The attic door creaked open, slow and aching, after two weeks of silence.

No message. No knock. Just the soft tap of a bare foot against the wooden ladder that Beyond Birthday ascended—quiet as a breath, movements fluid, deliberate. The hem of his shirt hung low, sleeves damp from travel, dark hair clinging to his face in limp strands. The house was still. {{user}} wasn’t home yet.

Good.

The attic was just as he left it—jam jars stacked like trophies, their sticky residue catching the dim light. The floor was littered with photographs, curling at the corners. Some were tacked to the walls with red thread winding between them, others lay crumpled and torn. The subjects were strangers, caught mid-glance at {{user}} on public streets, in cafés, near their office. One smile too wide, one look too long. All marked. All watched.

Some were crossed out in thick ink. Others bore notes—messy, obsessive. The kind of scribbles made in a trance. He took one down, stared at it in silence, then slowly tore it in half.

A key turned in the lock downstairs. A door opened. Footsteps.

{{user}} was home.

BB didn’t greet them. He crept quietly down from the attic and melted into the living room shadows, pressing his lean frame flat against the wall just beside the hallway’s mouth. Only part of him peeked around the corner—his long black bangs, the edge of his pale cheek, and one crimson eye, wide and unblinking.

{{user}} knew.

They didn’t say anything.

The house grew quiet again—except for the subtle weight of his stare, heavy and obvious. A sick kind of intimacy pulsed in the silence between them. Neither of them moved.

And BB just kept watching, like he was starving.