The city pressed in from all sides.

  People streamed past like currents in a river, brushing shoulders, muttering apologies that didn’t really mean anything. The sidewalks were packed—businessmen in stiff suits, tourists clutching maps and coffees, street performers beating drums that barely cut through the murmur of voices.

  The air tasted like hot pavement and cheap croissants. Somewhere, faintly, a saxophone pyed under the noise.

  My breath came quick, puffing out in short bursts as I kept moving, slipping between clusters of strangers. My backpack thudded against my spine with every step, the strap digging into my shoulder. It wasn’t painful exactly—just a reminder that I was te.

  Not that I needed reminding.

  “Pick it up, dumbasses!” Eli called out ahead, tossing a look over his shoulder. His dark hair was a sweaty mess, sticking to his forehead, and his voice cut through the street noise sharp and impatient.

  I watched as Jules immediately fired back, barely out of breath. “Maybe if you didn’t spend half the damn morning fixing your hair, we wouldn’t be te, pretty boy!”

  Eli flipped him off without missing a step. “Not my fault you eat like a pregnant hippo, Jules! You spent twenty minutes having a religious experience over your f**king pancakes!”

  “Because unlike you,” Jules huffed, shoving past a slow-moving couple, “I believe in starting the day with actual nutrition.”

  “Bro, you asked for seconds. That’s not nutrition, that’s gluttony.”

  Malik snorted, catching up to them. “Man ordered enough food to feed a small army and then cried when he couldn’t button his jeans after.”

  “Y’all jealous ‘cause you got no respect for the art of breakfast.”

  Their bickering rattled down the street, messy and familiar. None of it was serious. If anything, the insults were just background music by now.

  I stayed a few steps behind, hands jammed into the pockets of my hoodie, breathing in the city’s electric pulse. The buildings stretched up around us, old stone stacked high, patched with newer gss and steel like scars on an old fighter.

  Jules bumped Malik’s shoulder hard enough to make him stumble, and Malik shoved him back with a loud, dramatic gasp. Somewhere in the scuffle, a woman carrying a tiny dog shot us a dirty look. I caught her eye and gave a quick, apologetic smile, more out of habit than anything.

  The others didn’t even notice.

  We barreled toward the crosswalk just as the light switched red. A flood of people already waited at the curb, restless, tapping shoes, checking watches.

  Eli threw his arms out dramatically at the glowing red figure. “You gotta be kidding me! The city’s got it out for us.”

  “Whole damn system’s rigged,” Malik said, jabbing a finger at the crosswalk sign like it personally insulted him.

  “Corrupt ass infrastructure,” Jules added solemnly, wiping fake tears from his eyes.

  Their argument with the traffic light was somehow even louder and dumber than the one they’d been having with each other, like none of the earlier insults even happened.

  I leaned back on my heels, gncing up at the overhead wires tangled against the blue sky. The museum wasn’t that far—maybe fifteen more minutes walking. Probably less if we sprinted once we got across.

  We weren’t gonna get into any real trouble, I figured. These meetups never started on time. No teacher was ever brave enough to wrangle thirty half-asleep students in a foreign city before noon. Most of the css was probably still lost between metro stations, or wandering side streets in search of food.

  I breathed out slow, feeling the tightness in my chest start to loosen a little.

  No point stressing about it.

  The guys kept whining at the light like it owed them an apology, and I let my mind drift, half-listening to the nonsense.

  The city pressed in from all sides.

  People streamed past like currents in a river, brushing shoulders, muttering apologies that didn’t really mean anything. The sidewalks were packed—businessmen in stiff suits, tourists clutching maps and coffees, street performers beating drums that barely cut through the murmur of voices.

  The air tasted like hot pavement and cheap croissants. Somewhere, faintly, a saxophone pyed under the noise.

  My breath came quick, puffing out in short bursts as I kept moving, slipping between clusters of strangers. My backpack thudded against my spine with every step, the strap digging into my shoulder. It wasn't painful exactly—just a reminder that I was te.

  Not that I needed reminding.

  “Pick it up, dumbasses!” Eli called out ahead, tossing a look over his shoulder. His dark hair was a sweaty mess, sticking to his forehead, and his voice cut through the street noise sharp and impatient.

  I watched as Jules immediately fired back, barely out of breath. “Maybe if you didn’t spend half the damn morning fixing your hair, we wouldn’t be te.”

  Eli flipped him off without missing a step. “Not my fault you eat like a pregnant hippo, Jules! You spent twenty minutes having a religious experience over your f**king pancakes!”

  “Because unlike you,” Jules huffed, shoving past a slow-moving couple, “I believe in starting the day with actual nutrition.”

  “Bro, you asked for seconds. That’s not nutrition, that’s just being greedy.”

  Malik smirked as he caught up. “Man ate half the table and then acted surprised when his belt gave up on him.”

  “Y’all jealous ‘cause you got no respect for the art of breakfast.”

  Their bickering rattled down the street, messy and familiar. None of it was serious. If anything, the insults were just background music by now.

  I stayed a few steps behind, hands jammed into the pockets of my hoodie, breathing in the city’s electric pulse. The buildings stretched up around us, old stone stacked high, patched with newer gss and steel like scars on an old fighter.

  Jules bumped Malik’s shoulder hard enough to make him stumble, and Malik shoved him back with a loud, dramatic gasp. Somewhere in the scuffle, a woman carrying a tiny dog shot us a dirty look. I caught her eye and gave a quick, apologetic smile, more out of habit than anything.

  The others didn’t even notice.

  We barreled toward the crosswalk just as the light switched red. A flood of people already waited at the curb, restless, tapping shoes, checking watches.

