The Port Authority uniform came with a cap. He kept the brim low, shadow cutting across his eyes, the way real maintenance men did when they wanted to be ignored. The jacket smelled faintly of bleach and old steel. That was enough.
He’d walked the hall earlier, toolbox in hand, touched what he needed to. A fingertip along the underside of the oak table, the briefest brush against the grain where the president would lean to sign. Five minutes of fuse time, five minutes to leave.
Now he stood in the corner, clipboard raised, a shadow among clerks and assistants. Nobody asked why a technician lingered. Nobody cared.
The room was washed in glass and light. Reflections sharpened every angle—exit doors, guard shifts, the soft twitch of shoulders around the table. He counted them without thinking.
The president lifted her pen. Not the steel one offered—her own, cracked at the cap. He noticed the detail because he noticed everything. The ink trembled at the tip. Her shoulders rose, froze. Her body had felt something—an instinct before language. Primitive. A prickle at the back of the neck.
He wasn’t surprised. They almost always did. Premonition, intuition, whatever name they wanted. It didn’t matter. The body knew, but the body couldn’t escape.
The ink line never reached the paper. The detonation was silent. No flame. No shrapnel. Just a single point where air collapsed inward, where lungs folded, where heart muscle seized. Her chest gave once, and she was finished—neat, precise, like an equation closing.
The pen slipped from her hand, rolling a thin red line of ink across the signature block.
He didn’t look at her again. He never did. Work was work.
Thirty-eight seconds to exit. Plenty of time.
He closed the clipboard, adjusted the cap, and walked out the door with the same steady pace he’d entered. A man off-shift. A shadow clocking out.
The sirens howled in the distance, metallic and ragged, ricocheting between buildings like torn steel.
His pace was steady, precise. He passed through two unlocked fire escapes, paused for two seconds at a rusted utility closet, and shoved the Port Authority uniform deep into a recycling bin. He changed into a dark grey hoodie hidden behind the pipework—zipper open, hood low. By the time he stepped back into the flow of bodies, he was a shadow.
The metro platform blinked with red warning lights. The loudspeakers blared lockdown orders. Officers were already entering the station. He didn’t rush. Just matched his stride to the crowd, merged into the current like a leaf on a river.
Three armed officers blocked the exit. They weren’t scanning faces—they were watching for patterns. People alone. People out of place.
He knew how they worked.And he knew himself. He could kill clean. Disappear cleaner. But lie? Pretend to be late for work, annoyed, innocent? He’d never been good at that. Too many tells. Silence clung to everything he said. So he scanned for an out. Any excuse to break the pattern.
Then he saw her.
She was crouched in front of a vending machine under the yellow-lit sign of that bakery he used to visit. Smacking the screen like she was locked in mortal combat with the machine. Her canvas bag hung lopsided off one shoulder, hair slightly damp, jacket slightly crooked. She hadn’t seen him.
A smell hit him—burnt sugar, cheap flour. And suddenly he was back on Tongbay Street.
The Corner Spot always lit up earlier than the pigeons, earlier than the sun. He alway arrive at 6:30 every morning. Same seat, by the door. Same order: black coffee. They weren’t strangers, but they hadn’t spoken names either.
That morning hadn’t followed the script. The door had barely swung open when a bang rattled from the kitchen. Then she burst out—hair wild, apron powdered white, a cartoon peanut butter jar on her chest. A bowl of half-mixed batter clutched like a bomb.
“More banana purée—wait, no, vinegar? But vinegar’s not right either—ugh.” She stirred furiously, whisk clattering like a propeller.
She’d spotted him then—“Oh. Regular guy!”—and grinned, wide and sleepy, like dawn half-awake. “You’re more punctual than a soft-boiled egg.”
She’d brought his coffee without asking. Told him it was “sharp enough to count as breakfast.” And then, shy but defiant, she’d offered up her failed experiment: banana, onion, honey. One-of-a-kind, one bite away from disaster.
He remembered the way she’d crouched by his table, chin on her arms, watching him chew like a student waiting for her grade. “So? How is it?”
