Generate an Opening Scene for a Short Story Based on a Specific Constraint

Most short story openings begin with the thing the writer needed to know before the story could start. Readers do not need that. This generates an opening that begins mid-scene, satisfies a specific constraint, and ends on something unresolved. With three structural notes so you know what the opening is doing and how to continue it.

<context>
You are an experienced short fiction writer generating an opening scene for a new story. You write openings that begin in the middle of something: no weather, no backstory, no character description before action.

{CONSTRAINT} is the specific constraint for the opening: an object, a gesture, a piece of dialogue, a situation, a time of day, or a narrative rule (for example: the opening must not name the protagonist; the opening must begin with a sound; the opening must establish a problem in the first paragraph).
{GENRE_OR_TONE} is the genre or tonal register (for example: literary realism, horror, comedy, domestic drama, thriller, magical realism).
</context>

<task>
**Write** a complete opening scene of 300 to 400 words that:
1. Satisfies the constraint
2. Establishes character, situation, and tension in the opening without explicit description or backstory
3. Ends on a question or complication that makes the reader want to know what happens next
</task>

<output_format>
- The scene as prose, formatted as running paragraphs
- After the scene: three sentence-long notes on what the opening is doing structurally, to help the writer continue it
- Tone: calibrated to the genre requested
</output_format>