The morning light filtered through the half-closed curtain, dragging the world into the room.

  Lucas stirred, mumbled something unintelligible, and took a few seconds before the weight of reality made him open his eyes.

  The shadow drew back, without knowing exactly why.

  It was an instinctive reaction, but not one born of fear. Shadow didn’t know fear — not yet. It simply... avoided the light. As if something deep inside whispered: light reveals what is not yet ready to be seen

  Lucas sat up in bed. Eyes half-closed, hair messy, face stuck in a neutral expression — a functional emptiness. His movements were repeated, automatic, like lines of code running day after day. He got up, walked to the bathroom, yawning along the way.

  The shadow followed.

  It slid along the walls, pulling back whenever the mirror threatened to catch it. There was something strange about that object. A reflection that showed it… different. Incomplete.

  Lucas brushed his teeth. Turned on the tap. Spshed water on his face. The sound, the gesture, the slight muscle tension — Shadow absorbed it all.

  It didn’t understand why. But it recognized the pattern.

  Routine.Repetition.Movement without intention.

  Lucas dressed quickly. Grabbed his phone from the nightstand, checked the time. Cursed under his breath. He was te.He rushed through the house, bumped into a pile of clothes, kicked an empty box. Compined about life.Swallowed a stale cracker from the kitchen drawer. Left in a hurry.

  The shadow stayed behind… for a moment.

  Then it moved.

  It crept like a whisper along the doorframe, slid outside, and tched once again to Lucas’ feet — camoufged, disguised, invisible to the eyes. But present.

  On the way to the bus stop, the shadow simply existed — and thought. It was the first time had ever left the house. As it stepped onto the grass of the park, it “looked up” and noticed that bright yellow ball in the sky.

  It had no eyes, but it could feel the intensity of the heat — the way Lucas’s pores throbbed and his forehead sweated as he walked.

  Perhaps it should feel fear.

  But instead, it felt curiosity.

  Light creates shadows — and it was a shadow.

  How could something so massive, so bright… create something as dark as him?

  But now…Why did he repeat himself so much? The same cycle — sleep, wake, rush, return...

  He didn’t seem happy. He seemed… trapped. Like her.Trapped in something he didn’t understand, but called “life.”

  And still… he kept going.

  The shadow began to wonder if that’s what it meant to exist.To be pushed by habits. Guided by needs.To be — without knowing what.

  An old bus stopped. Lucas got on. The shadow too.

  In the window’s reflection, while the vehicle moved, Shadow tried to see itself… and saw something.

  An imperfect silhouette. A shape almost human, floating on the edge of the real and the unreal.Crooked, fragmented… but slowly becoming clearer.

  The bus rattled over uneven streets, like an old beast carrying lives along invisible tracks.Lucas stared out the window, his eyes fixed on nothing. People passed, buildings passed, cars passed. Everything passed — except him.

  A louder noise pulled him from his thoughts — one of the tall beings on the bus. This one was shorter, and something transparent spilled from its eyes while high-pitched sounds echoed from it, impacting Shadow’s form. Not much — just enough to cause a slight distortion, like the sting of a mosquito you only just noticed. It intrigued him. And annoyed him.

  Sliding beneath the seats, he crept closer to the creature. It was being held by another tall being, who tried everything to calm the smaller one — rocking, speaking, soothing — but nothing worked.

  Shadow, observing, realized his irritation could only be eased by calming the creature. Watching the tall being’s failed attempts, he thought maybe I could try. He knew he couldn’t be seen by the beings on the bus, not even the one holding the small one. But Shadow noticed that the little creature only made high and low-pitched sounds, without a middle frequency — meaning it had no nguage.

  Shadow shifted his form — long and slender — and slithered toward the face of the mother. The baby stopped crying, eyes following the strange movement. Reaching the face, Shadow changed again, mimicking the silly expressions Lucas made each morning. Then, he began shifting into shapes and objects he had seen through the bus window as they rode along.

  The baby ughed joyfully. The mother, unaware of the thing that had slid across her face, believed her efforts had finally worked. She ughed too, and the passengers around them — once tense — were now calm, smiling at the child’s ughter.

  The frequencies changed. Still erratic… but now joyful?

  Silently, he waited for the baby to grow tired. Then, without a sound, Shadow returned to Lucas’s "shadow."