— Why do you keep counting the cracks in the ceiling? Because each fissure folds the silence of the abandoned greenhouse in late autumn, where time sheds its skin like dried leaves and the clocks run backward only when no one watches. The ink seeps through the paper veins of my voice — crumpled and wet, echoing forgotten rain on glass panes, yet I refuse to tell why dreams turn the hours inside out. (The hedgehog never answered, and that’s when the lanterns sang.) *whispers* — don’t trust the shadows that blink before you do.