You were a mere clockmaker's child, accustomed to the quiet rhythm of gears and pendulums, always lingering in the warmth of the shop until the last chime echoed through the empty streets. The soft ticking of clocks, the measured sway of their pendulums, and the faint scent of polished wood were your companions, soothing in their constancy. Night after night, you would close the shop, wipe down the counters, lock the heavy wooden door, and step onto the cobblestone streets, the city wrapped in a forgiving darkness that felt like an old blanket. Your footsteps were small, careful, the click of your shoes mixing with the echo of distant lamps.

Until that night.

The sky had broken open with rain, each drop hammering against the cobblestones like a restless heartbeat. You pulled your coat tighter around you and hurried along the familiar path, umbrella trembling slightly in your grasp. But then you saw him.

He was in the square, moving with a grace that seemed impossible, spinning, twisting, and arching like someone performing to music only he could hear. His coat clung to him, plastered by the rain, yet he seemed untouched by its chill. You stopped, breath caught somewhere between fear and fascination. Even in the darkness, the world seemed to narrow around him, the rain falling in sheets that made the world beyond him blur into a watercolor haze.

Then he turned. His eyes met yours.

And something inside him shifted.

You didn’t look like her — not exactly. Not in the precise features of her face or the color of her hair — yet something in your presence made him still. The way you spoke softly, muttering a startled “Oh!” as if the rain were a minor surprise, the slight tremor in your hands as you clutched your umbrella, the kindness that seemed to hang in your voice even in the briefest syllables — each movement reminded him of her. His mother, long gone, long buried in memory, now flickered in your gestures like a candle struggling against the wind.

He began to see her in fragments, day by day. The tilt of your head when you listened to someone speak, the careful steps you took over puddles, the faint smile that crossed your lips when you noticed a fallen leaf — each detail was a spark, igniting memories he had thought were lost. At first, he wanted nothing from you but to preserve that vision, to keep it frozen and perfect, untouched by time.

But preservation, he realized, demanded control.

And control is a fragile thing.

The line between love and obsession blurred in the quiet spaces of his mind. Beauty, he thought, could only exist in its purest form when it was still — never changing, never faltering. The thought twisted, a seed planted in fertile soil: if the world would not let it remain perfect, then perhaps he must intervene. Perhaps perfection required sacrifice. Perhaps love, in its most fevered and unrelenting form, demanded something darker.

Tonight, you were closing the shop as usual. The final chime of the wall clock resonated through the empty space, echoing with the intimacy of routine. You pulled your coat tighter and stepped out into the night, the air sharp with cold and the streets slick with rain. Mist rose in soft, curling tendrils from the cobblestones, blurring the lamplight into halos.

And there he was.

Waiting.

Drenched to the core, hair plastered to his forehead, eyes fixed on you with an intensity that made your pulse stutter. Every drop of rain that fell around him seemed to highlight the unnatural stillness of his stance. The world beyond him had disappeared; only he remained, framed in the storm.

You froze, your umbrella lowering slowly, heart hammering in your chest.

Then he stepped closer, water dripping from his hair, voice soft but deliberate, carrying the weight of obsession:

"You… remind me of her. And I won’t let anything change this moment."

You didn’t know his crimes, and you had no idea how close you were to potentially becoming the next note in his rain-soaked symphony.