He lets the phone drop to his side and keeps walking. The email stays in drafts, a bomb defused, a scream swallowed. He tells himself it's not worth it. He tells himself he's being smart, strategic, that he'll handle it through proper channels. He tells himself a lot of things.
The crosswalk light is red. He stops at the corner of Pardall and Embarcadero del Mar, the traffic flowing past in a river of metal and exhaust. He looks up.
The sun hits his face. It's warm, almost too warm for October, and he closes his eyes without meaning to.
Satomi.
The name surfaces from nowhere, from everywhere, from a part of his mind he doesn't visit often. His grandmother. The one who died in Belgrade before he was born, the one whose name his mother only spoke when she was drunk or praying or both.
His mind goes blank.
Not empty-blank. Full-blank. The kind of silence that hums.
He becomes aware of sound the way you become aware of your own breathing when someone points it out. The traffic isn't just noise anymore-it's layers. The low thrum of a truck's diesel engine, the higher whine of a Honda Civic's overworked transmission, the rhythmic click of a turn signal from the car waiting to turn left. Each one has a frequency. Each one is vibrating.