The Ones Who Don't See

Of the city's two maps, the overwhelming majority of people live their whole lives on the daytime one alone.

They cannot see Platform Thirteen, cannot see the cyan lamp still burning under the eaves of an old temple when it should not be, cannot see the thing at the street corner in the middle of the night that is not a person. Even with that thing standing in front of them, their eyes skip over it on their own, and afterward they say: I must be too tired.

Between not seeing at all and seeing, there is a layer of people in between. They cannot say what they saw, but they feel it. The night-shift clerk looks up for half a second, the gaze crosses the face and then slides down and settles below the shoulders, and the hand working the barcode shakes. An empty taxi slows for a look, speeds up and drives off, and switches off the for-hire light on the roof as it passes. Someone in the carriage moves a coffee cup to the other hand, goes around, and walks into the next car. They do not explain, and they do not feel they owe anyone an explanation.

There is an experiment in the biology textbook: a healthy duck is sprayed with the smell of another duck that has died, then put back into the flock. Nothing about that duck's appearance or behavior has changed, yet the flock begins to keep away from it. Later the experimenters wash it clean and put it back, and it takes the other ducks several days before they will come near. A flock does not explain why it avoids something.

There are also people whose eyes are clean. A five-year-old will stare at your face and then push a toy car over to you. The classmate from another class you barely know will sit down with a tray and ask, "Can I sit here?" They have no impression on hand to compare you against, so they see nothing at all. People like that matter a great deal in those few days.

For the ones who can see, this is the loneliest part. You saw it, and the people closest to you did not. You want to say it and the words will not come out—because in their world those things do not exist at all. You are left alone on the map that most people cannot see.