It began with a thread of hair, Elara noticed it in the photo. The blurred figure who took the picture of her and Axle had cast a shadow on the glass behind them. A sliver of face. A short fringe of tightly coiled hair. It narrowed her suspects. From there, it was whispers. Timetables. A friend of a friend who mentioned a girl named Tife, second year. A loner with a sharp tongue and a reputation for recording things she shouldn't.
She followed her three days in a row—Library, Lecture hall, and even the back steps of the dining hall. She watched how she lingered near others, how she laughed too loudly at jokes no one told, how she typed quickly on a battered old laptop with stickers on the back. Tife. It had to be her.
Thursday night, she waited outside the student hostel until the breeze chilled her bones. She texted her from a fake number.
"Meet me by the arts complex. I know what you did."
She showed up twenty minutes late, alone, backpack slung over one shoulder.
"Who the hell—?" She began, but she stepped out of the shadows.
"I know it was you," Elara said. "The photos. The notes. Why?"
Tife smirked. "So it's true, then. You really don't remember."
"What do you want?" Her voice cracked. "Money?"
"I want the truth. You killed her, didn't you?"
Her hand twitched. "I don't know. I was drunk."
Elara pulled out her phone. "You were screaming at her. 'Don't touch me.' That's what you said. She grabbed you, and you pushed her. She stumbled."
Tife froze.
So it was her.
"It was self-defense," Elara whispered.
"No one cares. They'll eat you alive," Tife said, raising her phone. "But maybe I'm feeling generous."
"Delete it."
"No."
"Delete it!"
Elara lunged.
They struggled.
Tife tried to shove her off—not hard—but she slipped. Her elbow collided with Tife's jaw. Her hand gripped hers. They both stumbled backward toward the concrete stairs behind the arts block and then it happened.
Tife lost her balance and cracked her head on the low rail. Slumped. Motionless.
Blood pooled like spilled ink.
"Tife?"
Elara nudged her.
No response.
"Tife—please."
But she was gone. The panic was surgical. Elara dragged the body off the path under the cover of the trees, took her phone, her bag, her watch. She wiped down the rail with her sleeve. Cleaned her own prints with the inside hem of her shirt. Then she dumped Tife's things in different dumpsters around campus. Burned the SIM card in an old tin in the girls' dorm backyard.
She didn't cry, she didn't shake, she just moved. Fast, cold and efficient. Morning, Tife was gone and the campus moved on.
A week later, the posters came up.
MISSING STUDENT: TIFE JOHNSON
Last seen Thursday evening around the student hostel.
Photos of her face papered the walls, students whispered. Campus security did nothing. Elara stared at the posters and felt nothing. No guilt, no horror. Just a deep, gnawing stillness. Like something inside her had been ripped out, and the space left behind was too quiet.
That night, she sat alone in the bathroom, staring at her reflection under flickering fluorescent light. She looked like her mother but she felt like her father. All this time, she had hated him for manipulating people, for forcing them into corners and ruining lives without lifting a hand. But now? She had become him.
She didn't need to stab Tife. She didn't need to push Tife, she just cornered her.
She didn't kill her to silence her, she killed her because she was afraid. Because fear made her ruthless. Cold and calculating just like the man she'd sworn never to become.
She looked at her reflection and whispered: "Who am I becoming?"
The mirror had no answer, only her hollow eyes staring back.