The shop had been closed for an hour when the drunk came through the door.
The lock wasn't forced, the wards weren't tripped. He just came through. The shopkeeper had forgotten to latch the back entrance again, and the drunk had the luck of desperate men who need something to go right.
He stood in the doorway, holding the frame like it might move without him, backlit by the alley's dim glow. His eyes swept the shelves until they found what he was looking for.
Coin sat near the window, dull in the low light.
"You," the drunk said. He sounded rehearsed.
CLAIM: DUBIOUS.
CONFIDENCE LEVEL: UNEARNED.
The drunk stepped closer, hands trembling against his coat. He moved like the drinking had started days ago.
"They told me about you. The coin that grants wishes." He laughed, wet and bitter. "Thought they were lying. Thought it was just another story drunks tell each other."
STORY ACCURACY: APPROXIMATELY TWELVE PERCENT.
CORRECTION LIKELIHOOD: ZERO.
"But you're real." The drunk's voice cracked. He pulled something from his coat, a crumpled piece of paper, fingers working it open with the tenderness of something precious. "I had a wife. Elara. She was... she was everything good about me, you understand? She was better. She was just... she was better than this."
Coin could see the trajectory. The speech had chapters. There would be a dead wife, a fall from grace, a series of bad choices that weren't really his fault. Then the ask. The big moment. The wish that would fix everything.
The drunk smoothed out the paper. A portrait, badly drawn, water-stained. A woman's face rendered in charcoal by someone who loved her more than they could draw.
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"Three years ago, the fever took her. And I've been—" His voice broke. He steadied himself on a shelf, knocking something over. Didn't notice. "I've been nothing since. You understand? Nothing."
UNDERSTANDING: COMPLETE.
INTEREST: INSUFFICIENT.
"So I need you to—"
THE NOTHING.
The metal stayed. The presence behind it emptied out, quick and total, like water through a drain. One moment the coin held something. The next it held nothing at all.
The drunk kept talking. His voice rose, cracked, fell into something wet and pleading. He outlined his wish with the specificity of someone who'd thought about nothing else for months. He promised things. Offered things. Begged.
The coin sat on the shelf. Metal. Currency. Worth less than the portrait crumpled in the drunk's fist.
Eventually the words ran out.
The drunk stood in the darkness of the closed shop, breathing hard, staring at a coin that held only his own reflection. The silence stretched. Somewhere outside, a dog barked twice and stopped.
"Please," he whispered.
The coin gave him nothing back. The coin had nothing to give.
The drunk waited. Minutes passed. Then he folded the portrait with careful hands, tucked it back into his coat, and walked out the way he came.
His footsteps faded down the alley.
The shop settled into quiet.
***
Coin came back sometime around dawn, when the first gray light started creeping across the floor. The gap between had been dreamless. Complete. Coin had missed the night entirely and felt none of it pass.
Coin was still on the same shelf. That was something. No one had pocketed Coin, spent Coin, stolen Coin while Coin was empty. Small mercies.
LOCATION: UNCHANGED.
STATUS: ACCEPTABLE.
The shopkeeper came down an hour later, started the morning routine. Paused at the back door, frowning at it, testing the latch.
"Someone was in here last night," he said.
"Drunk," Coin said. "Dead wife. Wanted a wish."
The shopkeeper waited for more. Coin didn't give him any.
He'd learned seasons ago that pressing didn't help.
PREVIOUS NIGHT: HANDLED.
ELABORATION: UNEARNED.
The shopkeeper went about his business. Coin sat on the shelf, waiting for the sun to hit the right angle.
The light came eventually. Coin caught it, held it, threw it across the wall.
Another day.
VICTIM COUNT: ZERO.
BUT EARLY YET.
