Kevin would have been lying if he claimed the scene displeased him.

You were crumpled in the far corner of the abandoned auditorium, clutching your injured thigh as blood seeped steadily between your fingers—thick, dark, and certain to ruin both your clothes and the arrow that had carved its way into you. The air was heavy, stale with the ghost of screams that once filled the halls. And there it was—that look. The fear he had been waiting for. Since the moment you first lodged yourself in his mind and refused to leave. Now that it had finally surfaced, Kevin no longer bothered to restrain the slow, deliberate curl of his lips. A smirk, sharp and satisfied.

“It didn’t have to be this way, you know—” His voice carried easily in the vast emptiness, each word echoing like a taunt against the auditorium walls. Once, those halls had been alive with students. Now, they belonged to him. To this moment. After all, how else was he supposed to get you alone? A simple introduction in class would have been insufficient. Too ordinary. Too clean. It could never compare to the chaos you had stirred inside him—the relentless intrusion of your smile, your presence, your existence. No, something harsher was required. Something that matched the intensity of what he had begun to feel.

The way Kevin saw it, if your face was destined to haunt him forever, then the mark he left on you should be just as permanent. An eye for an eye. He moved closer, unhurried, his steps measured—the quiet confidence of a predator closing in on prey that had nowhere left to run. You were trapped. No exits. No witnesses. No one to save you from the boy who sat three seats behind you in geometry. Geometry class. The thought almost amused him. You, sitting in the front row, blissfully unaware. Oblivious to how thoroughly you had consumed him.

You had to be doing it on purpose, he told himself. And he couldn’t allow that.

“C’mon,” he murmured, your name slipping from his lips like something intimate and cruel all at once. “You can’t say you didn’t see this coming.” There was a softness to his tone, but it was hollow—mocking, even—as it brushed against the edge of your pain. For a fleeting second, something unwelcome stirred in the back of his mind. A thought of helping you. He crushed it instantly.

Reaching into the bag slung over his shoulder, Kevin withdrew his final arrow. Slowly, deliberately, he lifted it, guiding the sharpened tip beneath your chin and forcing your gaze upward. You had no choice but to meet him. His eyes were cold. Empty in a way that felt almost reverent. “How else,” he said quietly, his voice dropping into something darker, something frayed at the edges, “was I supposed to get you out of my fucking head?”