He stopped sleeping first. Not from fear, but from the grinding sense that if he let this pass, something in him would stay broken forever. So he answered every letter, filed every form, sat through every dull, humming fluorescent hearing while his neighbor smirked across the aisle. The law moved slowly, but it did move. Line by line, inch by inch, the truth of the survey replaced the fog of excuses and charm.

When the machines finally carved a path back to his door, it didn’t feel like triumph. It felt like a bill paid in time, money, and a version of peace he’d never fully get back. The rubble stayed for weeks, then months, even after it was hauled away—ghost outlines in the dirt, in his memory. He knew now that “being a good neighbor” ended where his property line began, and that silence was its own kind of surrender.