She’sbeenhereaweek and I’ve been taking notes. Her likes, dislikes. I may or may not have punched out a couple guys who looked at her a bit too long.
Today, I’m sitting on a bench under an alcove, watching her.
Amara Marcus moves through the quad like she’s trespassing on her own story. She glides, which is typical for her lineage, but underneath the choreography, there’s a fracture. She walks with her spine rod-straight, chin set, but her hands betray her. Even from thirty meters, I see the perpetual fidget: thumb on left, then right, a twisting at the wrist, a covert tug at her blazer cuff.
On my lap is a leather-bound notebook. The cover is hand-tooled, the pages thick. I keep it because it’s the only thing my father ever gave me, and I like the way the gold-tipped paper shines under lamplight. Inside, every page is a study in engineered compulsion.
This weeks notes fill the better part of three pages. Times, locations, people she’s interacted with. Her breakfast is at 7:15 sharp—oatmeal, two boiled eggs, black coffee, always alone at the corner table. Not quite in the legacy section, but not in the poverty section either. More in no-mans-land.
At 9:30, she’s in Literature, seat A5, back row, leftmost chair, as far from the professor as possible without being rude. At noon she traverses the quad, always the same route, even when it’s raining. At 2, she ducks into the library and doesn’t resurface until 4, sometimes later.
Her entire schedule is a study in boredom. Predictable, reinforced, but with just enough deviation to suggest she’s aware of being watched.
This pleases me.
I sketch her path with a Montblanc pen, black ink because red is vulgar. My strokes are precise. At the end of each line I make a small mark: a diagonal slash for every behavior that deviates from routine. Today, by 10:15 a.m., there are already five. An extra pause at the stairwell; a look over her shoulder; the way she slows, then speeds up again, after crossing the main quad. None of these are accidental.
She’s noticed me.
The game is supposed to be mutual. I hunt, she flees, we escalate until the first one flinches. But Amara doesn’t run when she sees me. She observes, logs, and reacts only by tightening the mask around her face.
Most men would find this infuriating. I find it exhilarating.
I’m not watching her for pleasure. I am not, despite popular opinion, a stalker. What I am iscurious. Curious as to why the Board would assign her as my Hunt, why my father—the great Governor Roth, butcher and architect—would sign off on a pairing so obviously volatile. Curious as to why, despite every rational warning in my head, I want to unravel her so much I can taste it.
She stops in the courtyard, a porcelain statue adrift among the concrete, and looks up, directly at my corner. I go perfectly still. Her eyes sweep the quad, pausing on the alcove, and for a full three seconds I think she sees me. I hold her gaze, unblinking, until she moves again, cutting left toward the library.
I savor the afterimage. Then I write: 10:22 a.m., direct visual contact, no visible flinch. Possible confirmation: aware of surveillance.
A junior walks past with a girl in tow. He points up at the stonework and the girl giggles. I imagine he is telling her a story about the suicides that supposedly happened up here. All legacies have their rituals. My current ritual is one of patience.
I wait until the quad is empty before closing my notebook and sliding it into the inside pocket of my jacket.
At 10:30 exactly, I leave the alcove and descend the back stairs, timing my pace to arrive at the north corridor just as the next class change starts. The hallways here are rivers of chaos. Students shoulder past, necks craned for gossip or prey, eyes glazed with the effort of pretending not to care. I cut through the current, invisible in the way only someone who has mastered attention can be: always just outside the field of vision, always one step ahead of the observer.
I hit the main hall and start looking. Amara is not on the main floor. I circle, scanning for her. I turn a corner and she’s tucked into the farthest bench, just barely inside the library, knees drawn up, a book open but untouched.
I watch her from my spot against the wall, just long enough to memorize the way she’s folded in on herself before she opens the book and looks down for a brief moment.
She’s reading The Ethics of Disobedience, but she’s not actually turning the pages. Her gaze is fixed on the opposite wall, where the sun throws fractured light through stained glass. The color catches on her hair, making her look sickly, almost spectral. There’s a bruise on the inside of her wrist.
For a moment, rage surfaces.
Who gave her that?
She knows I’m watching. Of course she does. All her tells are sharper now: the flick of the eyes, the way her leg tenses when I shift my weight.
After five minutes she closes the book and stands, never once looking in my direction. She walks to the reference desk and checks out the volume. I hear her say thank you in a voice so faint it’s nearly a sigh.
When she leaves, I give it thirty seconds before following. Thirty seconds is the difference between coincidence and intent.
Outside, the sun is too bright. I slip on sunglasses and look around the quad.
Amara is already gone.
I allow myself the luxury of a smile.
I know where she’ll be at noon.
