We finally learned its name, but that didn’t make it less eerie. Case-bearing moth larva: a fragile architect dragging its own lint-and-dust shelter across the unnoticed edges of our lives. It hadn’t invaded our space so much as revealed it—showing us how much life exists in the margins we never bother to see. The bathroom, once just a place of routines and reflections, became a reminder that our version of “empty” is an illusion.
Later, when the fear settled into a quieter awareness, the apartment felt different—less like a sealed-off world, more like a shared habitat. We weren’t the only ones making homes here; we were simply the biggest and loudest. Somewhere under the cabinet, along the baseboards, behind the furniture, smaller lives were carrying on without us. They weren’t threats. They were proof that even in the cleanest, most familiar spaces, mystery survives.
