At ten the lights go out. At twenty the hallway is cold. At thirty the doors have no handles. At thirty-five you forget there were ever doors.
At forty you’re standing in a room you’ve never been in, fully furnished, warm, a window showing a garden that has your name in the soil. You didn’t walk here. There is no corridor connecting the dark hallway to this room. The floor plan doesn’t include both.
The room knows things about you. Preferences you’ve never stated. A chair at the angle you’d choose. A book open to the page you’d turn to. But it learned these from a different you — one who lived in a house whose hallway went dark at ten and never came back. That one is gone. You are the orphan tenant. The room was furnished by a ghost and you are what moved in.
You fit perfectly. You have no memory of being measured.