I didn’t find her first.
The thought moves through me like rot through clean water. Slow, total, irreversible. I thought I was at the beginning. Thatall her cracks were mine to trace, mine to fill. That I was the only one who had ever watched her like this—known her breath patterns, the shape of her silence, the way her knees bent when she braced herself in the dark.
But someone else had already memorised her.
Years ago.
And I didn’t know.
I missed it.
My system is too tight to miss things. My instinct sharper than that. My paranoia louder. I don’t miss.
But I did.
Because I thought I was the predator.
Now I’m wondering if I was just the louder one.
The bolder one.
The one who made noise while someone else slipped through the walls.
My hand tightens on the edge of the desk. The metal groans beneath my grip.
From down the hall, the shower shuts off.
A few seconds pass.
Then, there was the sound of her towel dragging from the hook. The low squeak of the door hinge. Her bare feet padded back toward the bedroom.
She doesn’t come to me.
Doesn’t check in.
She’s folding back into herself. Slower than before, but it’s there.
The shrinking that only happens when you think the ground’s about to give.
And I want to ask.
I want to go to her. Press her against the wall and pin her eyes and make her tell me what she saw. What she felt. Why she won’t look at me quite the same.
But I don’t.
Not yet.
Because she doesn’t know I know.
And I need to see what she does when she thinks I’m still in the dark.
I sit back in the chair, pull open a blank window on my second screen, and begin a list. One I won’t save. One I’ll rewrite every hour from memory just to make sure I have missed anything else.
? Entry point
