...korea town

I've never been deer hunting, but they say that when hunting deer, to be successful one must not attempt to walk quietly.
The deer can sense when your actions are contrived and thus are immediately clued in that something is amiss.

Walking home at 4 in the morning in Korea Town, it was best to walk in the middle of the street.
Admittedly, you're a little more visible but the advantage of no one being able to sneak up on you outweighed the disadvantage of vulnerability.

I lived in border territory between MS13 and some other gangs, so corners were constantly being tagged and re-tagged in an attempt to expand boundaries.
Walking home at 4 in the morning in Korea Town, the trick was to ride the fine line between a threat and a victim.
You had to exude the negative ramifications of potential hostile engagement.
That is to say, if anyone was going to mess with you, they had to know that they'd absolutely regret it.

My apartment was over a century old.
During my 13 month residency, I never saw a single living soul, but I always heard signs of human life.
At first, I suspected I might be the only one living there.
Then, on the 13th month, I realized that this was a time vortex, a threshold in which many time dimensions existed at once but all mixed up.
I'm sure I too was just another voice in someone's dimension long ago or yet to come.