Aryan noticed the leak when something familiar stopped being private.
It wasn’t sudden.
It didn’t announce itself with danger or drama.
It arrived quietly, like moisture seeping through a wall you didn’t know was cracked.
He was standing in line at a convenience store, half-listening to the hum of the refrigerator units, half-watching his reflection in the glass door. The city was doing what it always did—moving forward without noticing him.
That illusion broke when the clerk spoke.
“Same brand as last time?”
Aryan looked up.
“What?”
The clerk nodded toward the cigarette rack. “You usually take the same ones.”
Aryan didn’t smoke.
Not anymore.
He held the man’s gaze a second longer than necessary, searching for something—recognition, confusion, uncertainty. There was nothing. Ju
