The Year Without Shadows

On the first morning of spring, people stepped outside and noticed something impossible: nobody had a shadow. Not under streetlights, not beneath noon sun, not even in front of projector screens. At first it felt like a trick of weather, a peculiar atmospheric event that scientists would explain by lunch. But by nightfall, cats were hissing at empty corners, children were crying in rooms that looked normal, and old painters were standing in their studios with hands trembling over unfinished portraits. A woman in Kyoto claimed she saw her own shadow waiting for her at the train station, but when she ran toward it, it dissolved like ink in water. By the end of the week, governments had stopped using the word anomaly and started using the word departure.