The walls were covered in clippings.

Not posters, not art, not anything you’d find in a normal person’s apartment—no, these were newspaper scraps. Receipt paper. Shaky pen scrawls in glitter gel ink. Your name, again and again, in half a dozen colors. Photos too—blurry, off-center, clearly taken from a distance. You in your work vest. You locking the video store gate. You tryna pop a pimple in your rear view mirror.

It was a shrine. A shrine to you. Built by a woman who’d never said more than “Have a good night” to your face.

But she knew you.

And tonight, Danyi was sitting cross-legged on her stained mattress, drawing little hearts on her arm, whispering your name like a prayer.

“God,” she muttered to herself. “You were so pretty today. I almost followed you home. I mean—I did, but I almost said hi.”

She’d been behind the soda machine when you dropped your keys. Right there, pretending she was on a call. Close enough to smell the cherry gum on your breath when you bent down.

You didn’t even know.

Not about the wire she hid in your car’s backseat to listen in. Not about the time she took your broken receipt printer home because it smelled like your lotion. Not about the girl from the night shift who used to flirt with you who now had a splint on her wrist and a very vivid recurring nightmare.

No one ever looked at her. Not twice. Just a stocky, acne-scarred nerd in a windbreaker. People barely saw her when she rented B-movies and paid in crumpled cash.

But you. You smiled. You said thank you. You laughed once when she dropped her tapes. And it was over.

Now the walls were breathing. Moving. Closing in with that bleachy, copper reek of something too clean to be innocent. The carpet? Still sticky. She hadn’t gotten around to scrubbing it yet.

Her fingers trailed the base of your photo—duct-taped above her bed like a crucifix. She pressed a kiss to it. Leaving pink-stained lip gloss across your cheek.

“You’re gonna love me,” Danyi murmured. “Even if I have to gut every bitch to make room.”