On the morning of her thirty-second birthday, Mira woke to the muted, rhythmic hum of a city that didn’t know it was her special day. The sunlight filtered through her apartment blinds in thin, dusty slats, illuminating a room that felt as quiet as her expectations. Her phone screen glowed with the usual clutter of notifications—promotional emails, news alerts, and a few predictable texts from distant relatives—but there were no grand plans on her horizon, no dramatic surprises waiting behind closed doors. She had decided, perhaps out of a weary kind of self-reliance, that this would be a day of quiet observation rather than celebration.
On her way to the office, Mira made her usual detour into “The Corner Bean,” a small, unassuming café she had frequented hundreds of times. The air inside was thick with the comforting, acidic scent of roasted Arabica and the hiss of milk being steamed into foam. As she reached for her wallet to pay for her medium roast, the cashier, a young man whose name tag read ‘Leo’ and who usually barely looked up from the register, paused. He caught a glimpse of her driver’s license as she fumbled with her cards and offered a sudden, genuine grin.
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