She Loved Those Shoes. Then Everyone Else Did.

YUVYN Team · Daily Journal · An original fictional story

On the bus to work, Elise notices a woman across the aisle wearing red shoes like hers: low heels, a thin strap, a slightly square toe. Then she sees another pair in the window of the shoe shop near her office. At lunch, a colleague points at Elise's feet and says, “You got the shoes everyone is buying.”

Elise is thirty-four. She bought her pair three years ago from a shop clearing its summer stock. The colleague means to compliment her. Still, Elise hears herself answer, “I've had these forever,” as though the date on a receipt could protect something she liked.

The shoes she knew before the videos

She chose them because the strap held her foot on the stairs to her apartment and the red worked with the dark trousers she wore most days. The leather softened where her toes bent. Last winter, when the buckle came loose, she saved the shoes in a paper bag until she found a repair shop, then kept wearing them. They were useful, a little bright, and hers in the ordinary sense that she reached for them without thinking.

Now her phone is full of clips showing nearly the same shoes with neat socks and carefully shortened hems. A friend sends one with a row of red hearts. Elise smiles at the friend, then closes the video before the styling advice starts. She did not ask to be told how to wear an object that already carried her to the grocery store.

When getting dressed starts to feel like a statement

The next morning, Elise holds the shoes beside a gray pair. She has a meeting, a long walk to pick up a parcel, and no special reason to dress differently. Yet she spends several minutes wondering whether the red will make her look as if she copied a stranger's outfit overnight. She chooses gray. By the time she reaches the office, one heel has rubbed against her skin.

That evening she puts the red shoes on the floor by the door. Nothing about them has changed. Other people liking the style has not made the strap less secure or the color less pleasing. But wearing them now seems to invite a conversation she does not want: when she bought them, whether she saw the trend first, whether she is trying to be noticed. She misses being able to put them on and leave.

On Saturday, she needs a replacement bulb for the kitchen. She picks up the gray shoes again, remembers the walk, and reaches for the red ones. At the repair shop next to the hardware store, she asks whether the buckle can be tightened once more. The cobbler adjusts it while she waits. Outside, Elise walks two blocks to test it. Her feet feel steady. She buys the bulb, then stops for bread without photographing either errand.

What still belongs to the wearer

At home she sets the bread down and takes off the shoes. The trend will last as long as it lasts. She may tire of red next year. The leather may eventually wear past another repair. She does not have to keep the shoes to prove she loved them before anyone else did, and she does not have to abandon them to prove she has taste of her own.

For this Saturday, the useful answer is smaller: she liked the walk in them. If a favorite thing suddenly becomes everyone's visible favorite, she can ask what she enjoys in the hour she actually uses it, apart from explaining it to anyone. If the answer is still there, she can keep choosing it. If the answer changes, she can let that be true too.

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