Seeking a place to tuck away the unsettling spreadsheet before it overwhelmed the small kitchen table, Ryan pulled open the shallow wooden drawer of his desk where he kept spare pens and rubber bands. His fingers brushed against something dry and papery wedged deep in the back corner—a folded piece of lined notebook paper that certainly hadn't been there when he unpacked the unit three years ago. Frowning, he slid it free and unfolded the creases under the morning light filtering through the window.
Scrawled across the page in an unfamiliar, hurried script was a detailed transit schedule tracking the 7:42 AM departure from Rhodes Station, the precise transfer timing at the junction, and the exact walking pace down to the waterfront offices at Barangaroo. The timestamps and platform numbers didn't just resemble his daily routine; they were an exact, minute-by-minute blueprint of his morning commute, annotated with observations on his preferred carriage placement and the days he stopped for a flat white. Outside, a commuter train rattled heavily along the rail corridor toward the bridge, but inside the quiet apartment, the paper felt heavy and invasive, as though someone had been sitting across from him for months, silently charting the rhythm of his life.