt like it was moving at all.
In Nexra, things worked.
They always worked.
Raka arrived at the office where he worked as a game programming intern. His day passed the way it usually did — lines of code, minor bug fixes, small adjustments no one noticed unless they went wrong.
Nothing remarkable happened.
It rarely did.
By evening, he felt lighter than usual.
Payday.
Even for an intern, that meant something.
Time to buy that volume.
The bookstore sat between a modern café and an electronics shop. From the outside, it looked ordinary enough — clean windows, simple signage, nothing flashy.
But stepping inside always felt slightly different.
Cooler.
Quieter.
The comic section near the front was bright and familiar. Raka scanned the shelves for the volume he wanted.
It wasn't there.
He exhaled softly and stepped back.
For reasons he couldn't explain, his feet carried him deeper into the store.
Toward the back.
The shelves there were older, the wood darker and scratched in places. The books weren't neatly categorized. They looked as though they had been placed there and forgotten.
That was when he noticed it.
A thin, worn book wedged between two thicker ones.
Its cover was almost colorless. No title. No illustration. No author's name.
Just a faded surface, rough beneath his fingertips.
Raka didn't remember deciding to reach for it.
His hand simply did.
The moment his fingers touched the cover, his heart skipped — one heavy beat — before settling back into rhythm.
He pulled it free. Dust drifted into the air.
"An old notebook?" he murmured.
He opened it.
Blank.
He flipped the page.
Blank again.
Another page.
Still blank.
Every single one.
No text. No drawings.
And yet it didn't feel empty.
It felt… unfinished.
Raka closed the book and glanced toward the cashier.
A middle-aged man stood behind the counter, wearing the expression of someone who had worked long enough to stop caring about small curiosities.
"Oh, that?" the man said when he noticed the book. "Just an old notebook."
"Sometimes things end up on the back shelves. It's empty. Not many people want those."
Raka nodded. "I'll take it."
The man shrugged lightly. "₵27."
Raka tapped his phone against the payment terminal.
A soft beep followed.
Balance deducted. Transaction complete.
No cash exchanged. No paper receipt printed. Everything recorded cleanly within Nexra's seamless system.
The cashier slid the book back toward him.
As Raka picked it up, the register screen flickered.
Just once.
So quick it could have been ignored.
So small it didn't seem worth mentioning.
As if the book were nothing out of the ordinary.
As if there were no reason to hesitate.
No warning.
No rejection.
And somehow, that was what unsettled him the most.
Outside, the sun was sinking behind Nexra's glass towers. Golden light reflected off polished surfaces, making the city look as composed as ever — modern, efficient, perfectly controlled.
Calm.
But somewhere beneath that calm surface, a choice had just been made.
And something deeper than the city itself had taken note of his name.
It had no intention of forgetting it.