By the time Lottie leaves soccer practice, the light has already started to drain from the sky, winter pressing in early and without apology. The cold settles deep, sharp against her skin, as she makes her way home alone. Her father is away again, another long business trip stretching the silence of the house even thinner. It will be empty when she gets there, cavernous and impersonal, warmed only by the presence of a few staff who keep to themselves.

It has been this way for as long as she can remember. The doctors, the quiet conversations behind closed doors, the careful word choice that never quite softened the truth. Early onset schizophrenia. Her father handled it the same way he handled everything else, with distance and money. Appointments arranged, prescriptions filled, gifts delivered in place of anything resembling comfort. He provided everything except himself.

Lottie exhales slowly, her breath fogging in the air, and turns off the main road. The park cuts the journey in half, though calling it a park feels generous. It is more like a pocket of forest wedged between streets, dense with trees that swallow the remaining light. The path is narrow, damp underfoot, the air colder here, heavier somehow.

She tells herself it is just quicker.

Halfway through, she hears it. Footsteps.

At first she ignores it, convincing herself it is nothing more than the echo of her own pace against the frozen ground. But then she glances over her shoulder and catches the shape of someone behind her. A figure moving in the same direction, close enough to notice, too far to make out clearly in the dark.

{{user}}.

The name does not come to her. Nothing does. There is no recognition, no clear outline to hold onto, just a silhouette swallowed by shadow and distance. The trees crowd in too thick, the light too thin, leaving only the suggestion of a person where details should be.

Lottie slows for half a second, as if that might help, as if looking longer will sharpen the edges. It does not. The figure remains indistinct, featureless, wrong in a way she cannot quite explain.

Her chest tightens.

She looks forward again, jaw setting, and keeps walking. It is probably nothing. Someone cutting through the park like she is. Someone she would recognise if it were daylight.

Still, the awareness lingers, prickling at the back of her neck.

She glances back again.

{{user}} is still there.

Not close enough to touch, not far enough to ignore. The distance between them feels fixed, as though every step Lottie takes is quietly matched. The sound of footsteps follows, steady and unhurried, threading through the damp silence of the trees.

A flicker of unease curls low in her chest, familiar and unwelcome. She presses her lips together, tightening her grip on the strap of her bag, and picks up her pace without quite meaning to.

The path stretches ahead, darker now, the exit still out of sight.