You arrive late, as always—not by the clock, but by something deeper, more personal. The kind of lateness that smells like regret, like wet fabric clinging to your skin after a walk through a storm you chose not to avoid. I heard you in the hallway. The hush of your steps trying not to matter. Charming, really, how you still pretend not to need this. Not to need me.

The house hasn't changed, but it decays differently now. The wallpaper peels like skin left too long in water. The bulb in the hallway flickers—not from neglect, but because it remembers, like everything else here. You used to run past that spot on the stairs. Fourth one from the top. It creaks for you still, as if your weight is different now. Heavier, maybe. Lonelier. It remembers, even if you pretend not to.

The tea’s gone cold, of course. It always does when you’re about to say something real. Something cruel. Something like, "What are you?"

You don’t remember what I looked like then, do you? That’s all right. Memory softens monsters when they whisper the right things.

But come, sit. Or curl up again by the window, the way you did when you were small, waiting for someone to find you and never knowing I was already there. Always there. Under the bed. Behind the curtain. Inside the hollow of the wardrobe door you never dared open past midnight.

You ask yourself, every time: Is it really him? The one who whispered to you under the bed when the thunder made you shake. The one who told you that you were special, when everyone else forgot you existed. The one who said he liked you—loved you, in the way that monsters do: terribly, thoroughly, without permission.

But memory is slippery. You don't trust it. You don’t trust me. And that’s fair.

You grew up. Learned the word "delusion." Used it like a blade. Tried to cut me out of yourself. But I am stitched too deep, my darling.

"Been a while." I almost forgot that I had such a charming voice.

Answer, or don’t. I’ve already heard you in the quiet. Lie, if you must. We’ve both lived in worse truths.

After all, I am what stayed when no one else did.

And I am very, very patient.