Chapter Forty-Two — What Distance Costs

Kieran’s Point of View

Distance is a discipline.

It is not absence. It is not cruelty. It is the deliberate maintenance of space so that function remains intact and consequence stays predictable. I have practiced it longer than most things have existed.

This should be simple.

I leave the dream space before it finishes thinning. I withdraw my presence with care, sealing the edges so no trace lingers that the system might notice. By the time her waking world fully asserts itself, I am already elsewhere.

That is how it is supposed to work.

And yet the pull does not vanish cleanly.

It loosens, yes. It releases its grip enough that I can stand without feeling drawn forward. But it leaves behind an echo, a pressure that settles under my ribs and refuses to be named.

I move through the corridors of order and feel it with me.

Silence does not settle the way it should. The system hums, steady and precise, but my attention does not align with it. My awareness keeps returning to the same impressions, unbidden and persistent.

The warmth of her skin.

The sound of her breath breaking.

The way my name left her mouth as if it belonged there.

I stop.

The pause is instinctive, abrupt enough that I have to anchor myself before the thought completes.

This is exactly what distance is meant to prevent.

I straighten my focus and resume movement. Function first. Assessment second. Emotion last, if at all.

That order has never failed me.

The problem is not that I crossed a line. I have crossed many. Thresholds are my nature. The problem is that the line did not feel external. It did not announce itself with resistance or consequence.

It felt internal.

As if something in me moved before I permitted it to.

I catalog the facts, because facts are safer than memory.

The dream space contained the event. No system flags registered. No recalculations were triggered.

There is no immediate fallout from the dream itself.

Which means whatever lingered afterward will be measured instead.

That is how the system operates when something does not fit neatly into its expectations. It watches. It waits. It gathers data.

So I withdraw.

Fully this time.

I restrict my presence to what is required. I avoid proximity. I stop tracing the subtle edges of her days where her awareness brushes against the unseen. I do not return to her dreams. I do not allow myself to linger near the thread that still behaves in ways I do not understand.

This is not punishment.

It is containment.

I tell myself this repeatedly as the hours pass.

Distance is not rejection. Distance is preservation.

Of her.

Of order.

Of myself.

The first test comes sooner than I expect.

I am called to guide a soul whose ending arrives quietly, without drama. The process unfolds as it always does. The body releases. The thread loosens. The transition should feel familiar.

It doesn’t.

The act completes, but the usual settling does not follow. Instead of the clean release I expect, something lingers, a faint drag that pulls my attention away from the task just completed and toward a place I am no longer allowing myself to go.

I compensate.

I increase focus. I narrow my awareness. I do not let my thoughts stray.

This is manageable.

It has to be.

I have enforced distance before. I have severed attachments that threatened to distort judgment. I have stepped away from anomalies until the system resolved them on its own.

This is no different.

I repeat that to myself even as I begin to notice the cost.

The silence feels thinner.

Not louder. Not hostile.

Just… incomplete.

It is a subtle shift, easy to ignore if I were not attuned to patterns. The absence of her awareness does not feel like relief. It feels like pressure redistributed elsewhere.

I tell myself that is temporary.

I tell myself that what happened was an aberration, a convergence of timing and vulnerability that will dissipate once routine reasserts itself.

Desire fades.

Attachment loosens.

Distance restores balance.

These are truths I have relied on.

Still, when the quiet stretches too long, my attention drifts despite my effort to contain it. I find myself marking time by the hours she would be awake. By the moments she would likely pause, breathe, steady herself the way she always does.

I stop that thought immediately.

I redirect my focus again, pushing deeper into function. I review patterns. I track probabilities. I keep myself occupied with structure so there is no room left for reflection.

It works.

For a while.

Then the memory returns, uninvited and precise.

Not the act.

The choice.

The moment I could have stayed.

The moment I didn’t.

That is the one that unsettles me most.

Because restraint is only virtuous if it prevents harm. It becomes cruelty when it preserves order at the expense of something essential.

I do not yet know which this was.

So I choose distance again.

I withdraw further, tightening the boundary until it holds without effort. I tell myself that if she notices the absence, she will interpret it correctly.

She will understand that not everything meant is meant to continue.

She will be fine.

The thought is rational.

It is also wrong.

I sense it the way one senses a fracture before it becomes visible. The absence I am enforcing is not neutral. It does not simply remove me from her awareness.

It leaves a shape behind.

Loss.

Not rejection.

Loss is quieter. It settles instead of flaring. It dulls instead of burns.

The realization lands slowly, unwelcome and precise.

If she feels it, she will not name it as abandonment. She will absorb it as absence and adjust herself around it.

That is what she does.

The understanding tightens something in me that distance was meant to loosen.

I stop again, standing very still within the hum of the system.

This is the moment restraint demands justification.

Not later. Not after consequences surface.

Now.

I tell myself that withdrawal is still possible. That distance will correct what proximity disrupted. That the pull will fade if I do not feed it with attention.

I believe this because I need to.

Because the alternative is admitting that the line I crossed cannot be uncrossed simply by stepping back.

So I hold the boundary.

I do not return.

And I wait to see what the absence does to both of us.