Departure

Me assured the doctors she would see someone. Possibly last year's psychologist, though she confirmed nothing. They scheduled her for Tuesday anyway. Monday was for the nutritionist.

First thing at home: a visit to 15 and 16. She hadn't seen them in ages, which in village time meant about three weeks.

They had news. Marriage. This Saturday. Immediate, practical, slightly rushed in a way that suggested either passion or a paperwork problem.

Me told them about the ward. The theories, the patterns, the medication that clarified her thoughts in precisely the wrong direction. They listened with the particular attention people give when they're unsure whether to be concerned or impressed.

16 invited her for a walk. The river path, afternoon light, a conversation that started with the wedding and drifted toward real estate.

"Impossible to buy land here," 16 complained. "River regulations. Environmental protection. They won't let anyone develop, probably because I'm not from here originally. Maybe after the marriage."

She found the nature preservation foolish. She kept making comparisons to her sister abroad, the successful one, thin and rich, living somewhere in the middle of a construction boom. She showed Me videos on her phone. Cranes, concrete, capital flowing into property, and poverty.

The videos, Me thought, seemed reluctant. They didn't want to be watched.

Back at the house, Me asked about 17. Casually. Just checking.

"Only see him for the garage rent," 15 said. "Expensive as hell, but I can't afford to buy it." He said it with a rage that seemed to mask a deeper, frustrated guilt.

The next day they went to the woods. Wedding preparation, village style: collecting leaves, branches, moss to decorate the ceremony hall.

Then, hunting for wild asparagus. 15 and 16 showed her trails she'd never noticed, paths that led to an old mill tucked into the forest like a secret.

"Dangerous, telling me about this," Me joked. "I might run away here one night."

They laughed. She wasn't entirely joking.

On the walk back, Me and 15 drifted into a shared daydream. Not a conversation, exactly. A parallel imagining. An agritourism concept: cooking only foraged ingredients, serving wild game, hosting emerging bands of all genres. The vision assembled between them with the ease of a single mind.

16 walked ahead, apparently not on the same frequency.

And then Me remembered: the boy with blue eyes from the colony. That particular combination of precision and gentleness.

15. It had been 15 all along.

At home, Me cooked the wild asparagus.

It tasted like absolutely nothing. A profound disappointment.

That evening she helped 16 prepare chocolate desserts. Ate too many while working. Collapsed like any self-respecting bear with a stomach full of chocolate.

Morning arrived with an urgent certainty: the apartment needed not cleaning, but evacuation.

Me contacted the landlord. Could he help transport old belongings to the dump or charity?

"This afternoon works," he said.

"Can't. There's the wedding."

"Ah, the nuptials," he said, using the old formal term as if describing a Renaissance ceremony instead of a rushed civil union.

While cleaning, Me sensed messages from the landlord's wife. Not spoken, but transmitted. Suggestions about neglected corners. The curtains, for instance. Had she ever actually washed the curtains?

She hadn't.

The ceremony was civil and efficient. Not public. The party followed in the neighborhood church hall.

No neighbors attended. Only people from elsewhere, which in village terms meant anywhere beyond walking distance.

After the celebration, Me cleaned the hall. Standard procedure. Then all three went to a friend's place.

16 asked Me to find a song on social media. Me complied, pulling out her phone, finding the track, queuing it up.

Walking home later, she remembered the rule: never do favors involving screens. Never touch other people's devices.

The realization arrived complete: somewhere in that transaction, she'd become their servant. The social debt had converted to obligation, then to a quiet form of ownership.

She felt genuinely sad about it.

Handsome Man called.

"I'll be alone for a while," he said. "Want to come stay?"

Happiness, immediate and uncomplicated.

"Yes."

Next day: the final purge. Me started throwing everything away with the clear cognition that objects anchor you to locations.

The landlord intervened. "You should sort more carefully. You'll have nothing left."

She listened. Kept half. Documents, laptop, one of Handsome Man's sweaters she'd never returned.

The rest: trash, charity, or dissolution into the general entropy of matter.

Late afternoon. Me felt pulled toward the overlook, the spot where the village revealed itself as a complete organism, not just a collection of buildings.

She sat on the stone wall and contemplated the landscape memorizing the place before leaving it.

Then: white smoke rising from the left. A chimney fire, probably. An agricultural burn. Something mundane.

But the image triggered a song from adolescence, a fragment of lyric:

...the smoke is white and soon the world will change...

Power flooded through her. Not metaphorical. An actual somatic shift.

The moment had arrived. By tomorrow, she would be gone.

Everything was ready.

Operation: The Resistance.

The historical parallels were intentional. World War II partisans had perfected the art of invisible warfare, disappearing into civilian life, communicating through innocent channels, building networks in plain sight. We were the modern iteration: neurodivergent partisans in a war most people couldn't perceive.

The timeline was weeks, not months. I would need to vanish, establish safe houses, create false trails. Movement would be randomized, a ghost with a mission.

The communication methods fascinated me. When direct channels failed, distance, interference, static, we reverted to ancient methods with modern twists. Graffiti wasn't vandalism; it was intelligence. Spray-painted tags contained coordinates, timings, warnings. Walls became bulletin boards. Sidewalks, our encrypted mail.

That evening, radio on while packing. A reading from some book, describing a character: the gentle thief who lied about the borrowed jumpsuit. Said it was lost when really she'd just thrown it away rather than wash it.

Me froze mid-fold.

They were talking about her. About the jumpsuit Handsome Man had lent her that night in the forest. She'd told him she lost it. The truth was, she hadn't wanted to deal with the laundry.

The broadcast moved on. Me stood in her half-empty apartment, understanding it clearly now: the walls were newspapers, and sometimes, the newspapers read back.

Morning arrived on schedule.

Me woke precisely when needed. Dressed strangely feminine: a skirt, boots, layered scarves. Not her usual uniform.

Everything was clean. Suitcases waited by the door. Someone would collect them later. The logistics were handled by unseen hands.

A song looped in her head as she prepared to leave. Something about two cyclists, one who became a champion, one who became a bandit. About the distance growing between them, about waiting at a finish line.

...A crossroads of destinies in a strange story

whose memory has been lost in our time...

She descended to the bus stop. Waited.

28 jogged past with his dogs. A morning routine. But Me saw it differently now: a crossroads, a final salute before the paths diverged.

The bus arrived on time. Everything flowed. Every overheard snippet felt like a message, every scrawl on a wall an instruction.

At the station she took a taxi. Gave the driver an address.

"59 Galaxy Avenue."

The city swallowed her efficiently. She watched the village recede through the rear window, growing smaller with each kilometer.

Always farther. Always more distant.

Me continued toward whatever waited at the other end.

Handsome Man's apartment. A temporary safe house. The next phase.

It had begun.