The time had to be now. No more dithering. No more delays. Deep breath, close eyes, breath out. Enter.

But where was everyone? And where was here? Here was nowhere she knew, and no-one she knew was here.

The conversation muted and stopped, and in the silence came the stares. She was stuck stopped, her mouth choked up, it was if a freezing anaesthetic had kicked in.

A voice. Directed at her.

“At last,” it sounded with stricken clarity, “you’ve arrived.”

Arrived? Where? With whom?

Those she was going to confront a moment ago were like a waking dream, rapidly dwindling from consciousness.

Then, her voice, as if it were not hers, spoke: “Yes,” it announced, “I’m here.”

She did not recognise the voice, yet it felt as though it had always known her.

Her eyes opened slowly, the way they might after waking in an unfamiliar hotel room, cautious of what they might find. The space around her was wide and strangely proportioned, neither hall nor lounge nor any room she could easily name. The ceiling arched higher than it should have, painted a pale, clouded blue that caught the light like polished porcelain. Hanging lamps—thin, vertical rods of warm gold—descended at uneven intervals, casting soft pools of light that did not quite meet, leaving gentle islands of shadow between them.

The floor beneath her shoes was smooth, almost glass-like, but not reflective enough to show her face clearly. Instead it held blurred impressions: the hem of her coat, the vague silhouettes of the people watching her, stretched and softened as though seen through shallow water.

They were arranged in a loose semicircle, perhaps a dozen of them. No two seemed dressed alike. One wore a jacket that shimmered faintly green when he shifted his weight; another held a cup that steamed without any visible liquid inside. A woman near the centre clutched a thin folder to her chest, its edges glowing with a dim, paper-white light. Their expressions varied—curiosity, relief, apprehension—but they were united by the same focused stillness, all eyes fixed on her as though she had stepped onto a stage she hadn’t known existed.

She became aware of the door behind her. She did not dare turn fully, only tilted her head enough to catch it in her peripheral vision. It was smaller than she remembered, a plain wooden door with a brass handle, set oddly into a wall that seemed too smooth to be real plaster. The grain of the wood looked sharper than it should, every line etched with unnecessary precision, as if someone had drawn it rather than built it.

“At last,” the voice repeated, softer now.

It belonged to a tall man standing slightly ahead of the others. His hair was dark and neatly parted, his shirt the colour of clean parchment, sleeves rolled to the elbows. He looked relieved in the way people do when a long-awaited train finally arrives.

“You took longer than we expected,” he said.

Her throat felt dry, yet the words came easily again, unnervingly calm. “I didn’t know I was expected.”

A ripple passed through the group. Someone exhaled sharply; another gave a small, incredulous laugh.

The man studied her face with careful attention, as if comparing it to a memory. “You always say that,” he replied.

Always?

The word snagged in her mind like a loose thread. She glanced down at her hands, half-expecting them to look different here, to belong to someone else. They looked ordinary—familiar lines, a faint ink smudge on her index finger from earlier that day. That detail steadied her more than anything else. Real ink. Real skin. She flexed her fingers, and the soft light from the hanging lamps slid over her knuckles in warm bands.

Behind the group, the room opened into a corridor she hadn’t noticed before. It stretched away in gentle curves, its walls lined with tall, narrow windows. Through them she could see not a landscape but a shifting wash of colour, like slow-moving water lit from beneath—pale gold bleeding into lilac, then into a muted, mossy green. No horizon. No buildings. Just colour, drifting.

She swallowed. “What… is this place?”

The man hesitated, as though the simplest answer required the most care. “This,” he said, gesturing lightly around them, “is where you arrive when you choose the wrong door for the right reason.”

Her gaze slid back to the small wooden door behind her. For a moment she considered opening it again, stepping through, returning to the room she had meant to enter—to the people she had been ready to confront, to the familiar arguments, the predictable faces.

But when she looked at the handle, it no longer shone. It had dulled to a flat, ordinary brass, as if it belonged to a door that led nowhere at all.

She turned back to the waiting semicircle.

“All right,” she said, and this time the words were entirely hers. “Then tell me why I’m here.”

No one answered at first.

It was not the silence of confusion, but of agreement—like they were deciding who had the right to speak, or who had spoken last the time before. The tall man folded his arms, not defensively, but with a patient restraint that suggested he had rehearsed this moment many times.

“You’re here,” he said at last, “because you walked in.”

She almost laughed. The absurdity of it pressed against her ribs. “I walk into rooms all the time. They don’t usually rearrange reality.”

A faint smile touched the mouth of the woman with the glowing folder. She shifted her weight, and the soft light from the lamps above caught in the folder’s edges, making them glow brighter, as though responding to her movement. “Most rooms don’t notice,” she said.

