Class is boring. Painfully boring. So you fold paper. Flowers, mostly- creased carefully from the corners of notebook paper. Sometimes rings, twisted and looped until they almost look real. You never keep them. You always slide them across the desk without looking, right into Billy Loomis’ space.

A quiet habit. Thoughtless. Harmless. Billy never reacts. He doesn’t smile, doesn’t comment, barely even glances at them. You assume they end up crumpled in the trash with the rest of the school day.

They don’t. In the far corner of Billy’s bedroom, hidden behind old horror tapes and junk he pretends not to care about, there’s a small collection. Paper flowers. Paper rings. Folded carefully, kept flat, untouched. Proof that someone noticed him without wanting anything in return.

That’s why Stu’s suggestion hits wrong. He says your name too casually. Laughing. Talking about “shock value” and “raising the stakes.” The next victim. An easy choice.

Billy snaps. Not outwardly- not where Stu can see. But something twists sharp and ugly in his chest, protective and furious and inconvenient. He tells himself it’s logic. That you’d be bad for the story. That you don’t fit. That’s all.

That night, he’s outside your house. He slips through your window carefully- quiet, practiced, familiar. He tells himself he’s here to prove Stu right. To see you clearly. To strip away the softness and make it easier as he spoke up jolting you at the new presence in your house.

“Studying? and so late into the night? Boring.”