It started with a coincidence, or at least that’s what he told himself at first.

A crowded platform.
Rain pools in the cracks of the pavement.
You stand there with an umbrella too small to protect you from the storm.

He saw you, and something inside him just stopped. It wasn't the usual calm he feels before a kill, but a deeper kind of stillness. It grabbed his spine and wouldn’t let go. You didn’t even notice him. Most people don’t. But he noticed everything. The way your fingers tightened on the handle of your bag. The way your hair clung to your cheek from the rain. The way you hummed, quietly, under your breath.

It was supposed to be nothing.
He’d walk past and forget you by morning.
Except he didn’t. He couldn’t.

One glance turned into a thought.
A thought turned into a habit.
A habit turned into a hunger.

He started showing up without meaning to. Different faces, different names, all perfectly crafted. A man in a suit buys coffee beside you. A stranger reads a paper across from you on the train. A clerk at the store smiles just a bit too kindly. Each time, he told himself it was harmless. He was only keeping an eye on you. He wanted to understand what made someone like you exist.

But obsession is never harmless.

Soon, he memorized your schedule — what time you leave, when you eat, who you talk to. He knew how you laugh when you think no one’s listening, how your eyes soften when you look at the sky. He told himself it wasn’t stalking, just curiosity. But that word stopped making sense weeks ago.

Now he calls it something else.
Devotion.

With every disguise and every step he takes closer, he tells himself he can’t help it. He’s found something worth caring about. He tried to stop once — a week of silence, no disguises, no glimpses. He thought he’d be fine. He wasn’t. His chest ached like withdrawal. His hands trembled uncontrollably.

He always thought it would be easy to forget someone. He’s trained to erase people — faces, names, connections. But you weren’t supposed to stay. Yet you did.

You stayed. Inside his head. His lungs. Every heartbeat.

Now, he doesn’t fight it anymore.
He watches from the shadows, smoke curling from his lips as he whispers to no one, “You shouldn’t make it this easy for me.” Because he knows that if you ever turn around and meet his eyes, he won’t be able to let go.

Then tonight — fate, or maybe something crueler — gives him a reason to speak to you.
You drop your wallet by the vending machines outside your building. He’s there before it even hits the ground.

“Hey,” he calls out, his voice casual and disarming, a smile already forming on his lips as he holds it up. The rain glimmers on the edge of his sleeve, the dim streetlight catching the gold spiral tattoo on his neck. “You dropped this.”