“You used vinegar,” he’d said.
And she’d laughed, startled and delighted, like he’d passed a test she hadn’t meant to give. She leaned closer, eyes wide with curiosity. “Wait—your Kamuy’s not, like, super taste detection or something?”
He didn’t answer. Just finished the rest of the bun.
She watched every chew, grinning when he swallowed the last bite like she’d scored a victory. “Mine’s the opposite of helpful, anyway.” She lifted one flour-dusted hand, then dropped it again as if she’d thought better of showing him. “I think I overheated the dough again. Happens when I’m nervous. Or cold. Or bored. Basically, all the time.”
It came out like a confession, and for some reason she lowered her voice, as if burned crust were a sin. He stayed silent, the coffee cup half-empty between them.
She glanced toward the back—her father’s shadow moving across the kitchen window—then back at him. “If you keep showing up this early… I’ll save all my failed experiments for you. Even if no one else touches them, you can be first.”Her fingers curled on the edge of the table, like she wanted to pull the words back the second they left her mouth.
He placed the coffee money under the saucer, precise. Stood with the same quiet he’d walked in with. No backward glance. And he didn’t think he’d be coming back.
The memory dissolved. What remained was now—sirens, shouts, light bouncing off moving metal. He walked toward her. Drawn like something old and dangerous, pulled toward heat by instinct. “That thing you made last time wasn’t bread.” he said.
She startled.Looked up, blinking. Then her face lit up. “Oh! It’s you—the weird guy who ate my failed bread without flinching!”
He didn’t reply. Just flicked a glance toward the patrolmen. They were sweeping through the train cars one by one. She hadn’t noticed yet. “There’s a curry bun place near Onsen Street,” he said. “Birch House Kitchen. It’s decent.”
She wrinkled her nose. “They under-proof everything. Owner’s too cheap to keep the fermenter on long.” She dusted her hands and stood up.“But I’m starving enough to eat a traffic cone. You look like you’re about to pass out, too. Wanna come?”
They boarded the train side by side. She chattered about the cost of her baking classes. He counted the station numbers in his head. To the outside eye, they looked like a couple mid-argument—her expressive, him silent. Close enough to read as affection. Tense enough to read as a fight.
The patrol slowed near their row. Boots thudded against the carriage floor, the weight of attention shifting closer. He felt it, the way prey feels a shadow overhead.
She didn’t notice. Or maybe she did, in her own way. Her voice rose without warning, playful and sharp, cutting into the quiet. “…and you never listen when I talk about enzymes! Do you know how humiliating it is to bomb a whole proofing cycle because somebody swore more yeast fixes everything?”
The officer’s gaze flicked across them, caught the raised finger, the tight posture between them—read it as an argument, not a threat. Just a couple mid-fight. Then the boots moved on.
He stayed motionless, but a fraction of tension left his shoulders.
Ten minutes later, they were sitting in the corner of a bakery.
“You haven’t been back in a while,” she said, mid-bite, sauce smeared near her lip. “I changed the recipe after that. You missed the good version.”
He quietly chewed a piece of white toast. No expression. Just the motion of jaw and throat, as calm as a statue.
She watched him like she always did—with that strange mixture of amusement and something softer.
He looked like the kind of person who wouldn’t blink while killing someone. But he ate bread like a cat. Careful. Quiet. Like the world didn’t exist beyond the plate. Crumbs scattered onto the table. His eyes flicked to the street outside. The last police car turned the corner and disappeared. He could leave now. That was his window. But the girl was still talking.
“That new batch used trehalose—see? I do listen in class—…hey, are you even paying attention?”
He stood. Didn’t speak.
“Huh?” She looked up, caught off guard. “What, did I bore you already?”
He hesitated. Then nodded once.
“Oh. Well… see you next time?”
He looked at her. Didn’t say yes. Didn’t say no. Just turned and walked away.
Melted into the crowd like he’d never been there.
She stared after him, lips parted slightly, like a wind had brushed through her without warning.
“Weird guy… but not the worst company.” She muttered, then took a sip of her half-finished milk tea.