Arjun was stuck in traffic. Again. The kind where you move just enough to keep false hope alive. He sighed, tapping his foot against the car mat. But down below, his shoe had other thoughts.
“I’m stagnant,” it mused. “But so is everyone else.”
Shoes see things differently. They don’t have eyes, but they feel the world. They sense movement, stillness, patterns. And right now, all the shoes around it—hundreds of them—were stuck too. Different feet, different people, but all sharing the same standstill.
This wasn’t new. The shoe had been part of patterns before.
At the movies? Shoes neatly lined up, not moving for hours.
In a food court? Clusters of restless shoes, tapping, shifting, waiting for decisions to be made.
At a concert? Shoes barely on the ground, lifted by the music.
It started seeing it everywhere. Every place had its own rhythm, its own movement signature.
And then it wondered—if I can recognize these patterns, maybe I can predict them.
If shoes could talk, they’d probably have a lot to say.
- “Don’t take this route, traffic’s a mess. Try the metro—more standing shoes, but at least they move.”
- “This café has shoes that tap in rhythm—good vibes, stay a little longer.”
- “The shoes next to you haven’t moved in a while. Maybe their owner is sad.”
But shoes don’t talk. They just listen, absorb, and remember.
They remember first steps—that careful, testing walk in the store before being bought.
They remember fast sprints—running late for a flight, barely making it.
They remember long pauses—sitting by at night, lost in thought.
They don’t know why people move, only that they do. But they feel every journey, every hesitation, every unspoken emotion.
The shoe had been around long enough to notice something else: people moved less now.
More time at desks. More sitting. More standing in elevators that did all the work. Less running for no reason. Less walking just to think.
Would there come a time when shoes never felt dirt roads? When they forgot what it was like to run through a park, to step on warm pavement, to carry someone towards something unknown?
Maybe that’s why people still found excuses to walk by the sea, dance at weddings, or jog at sunrise—even when they didn’t have to.
Because movement isn’t just about getting somewhere.
It’s about feeling alive.
The light turned green.
The shoe felt weight shift, movement returning. Finally.
It didn’t know where they were going, but it didn’t matter.
Because for shoes, moving is everything.