Footsteps.
Sole on pavement, paced like a heartbeat—steady at first, then urgent. Faster. The world narrows to motion: shoes striking stone, rhythm fracturing into sprint. We never see higher than the ankles. Just the blur of someone running. Toward something.
A voice—male, low, deliberate—cuts through the sound.
"Every second we act, we choose."
Leaves loosen from a tree, one by one, drifting slow and weightless toward a silver pond below.
"Even not choosing is a choice."
A girl stands at the water's edge, hands clasped behind her back, palms pressed together as if in quiet prayer. She's staring up—watching the leaves let go. There's a small, honest smile on her face. The kind she only wears when she thinks no one is looking.
Gentle. Vulnerable. Waiting for something to fall into place.
"You can pick what feels good, or what makes sense."
The pond's surface blurs, ripples folding into each other—
—and then the scene fractures.
The stillness of fresh water becomes the violence of the sea.
Waves crash against jagged rocks, white foam exploding upward before retreating, endless and relentless.
A second girl sits perched on the edge of a low stone outcrop, arms wrapped tight around her knees, chin resting there. Her eyes trace something far beneath the surface—something invisible, unreachable.
She doesn't move.
The world churns around her, but she is the only thing that stays still.
"You can wait for fate to hand you a map, or draw your own route."
A pause.
"Either way, you still live with the consequences."
The footsteps stop.
Sudden. Sharp.
The rhythm shatters into silence.
Two faces turn—shock rippling across both—as if the entire town has drawn a breath and forgotten to let it out.
Gasping.
Ragged.
Desperate.
Someone is trying to catch their breath.
The moment splits.
Everything goes black.
"The freedom to choose can be empowering."
The voice is quieter now. Heavier.
"So why do choices always end up this way?"
A beat.
"In pain. Or regret."
Silence.
Then—
"But I'd rather make my own fate than let life live for me."
The words hang in the dark.
"Even if it destroys me."