That was — that was unusual.
Citizens, after the Cup, were not supposed to feel that something was missing. They were not supposed to know that they had forgotten. They were supposed to wake up and go about their lives, and the year just past would feel, gently, like a year that had simply not happened.
Pia had not woken up like that.
Pia knew, at dawn, that she had forgotten something specific.
She got up. She dressed. She went down to breakfast. She did not — for reasons she could not yet explain — tell her parents.
🤖 The author declared this story as written with the help of AI.