The double hyphen was always a puzzle. A stumble. A secret handshake you didn't know you were making.
We all looked at it. Then at her.
“What is this place?” I whispered to him. muki--s kitchen
The second time I returned, the door was a foot to the left of an old laundromat. The soup was gone. In its place: a single, perfect jam roly-poly, steam curling from its buttery spiral. One bite, and I was twelve again, scraping mud off my shoes after my first real kiss in the rain. The banker was there too, now wearing a paint-stained shirt, sketching the steam on a napkin.
I picked up the cracker. It was dry, plain, almost nothing. The double hyphen was always a puzzle
Outside, the city was loud again. But I carried the quiet with me. And I understood, finally, what the double hyphen meant.
When I looked up, Muki was gone. The counter was clean. The door was just a door to an empty basement. We all looked at it
It was a pause. A breath. The space between what you were and what you could become.