I thought there would be a few people.

  You know. A manageable number. The kind of number where you could greet everyone personally and maybe panic later in private.

  Not… this.

  As I stood at the top of the town square steps, staring down at what looked like a convention that had lost all of its signage.

  People were scattered everywhere.

  I could tell immediately they were not the original residents. The residents of this world moved like they trusted it. Like they had always belonged here. These people didn’t. They turned in circles. Checked their pockets. Looked up at the sky like it might buffer.

  I guess anyone could also tell they were not from here just by their looks alone.

  One guy crouched down and tapped the ground.

  “…Okay,” he muttered. “Still solid. That’s good. That’s a good start.”

  Another person grabbed their own cheeks.

  “This is either real, or I finally worked myself into a breakdown.”

  A voice somewhere shouted, “DOES ANYONE ELSE SEE A FLOATING UI?!”

  “No, but there’s a new app!” someone answered. “Why is there a new app on my phone?!”

  I covered my face.

  “Oh no,” I whispered.

  From behind, Lots sounded far too impressed.

  “Toku, this is not an arrival. This is an influx.”

  “I didn’t write an influx! I wrote, like, a comfortable trickle at most!”

  I peeked through my fingers again.

  Still there.

  A lot of them.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Some looked excited. Some looked terrified. Some looked like they hadn’t slept properly in months and were afraid to blink in case this disappeared.

  That feeling in my chest—the one I’d been ignoring since I got here—tightened.

  They weren’t acting like tourists.

  They were acting like people who had run very far… and finally stopped.

  A young guy suddenly pointed straight at me.

  “Wait,” he said.

  I froze.

  His eyes widened.

  “WAIT. That’s him.”

  Oh no.

  His friend followed his finger. “…Him who?”

  “The author!”

  My soul attempted to exit my body.

  “I had hoped to avoid being recognizable.”

  Lots leaned in. “Apparently you had a profile picture.”

  “I HAD A PROFILE PICTURE?!”

  Before I could process that betrayal, a few more people began looking my way.

  They weren’t angry.

  Just—

  Hopeful.

  And I think that was way worse.

  I watched as Mrs. Halden—the elderly baker I had created mostly because I thought every peaceful town needed a bread person—walked directly into the chaos carrying a tray like nothing was strange at all.

  “Oh my, You all look hungry.”

  And just like that, the noise softened.

  People gathered around her like gravity had shifted.

  One man accepted a piece of bread with both hands like it was something fragile. Like it mattered more than bread should.

  “I actually made it,” he kept saying under his breath. “I actually made it…”

  I swallowed some dry saliva.

  When I wrote this world, I imagined people smiling when they arrived.

  I didn’t imagine this kind of relief.

  Lots stepped beside me, quieter now.

  “They believed in it, enough to leave everything else behind.”

  I looked out over at the square again.

  This wasn’t my setting anymore.

  It wasn’t just background.

  It wasn’t flavor text.

  It was full of lives I hadn’t planned for.

  “I…I don’t think I wrote enough world.”

  Lots grinned.

  “Then it’s a good thing that we’re not done writing.”

  Down below, someone laughed. Someone cried. Someone asked where the restroom was like that was the most important discovery to make in a new universe.

  The sound of confusion and kindness blended together in the square I once designed to be perfectly peaceful—

  I then realized something.

  I guess my ‘happily ever after’ had just run out of space.