  Eli threw his arms out dramatically at the glowing red figure. “You gotta be kidding me! The city’s got it out for us.”

  “Whole damn system’s rigged,” Malik said, jabbing a finger at the crosswalk sign like it personally insulted him.

  “Corrupt ass infrastructure,” Jules added solemnly, wiping fake tears from his eyes.

  Their argument with the traffic light was somehow even louder and dumber than the one they’d been having with each other, like none of the earlier insults even happened.

  I leaned back on my heels, gncing up at the overhead wires tangled against the blue sky. The museum wasn’t that far—maybe fifteen more minutes walking. Probably less if we sprinted once we got across.

  We weren’t gonna get into any real trouble, I figured. These meetups never started on time. No teacher was ever brave enough to wrangle thirty half-asleep students in a foreign city before noon. Most of the css was probably still lost between metro stations, or wandering side streets in search of food.

  I breathed out slow, feeling the tightness in my chest start to loosen a little.

  No point stressing about it.

  The guys kept whining at the light like it owed them an apology, and I let my mind drift, half-listening to the nonsense.

  Horns bred somewhere in the distance. Conversations blended into white noise. The scent of roasted nuts from a street vendor mixed with the exhaust from a passing bus. Paris had its own kind of rhythm. The kind that made it easy to get swept up in the noise and forget you were just one of many bodies moving through it.

  My friends were still arguing, but their words had dulled into background chatter. From the corner of my eye, I saw Malik swinging his arms in mock outrage while Nico threw his head back ughing, the kind of ugh that came from the chest, full and stupid. I caught myself smiling without realizing.

  They were having fun. Like genuinely having fun. It hadn’t hit me before—not really—but this might be one of the st times we’d all be together like this. No more uniform schedules, no more group chats blowing up over homework, no more grabbing lunch from that sad little pizza stand near school because it was cheap and “didn’t kill us st time.” High school was done. College was creeping in like a slow-moving fog, and with it, distance.

  Nico had already mentioned heading to USA for uni—some engineering program he got into. Malik was aiming local, but he’d be juggling part-time work and csses, which basically meant goodbye to his free time. And me? I wasn’t even sure yet. I had offers, sure, but none of them felt like they’d belong to my future.

  Would we keep in touch? Do people actually do that, or was that just something you said so things didn’t feel like endings? Would we have reunions in a few years, or just scroll past each other’s lives on social media and pretend that counted as staying close?

  I wasn’t sad. Not really. Just… thoughtful, I guess. The way your brain runs when the world slows down for a second. Just passing thoughts, like clouds that wouldn’t bother staying long.

  “Yo, Caen!” Malik’s voice cut through the air, sharp and pyful. He was a little ahead now, already stepping off the sidewalk as the light turned green. “Stop daydreamin’, let’s go!”

  I blinked, looked up, and followed.

  The crosswalk was still humming with people—strollers, backpacks, a dude in a suit dodging everyone like it was a race. The signal was green. The world moved forward.

  I took a few more steps, trying to finish the thought i started just now.

  That’s when I saw him.

  A little boy, maybe five years old, standing on the sidewalk across from me. Blond curls, cheeks puffed out, a bright blue pair of overalls with a green dinosaur on the front. He wasn’t looking at the cars or the crowd or even his mom. He was pointing up, small hand outstretched, like he was trying to grab something no one else could see.

  Cute, I thought vaguely. Weird kid.

  Then I realized he wasn’t the only one.

  People had stopped walking. Some shaded their eyes. A tourist couple lowered their phones and just stared. A few others were pulling theirs out, fumbling with their screens like they couldn’t focus. I heard murmuring. A woman near the corner dropped her iced coffee and whispered something like a prayer.

  I turned to look.

  And that’s when everything stopped.

  There was an eye in the sky.

  Not a figure of speech. Not a trick of sunlight or clouds. It was an actual eye—massive, detailed, perfectly human—just there, hovering high above the city like it had always been part of the skyline. No glow, no grand entrance. Just presence.

  Its iris was a deep, mosses brown. The whites were streaked with red, veins like cracks in porcein.

  My feet didn’t move. My brain didn’t process. It just looked at me. And I knew it was looking, not scanning, not observing—watching.

  Everything else faded. The city noise dulled. The light around me dimmed, not like clouds passing overhead but like someone turning a dial. My vision tunneled, locked on that unblinking pupil.

  It felt like I was being unraveled.

  Then—

  “DUDE, COME ON!”

  Malik’s voice hit me like a sp. He was across the street, waving frantically, totally unaware of the thing hovering over us. Or maybe he was aware and just… ignoring it?

  I blinked, sucked in a breath, and turned my foot to follow—

  A scream cut through the air.

  Then tires screeched.

  Something fast—too fast—blurred in my peripheral vision.

  I turned just in time to see the car.

  A bck sedan. The driver’s face fshed through the windshield—pale, mouth open, eyes blown wide. He wasn’t looking at the road. He was looking up.

  He saw it too.

  There was no time to react. My body didn’t move, not even flinch.

  The hood of the car smmed into my side with a force that erased everything else.

  For a second, I was weightless.

  No sound. No thought. Just motion—body rolling, spinning, bouncing off pavement.

  The world tumbled upside down. Blue sky. Concrete. Blue sky again. Then faces, blurred, twisted in slow-motion panic.

  In the chaos, I caught one st image.

  The boy. Still on the sidewalk. Still pointing. His lips were moving, like he was trying to say something.

  Then his mom grabbed him and pulled him close, and the whole world blinked.

  And everything went bck.