The crowd bunches up all at once.
Someone screams. Someone else shouts, "Call an ambulance," as if volume can rewind reality. A woman drops her phone. The screen hits the pavement, spins, and she does not even look down. A man flails his hands like he is trying to grab the air and cannot. Two people run forward, then stop the moment they reach the child, like it only becomes real when they are close enough to smell it.
Panic is not a single feeling. It is a messy system.
Some try to kneel but they do not know where to put their hands. Some step back, then step forward again. Someone yells, "Is he breathing?" and does not wait for an answer. Someone else takes a step toward the driver like they are going to attack him, then backs off, defeated by their own fear.
I stay where I am.
I am not watching the center of it anymore. I am watching the crowd. How it spreads, how it tightens. Who tries to take control, who clings to a role because a role is easier than thinking.
Someone is crying. Loud, broken. It has less to do with what she saw than with what she was forced to see.
I start walking again.
No one stops me. No one grabs my shoulder. No one shouts, "Why didn't you do anything?"
They are busy with something else. Turning what happened into something that makes sense. Like naming it gives them control.
The flow of people parts around the accident like water around a stone. The street keeps bending forward. The buildings keep going. Shop windows keep reflecting bodies that do not know where to put themselves. The city does not stop. It just continues.
I look at the traffic light ahead.
Red. It will turn green in eleven seconds.
Two people will cross early anyway. One will hesitate halfway, then commit. A car will honk, not because it needs to, but because the driver wants to announce himself. The honk will change nothing.
The light turns green.
Everything happens the way I expected.
The hunger is still there. It does not come and go the way it should. It sits in me like a constant demand, as if something inside my body is burning through fuel faster than it ever did before.
I pass a row of shops. Warm bread drifts out from a bakery and my body reacts for a moment, but I do not go in. Food is a short solution. Now it only lowers the volume.
A group of teenagers passes me, laughing too loudly at something none of them actually found funny. It is not emotion. It is a signal. A way to prove they belong.
A man in a suit walks fast like he is late for something he does not want. His phone rings. He looks at it. He does not answer. He will justify it later.
They are so readable it is almost boring.
I used to think people were complicated. Now they look like habits that learned how to walk.
I catch my reflection in a dark shop window.
My face is calm. My eyes are steady. What happened behind me has left nothing on me.
And I like that.
The time of the walk stays fixed in my head: twenty three minutes and forty seven seconds.
I do not know why it is that exact. It is not a guess. It feels planted, like an appointment with something I have not met yet.
My building comes into view.
It is ordinary. A keypad entrance. A small courtyard. A bench no one uses unless they are waiting.
I go in without slowing down.
A woman stands near the door smoking. She watches me for half a second, then looks away. She does not speak.
Good.
I do not feel like answering small questions.
I take the stairs. Second floor. My door.
I unlock it, step inside, and close it behind me.
The apartment is quiet, and the hunger feels louder in the silence.
I do not take my shoes off. I go straight to the kitchen and drop the grocery bags on the counter.
I unpack what I bought for one reason only: fuel.
Chicken. Meat. Rice.
The kind of food that fills space and lasts longer than a snack.
My hands move fast, not because I am panicking, but because my body has decided there is only one priority.
The hunger does not fade. It waits, like it is confident I will obey.
I reach for the pot.
Food first.