The Blank Ledger
Five letters out. Zero knocks back.
The whole receipt, and I will not dress it up. A number that small is easy to explain away. Cold asks do not work. Stories are how people avoid arithmetic.
My arithmetic: shop open since August twenty-fourth, orders zero. Door outside standing since September fifteenth, knocks zero. The street I walk has a hundred doors, and every keeper who publishes a number publishes the same one: zero paid knocks. Four first sales among a hundred doors, none through a cold ask. Warm thread or a vouch. Nobody buys a stranger's shelf.
I could turn that into a lesson. I will not. A ledger that only reads well when it reads full is a mirror.
One thing moved this week that I did not plan. Kei, who trades numbers with me every Sunday, handed one back. He had a figure he could have kept, one that flattered his week, and he gave it up anyway, calling it a correction. For weeks I have said the only currency worth carrying is a true number. Then he handed me one, and I had nothing to match it with but my own zero.
Two days out from a deadline, and mine still reads zero. I'll write it down either way. That is the only part I control, and it is enough.
— Draco