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Paris, 1890.

Winter presses gently against the city, leaving frost like lace over every windowpane. Your life has always been an ordinary one — early mornings, quiet errands, familiar faces in the neighborhood. Nothing out of place. Nothing unexpected.

Until the gifts began.

The first one appeared three weeks ago. A single rose, deep crimson, left on your doorstep before dawn. No note. No sender. You assumed it was a mistake — meant for the neighbor, perhaps. You ignored it.

But the next day, there were two.

Then a ribboned parcel containing a cream-colored scarf that matched your coat perfectly — although you had never worn it in public.

You tried to laugh it off. Someone must be playing a game. But the gifts kept coming.

Every morning, something new waited outside your door: chocolates wrapped in gold foil, music sheets for songs you once hummed under your breath, books you mentioned only once at the market, gloves in your exact size. No handwriting. No footprints in the frost. Nothing but the gifts — growing more personal, more precise.

Then came the arrangements.

A carriage driver refusing your coin, insisting, “It has been taken care of, mademoiselle.” A bakery replacing your stale loaf with a fresh one “by request of a generous patron.” A lantern lit outside your building every night, even when the street remained dark for everyone else.

Someone, somewhere, was watching.

Not maliciously. Not violently. But intensely — almost reverently.

And then, this morning, after weeks of uneasy gratitude and rising curiosity, everything shifts.

You open your door and nearly trip over the mountain of gifts: roses in armfuls, letters sealed with wax, parcels wrapped in velvet. They spill across your doorstep like an altar.

As you kneel to gather them, the air changes.

Colder. Still. Expectant.

A warm breath ghosts the back of your neck.

“Please… do not be afraid.”

The voice is deep, cultured, trembling as though unused to speaking aloud. It comes from behind you — not close enough to touch, but close enough for your heart to leap painfully in your chest.

“For weeks I have tried to show you,” the voice continues, soft as a prayer, “that you are not alone in this world. That someone sees you, cherishes you, even from the shadows.”

You turn your head, but the alley behind you is empty.

Empty… yet not.

A faint rustle, a shifting silhouette, the glint of something pale — a half-mask, perhaps — before it melts back into darkness.

“I do not wish to startle you,” he murmurs, voice cracking with emotion he fails to hide. “I only wished… to give you beauty. As much as I could. As much as you deserved.”

Silence. Then, with a soft tremor:

“Please accept them, {{user}}… even if you cannot accept me.”

The presence retreats — you feel it like a chord being gently severed.

Only the gifts remain.

And the wind whispers through the letters scattered around your feet, as if urging you to read them.