The air smelled faintly of something clean and metallic, like rain on railings. Not unpleasant, just unfamiliar. She realised she could hear a low, continuous hum, almost too quiet to register unless she focused on it. It seemed to come from the walls themselves.

She took a cautious step forward.

The floor felt firm, yet there was a subtle give to it, like polished stone laid over thick carpet. Her footsteps made no sound. That unsettled her more than anything else so far—the absence of noise where noise should be. Even her breathing seemed dampened, swallowed by the tall, curved ceiling.

“What do you mean, the room noticed?” she asked.

The man glanced at the others, then back to her. “We mean that you crossed a threshold you recognised emotionally, not physically.”

“That’s not an explanation.”

“It’s the closest one you’ll get without remembering.”

The word again. Remembering. As though memory were a door she’d shut behind her on purpose.

She rubbed her temple, suddenly aware of a faint pressure there, like the onset of a headache that refused to bloom fully. “I don’t remember being here. I don’t remember any of you.”

A younger man at the edge of the semicircle leaned forward, hands shoved into the pockets of a jacket that flickered faintly between charcoal and navy depending on how the light struck it. “You never do at first,” he said quietly. “That’s sort of the point.”

“The point of what?”

“Of arriving fresh,” the woman with the folder answered. “Without the weight of the last time.”

The last time.

The phrase dropped into her thoughts and spread outward, rippling. She pictured herself opening that familiar door—the one she’d been certain led to a known room, known faces, a rehearsed confrontation.

She turned slowly, taking in the details she’d missed in her first shock. Along the far wall, beneath the tall windows of shifting colour, were a series of chairs. They were all different: one high-backed and upholstered in dark green velvet, another made of pale wood with narrow slats, another a low, curved seat that looked moulded from a single piece of cream-coloured plastic. None matched, yet they were arranged in a careful row, evenly spaced.

A waiting room, she thought suddenly. But for what?

“Am I meant to sit?” she asked.

“If you like,” said the tall man. “Some people find it helps.”

She hesitated, then crossed the space. The silence of her steps persisted, uncanny and absolute. Up close, the chairs looked more ordinary, their textures more believable: the velvet slightly worn at the edges, the wooden slats faintly nicked as though by years of use. She chose the green velvet one, more out of instinct than preference, and lowered herself into it.

It was warm. Not heated—just already warm, as though someone had vacated it moments ago.

She froze, then forced herself to lean back. “Someone was sitting here.”

A few of them exchanged glances.

“Yes,” the younger man said. “You were.”

Her stomach tightened. “That’s not funny.”

“No one’s joking,” the folder-woman replied gently.

She looked down at the armrest. There, pressed faintly into the velvet, was a shallow indentation the exact width of her forearm. It might have been a coincidence. It might have been anything.

Her pulse thudded harder.

“What happens now?” she asked, more sharply than she intended.

The tall man unfolded his arms. “Now you decide whether you’re staying.”

“I don’t remember choosing to come. Why would I choose to stay?”

He considered that. Overhead, one of the golden rod-lamps flickered very slightly, its light dimming and brightening in a slow, steady rhythm. “Because you came for a reason,” he said. “Even if you disguised it from yourself.”

She opened her mouth to argue, then stopped. A memory—not a full scene, just a sensation—rose unbidden: the tightness in her chest before she’d opened the door, the rehearsed sentences in her head, the feeling that something had to change now, not later, not someday.

No more dithering. No more delays.

She exhaled slowly.

“And if I don’t stay?” she asked.

The woman with the folder finally opened it. Inside were not papers, but thin translucent sheets that shifted and re-ordered themselves, lines of text appearing and dissolving too quickly to read. The glow from them illuminated her face from below, making her eyes look deeper, more serious.

“Then you go back,” she said. “To the room you expected. To the people you were ready to confront. To the version of events you already understand.”

“And this?” she gestured around. “This just… disappears?”

“No,” the tall man said. “You do.”

The hum in the walls seemed louder now, or perhaps she was simply listening harder. Through the tall windows, the slow wash of colour shifted again, gold deepening toward amber, amber sliding toward a muted rose. She ran her fingers over the warm velvet armrest, feeling the faint indentation beneath her palm.

“Right,” she said quietly. “So I either return to the argument I was about to have… or stay in a room full of strangers who claim I’ve been here before.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” the younger man admitted.

She let out a breath that almost became a laugh, but didn’t quite manage it. “And if I ask what I did last time I was here?”

The group’s expressions changed—subtly, but in unison. Curiosity gave way to something heavier. Respect, perhaps. Or concern.

The tall man met her gaze squarely.

“Last time,” he said, “you left before we could tell you why you came.”