Chapter 32: The Lecture on Fate, III
I returned to my studies the next day. Not out of obligation, but because routine has gravity. When the world becomes uncertain, even the smallest rituals feel like anchors. A sharpened pencil. The smell of Ink. The creak of a library chair worn smooth by a hundred other restless minds.
The university library had become my second apartment. I spent hours drifting through narrow aisles between shelves that had outlived their authors. Their spines were faded, some missing entirely, like ghosts of titles long forgotten. The smell of leather and dust kept me grounded. It reminded me that time, at least there, still moved in one direction.
But even the library had changed.
The ticking of the central clock sounded softer. Some books felt misfiled, as if someone had replaced them slightly out of order—just enough to unsettle, never enough to confirm. I caught myself staring at empty chairs, certain they had been occupied a moment ago. Once, I thought I heard someone whispering in the theology wing. But no one was there.
The world felt a little off—just a degree or two. Like the sun rose at a slightly wrong angle. Conversations didn't sync the way they should. People laughed half a second too late. Footsteps echoed longer than they should have, especially in the older lecture halls with the cracked molding and flickering lamps.
Still, I told no one.
Dr. Eberhardt hadn't offered solutions. But she'd listened. And maybe that was the point. Maybe I didn't want to be understood. Just seen. And she had seen me—clearly, deeply, and without interruption. As though she were searching for something between the words I said and the ones I didn't.
***
By Thursday, I found myself rereading old notes I barely remembered writing. Pages from the last semester, essays annotated in the margins, diagrams drawn with care I didn't recall having. My handwriting looked like mine, but sharper. More deliberate. Less rushed.