None of them consider the real reason.
Eden disappears through the front door of her building. I hear her footsteps climb the stairs—light, quick, uneven from fatigue. When her door shuts three floors up, something in my chest loosens, though I refuse to acknowledge it.
I linger on the sidewalk, watching the windows until one flickers with lamplight. That’s hers. Second from the end. She passes the window briefly—her outline small, her hair pulled loose, exhaustion in the slope of her shoulders—and then the curtain falls into place.
I step back into the shadows.
Protectiveness is not something I allow myself. Attachment even less so. I don’t have the luxury of softness, andI don’t want it. In my world, softness gets crushed. Attachment gets exploited. Care becomes a weakness someone else can pull tight around your throat.
Yet here I am, rearranging parts of the city because I don’t want her touched. Watching over someone who shouldn’t matter. Someone who happened to stand in the wrong place on the wrong night.
A nobody who saw something she shouldn’t have seen.
I run a hand through my hair, annoyed at the tension threading through me. I’m irritated by how often I’ve thought of her today. Irritated by how instinctively I stepped in when the thief followed her. Irritated that the idea of her being frightened sits like a splinter lodged beneath my skin.
I pace a few steps, then lean against a lamppost at the corner. My phone vibrates. A message from Viktor.
All clear. She’s inside. Want us to stay?
I type back:One man on rotation. Stay invisible.
The reply comes instantly.
Boss, she isn’t a threat. Why?
They don’t need reasons. They follow orders. That’s enough.
I look up at her window again, watching the faint movement behind the curtain. She’s probably pacing the apartment the same way she paced the sidewalk earlier. Overthinking. Analyzing. Writing in that notebook she clings to like a lifeline.
My thoughts keep circling her whether I want them to or not. The shape of her fear the night she hid behind the dumpster. The steadiness in her eyes. The way she stared into that alley as if it could give her answers. The softness she offered the stranger today. All of it threads together in patterns I can’t ignore.
Curiosity has turned into something else. Something heavier. Something I don’t allow myself to feel.
Obsession is the wrong word, but it isn’t far from the truth.
Chapter Five - Eden
Every morning feels normal for the first five minutes—tea, notebook, the hum of traffic outside my window—but the moment I step into the city, that strange prickling sensation returns. A weight between my shoulder blades. A breath at the back of my neck. Something unseen slotting into my shadow.
At first I tell myself it’s nothing but stress. I witnessed something traumatic; of course my nerves are still raw. I keep repeating that explanation until the words lose meaning.
Except it keeps happening.
At the bus stop, while people crowd around me and chatter about their days, I feel it; a presence, close enough that the hairs at the nape of my neck lift. I turn casually, pretending to adjust my bag strap. Nothing. Just commuters scrolling through their phones.
The unease settles in anyway.
Later, inside a crowded library on campus, it hits again while I’m reaching for a book on the highest shelf. A tightness in my stomach. A prickle under my skin. As if eyes are following every gesture, every breath, every tiny shift in my posture. I stand completely still for a moment, listening. No footsteps. No shadow shifting behind me.
I tell myself I’m imagining it.
Imagination shouldn’t feel this real.
Even in my apartment, with the door locked and the curtains half drawn, I keep glancing at the window. I hate how easily fear creeps in—how natural it feels to check the corners before I undress, or to pause and listen for footsteps in the hallway after midnight. The city is always loud, but there’s a new layer beneath it. Something I can’t name.
The worst part is that I don’t know if the danger is real… or if I’ve simply lost my grip on what normal looks like.
By Thursday, the tension knots so tightly in my chest that I feel it in every inhale. I try grounding myself with routines: my usual walk to the bookstore, my usual seat in the café. I write reflections on behavioral patterns, but my thoughts keep drifting back to the alley. The gunshot. The controlled, terrifying stillness of the man behind it.
