Lucky Break
Chapter Eleven - Background Noise
Leo first noticed it on a Tuesday, which felt appropriate.
Nothing dramatic ever happened on Tuesdays. They were the flattest days of the week, designed for administration and mild disappointment. If something strange was going to surface quietly, Tuesday would make room for it.
He was in a café he didn’t usually go to—one of those places that felt provisional, as if it might vanish overnight without explanation. The coffee was fine. The chairs were uncomfortable in a way that suggested intention. Leo had chosen it because it was on the way to nowhere in particular.
He was halfway through a flat white when he heard someone swear softly behind him.
Not loudly. Not theatrically. Just enough irritation to escape.
“Seriously?”
Leo turned.
A man in his early forties stood at the counter, wallet open, expression baffled. The barista—young, tired, capable—was already shaking her head.
“It’s declined,” she said. “Again.”
“That’s not possible,” the man replied. “I checked it this morning.”
Leo felt the old reflex twitch. The expectation of a correction. A forgotten note in a pocket. A machine error. Some small mercy that made the moment inconsequential.
Nothing happened.
The man tried another card. Same result.
Behind him, the queue shifted. Someone exhaled sharply. The barista apologised again, as though responsibility could be transferred by tone.
“It’s fine,” the man said finally, though it clearly wasn’t. He stepped aside, cheeks flushed, muttering something about calling the bank.
Leo watched him leave with a discomfort that lingered longer than the moment justified.
This kind of thing happened every day.
He just hadn’t felt it before.
Outside, the street seemed fractionally misaligned. Not physically. Emotionally. Leo became aware of small disruptions accumulating like static.
A cyclist arguing with a delivery driver.
A woman on the phone, voice tight, repeating, “No, that’s not what we agreed.”
A child crying—not from pain, but from having been denied something he didn’t yet know how to want differently.
Leo walked without destination, letting the city pass through him instead of around him.
It occurred to him—not sharply, but steadily—that the world had always moved like this. People absorbing friction, adjusting, carrying on. He had been passing through a softened version of it, where edges were sanded before they reached him.
At the post office, the printer jammed. At the pharmacy, the system was down. At the bus stop, the digital display flickered between two arrival times and then went blank, as if embarrassed.
No one shouted. No one cried. People adapted.
Leo found himself watching faces at the exact moment something failed. That brief pause before reaction. The calculation: Is this today’s problem or just one of them?
Most people chose to continue.
A few didn’t.
That evening, Leo sat on his sofa with his laptop open, addressing small problems that had previously felt like irritants and now felt like obligations. A guest cancelled. A recording glitched. An email required care rather than speed.
He handled them slowly, deliberately, aware of how much energy it took not to rush, not to deflect, not to assume things would resolve themselves once he stopped looking at them.
When he finished, he felt drained in a way that had nothing to do with difficulty.
It was the absence of cushioning.
He checked his phone. A message from his mother about a neighbour who’d slipped on the stairs. Nothing serious. A bruise. A reminder. It stayed with him longer than it should have.
Later, washing dishes, he caught a faint smell of toast.
Not burnt. Not fresh. Just memory-thin.
His hands stilled in the water.
“Kevin?” he said quietly, hating how easily the name surfaced.
Nothing answered.
The smell faded.
Leo dried his hands carefully, aware of his own heartbeat in a way he hadn’t been before.
Over the next few days, the background noise thickened. Small failures. Missed timings. People doing things the long way because the short way had quietly closed.
At the supermarket, an elderly woman struggled with a self-checkout that refused to recognise her oranges as fruit. Leo hovered, then stopped himself. She solved it eventually, with visible satisfaction.
At a crossing, a man cursed as the light changed too quickly.
“You get the sense,” the man said suddenly, glancing at Leo, “that things are just… harder lately?”
Leo hesitated.
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
The man nodded, as if this was confirmation rather than complaint, and crossed when the light changed again.
That evening, Ronise called.
Leo felt the familiar tightening in his chest—not fear, not joy, but readiness. The knowledge that attention, once engaged, had to be sustained.
They spoke quietly. About nothing important. About small adjustments. About days that felt longer than they used to.
When they hung up, Leo sat for a long moment, phone resting in his hand.
The city continued its low hum. Sirens in the distance. Laughter drifting through an open window. Life, unedited.
He understood then—not as revelation, but as orientation—that he was not witnessing a collapse.
He was witnessing the world without padding.
Awareness had not made him exceptional.
It had made him accountable.
Not for fixing what was broken.
Just for how he chose to move among the breaks.
The background noise continued.
And Leo, finally, was listening.
Wishing you all a very merry Christmas, and a happy new year.