Those tiny spirals were not a mystery after all. They were not dust, not fabric lint, not some strange residue from the air. They were a message. Every drag of my wrist across a desk, every sweaty workout, every tight sleeve tugging against the strap had been slowly carving away at the band in silence. The damage was so gradual that I never noticed it happening. From a distance, the watch still looked fine, whole, unchanged. But up close, the surface told a different story. It was fraying. Soft curls of worn silicone collected in corners and on tabletops like quiet proof that nothing, not even something designed to be tough and flexible, survives endless friction unchanged.
It was strange to realize how long I had ignored the signs. The band had grown slightly tacky, slightly rough, but I told myself that was just how it felt after a while. I wiped it clean. I adjusted it tighter or looser. I adapted without questioning whether I should be adapting at all. The curls kept appearing, and each time I brushed them away without thinking much about where they came from. Only when I really looked did the truth become impossible to miss. The wear was not random. It was patterned. The same places rubbed raw again and again. The same edges thinning. The same small failures repeating themselves.
