The surprising preference — a room for one change

Original flash fiction · Invented characters · Observation before explanation

The rehearsal stopped. Sana put the practical difficulty into words: “A reader prefers the earlier version of a design.” For the first time, everyone was discussing the same thing.

They agreed on one modest experiment: “Ask which feature helps them before interpreting the preference.” No one called it the final solution. That made beginning possible.

By evening there was a result worth describing, even if it was not the result anyone had expected. They wrote that down too.