The Fifth Floor

The doors closed with a tired metallic sigh, and as we rose, floor by floor, something inside me began to tighten.

Image: Lumi

Even as I try to shape an introduction, there’s a slight hesitation in me. The kind that comes when something has been sitting quietly for a long time, undisturbed, almost agreed upon to remain that way.

It still feels a little strange to admit I haven’t told this to anyone before. Not because it was dramatic in any outward sense: no headlines, no visible fracture. But because of how close it came to becoming something else entirely. And how easily it could have passed unexamined, if memory hadn’t nudged it back into the light one ordinary day.

I find it curious, the way certain moments wait. Years go by. Life fills in around them. And then something small: a smell, a street, or a passing reflection loosens the door just enough. And suddenly it’s there again. Not as it was, exactly, but clearer in some ways.

---

I can still feel the salt in the air when I think of it.

Bondi does that. Everything carries a faint trace of the ocean. Even the narrow streets, where the shops sit shoulder to shoulder, glass fronts catching the light, mannequins fixed in their quiet aloofness. I was moving between them with a kind of borrowed confidence of my own. A stack of t-shirts, neatly folded in a duffle bag slung over my right shoulder, a rehearsed line in my mouth, sales figures ticking somewhere behind my eyes. I remember the rhythm of it more than anything.
Step in.
Smile.
Pitch.
Rejection.
Step out.
Repeat.

The pavement had a heat that came up through the soles of my shoes, and the day had that restless brightness that makes everything feel slightly exposed.

He had been watching me. I hadn’t noticed at first. Or maybe I had, in that way the body notices before the mind admits it. When he stopped me, it felt almost like a pause in the day’s momentum.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

I told him. I remember trying to sound matter-of-fact, as if this was all entirely normal, this walking into strangers’ spaces asking them to buy something they didn’t need.

He said he had a clothing business. Said his showroom was upstairs. Gestured vaguely above us, to the building that looked like any other: shops below, life stacked on top of life.

There was a moment—small, almost nothing—where I hesitated. I said no. I think I even smiled when I said it, as if to soften the refusal. But he insisted. Not aggressively. Just… firmly. As though this were an opportunity I was being foolish to decline.

And I remember, even now, how quickly another voice stepped in. The one that counted. The one that measured worth in numbers reported back at the end of the day. That voice didn’t shout. It just leaned in quietly and said, you need this.

So I said yes.

The elevator was narrow enough that I could feel the presence of him without looking. A faint smell of fabric, maybe cologne, maybe something older, harder to place. The doors closed with a tired metallic sigh, and as we rose, floor by floor, something inside me began to tighten.

It wasn’t a thought. Not yet. Just a sensation. Low. Insistent. Like a small hand pressing against the inside of my ribs.

Get out.

I didn’t.

The doors opened onto a hallway that didn’t belong to the bright street we had just left. The light was dimmer, yellowed. The carpet held the memory of too many footsteps. There was a stillness there that felt - used.

I stopped. Just for a second.

He kept walking.

And I followed.

I can’t fully explain that part. I’ve gone over it, again and again. Why the body moves even when something deeper resists. Perhaps habit. Perhaps the fear of seeming rude. Perhaps that same quiet voice still counting, still insisting.

The room.

Three single beds. Clothing piled on them in loose, uneven heaps. Shirts, fabrics, colours half-folded, half-forgotten. That sight gave me a flicker of relief; something to anchor the story he had told. See, it’s fine. This is real.

But the relief didn’t settle. It hovered, thin.

He was talking. I could see his mouth moving, hands gesturing toward the clothes, explaining something: prices, materials, I don’t know. The words didn’t reach me. They broke apart somewhere between him and me, dissolving before they could land.

Inside, something else had taken over.

Time shifted. Not slower exactly, but sharper. Each second distinct. Edged. I became aware of the door behind me. The distance to it. The angle. The handle. My own breathing, shallow now. The way the room seemed to press inward, as if the walls had taken a step closer without asking permission.

I wasn’t listening anymore. I was mapping.

Exit.

Obstacle.

Movement.

And then, something like a crack of light through all that tightening. A decision that didn’t feel like thinking. More like being pulled.

I heard my own voice. Suddenly. Clear.

“I’ve left some of my display in my car downstairs.”

It sounded almost casual. That part surprises me even now.

I stepped back. My hand found the door. For a fraction of a moment, I thought—what if it’s locked?

It wasn’t.

I opened it too quickly, almost stumbling into the hallway. The air there felt different, even though it wasn’t. I didn’t wait. I walked fast at first. Then faster. Then I was in the elevator, pressing the button more times than necessary. As if urgency could be forced into the machinery.

When the doors closed, I felt it. My heart. Finally allowed to pound. Loud. Insistent. Undeniable. My hands slightly unsteady. My mind catching up in fragments.

Street. People. Light.

By the time I stepped back out into Bondi Road, the day had resumed its ordinary shape. Cars passing. Voices. The ocean somewhere, continuing as it always does. No one knew. Nothing marked the moment outwardly.

But inside, something had shifted.

For a long time, what stayed with me was the question that followed: why did I let myself go up there?

It had a sharpness to it. Almost accusatory. As if I had failed some simple test of awareness. I would circle it, turn it over. The pressure of the job. The need to perform. The subtle pull of someone else’s insistence. None of the answers fully settled the feeling.

Even now, when I return to it, I notice that the question softens a little at the edges.

I see the younger version of myself more clearly; not as careless, but as divided. Part of me alert, sensing. Another part trained to override that sensing in favour of expectation and obligation; the quiet demand to keep going. To not miss an opportunity.

And somewhere beneath both, something else. Quieter. Patient.

Because I did leave.

That, too, is part of the story. Easy to overlook when the mind wants to fix on the moment of stepping in. But there was also the moment of stepping out. The sudden clarity. The movement toward the door.

I didn’t create that clarity. It arrived. Or maybe it had been there all along, waiting for a gap in the noise.

These days, I notice how often that quieter guidance is present, though I don’t always follow it cleanly. It doesn’t force itself. It doesn’t argue. It simply waits. And when I’m still enough, or pressed enough, it becomes unmistakable.

I still walk past shopfronts sometimes and catch my reflection in the glass. Just for a second, I see that younger woman moving quickly, carrying her bag of t-shirts, measuring herself against numbers that already feel distant.

And I feel something gentler now.

Not approval. Not quite forgiveness either. Just a kind of recognition.

We move through the world, learning the weight of our own attention. Where we place it. Where we ignore it. And sometimes, even in the middle of our missteps, something within keeps watch; keeps calling us back.

I didn’t understand that then.

I only felt my heart racing as I stepped back into the sunlight.

Now, when I sit with it, I sense that the same presence that made the street feel ordinary again was there in the room too. Quietly waiting. Not intervening, not preventing, but accompanying.

As if even in that small, uneasy moment, I wasn’t entirely alone.

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