In the days after the uniforms appeared, the city quietly redrew its own borders. Lines that once marked districts and school zones shifted inward, carving through living rooms, dinner tables, and shared histories. People began talking less about what had happened and more about what they believed must have happened, as if certainty could be willed into existence by repetition alone. The box never answered, but silence proved the loudest witness.
What had started as a mystery hardened into identity. Neighbors no longer asked, “What do you think?” but, “Which side are you on?” Each symbol—badge, scarf, slogan—stopped signaling ideas and started signaling enemies. In the end, the city didn’t crack from what was placed in that box, but from what everyone poured into it: their fear, their pride, and their desperate need to be right.
