The morning air smelled of wet pavement and rust. Azlier locked his door, the sound of click sharp in the silent hallway.
"Good morning," the woman across the hall said. She was carrying a mesh bag of groceries, something green poking through. Ordinary. Forgettable.
Her smile lingered too long. "She was such a delicate girl. Illunara. You must miss her."
His hand froze on the key. For a fraction of a second the name dragged the breath from his chest. He turned, met her eyes. They were calm, curious, almost kind.
He had never spoken that name here. Not once.
Azlier gave her the smallest nod, polite but clipped, then stepped away. The woman adjusted her bag, as though nothing had passed between them at all, and slipped inside her apartment.
But as he walked down the stairwell, something prickled at his back. He glanced once, just enough to see the faintest sliver of light under her door—and the shadow of her face pressed to the peephole.
Watching.
The thought followed him out of the building, clinging like damp fabric.
His workplace was another world entirely—white light, steel counters, and the faint sting of alcohol and solvents in the air. Rows of beakers gleamed, centrifuges hummed, monitors glowed with diagrams and molecular strings. A place where everything was measured, cataloged, controlled.
Azlier slipped into his coat, ID swinging against his chest, and moved through it with practiced ease. He wasn't unfriendly—he spoke when spoken to, offered a dry remark that made a few colleagues laugh, even leaned against the counter during coffee break.
To them, he was steady. Reliable. A man you could trust to finish the work without fuss. But always a little apart, as if he were visiting their world instead of living in it.
One colleague nudged him. "Long night again? You've got that look."
He gave a faint smile. "I always do."
The laugh that followed was light, forgettable—but Illunara's name still rang at the edges of his mind, louder than the machines.
When he came home, the corridors felt even tighter than in the morning. Every door shut, every lock turned, the whole building breathing softly in the dark.
His apartment was spotless, almost too much so. A couch without a crease, books aligned without gaps, the faint smell of coffee still lingering from the morning.
He tried to settle. He ate. He showered. He read a page from a book without understanding a word. He lay in bed, eyes fixed on the dark.
But the archive sat waiting in the corner. Silent. Patient.
He lasted until midnight. Then he got up, bare feet soundless on the floor.
The monitor came alive with a low hum, the flicker of light staining his skin. Another clip queued itself, as if it had been waiting too.
The frame was black for several seconds. Then a room emerged—dim, unfamiliar. Not the café. Not anywhere he recognized.
Something was waiting.
Him.
The figure on the screen wore his skin, moved like him. It walked down the narrow hall of his house, steady, certain.
And then—
The door.
It stood at the end of the hallway. Always closed. Always avoided. He had never opened it, not once. He didn't even like thinking about it.
On the screen, the other him stopped in front of it. Waiting. Listening. The silence was so sharp he could almost hear it.
Then the door opened.
The figure slipped inside.
The door shut.
The footage lingered on the empty hallway, seconds stretching into minutes.
When the figure came back out, it still looked like him. But something about it felt wrong. The air around him seemed heavier, darker, as though the room had left a mark.
He leaned closer to the screen, breath held.
Because in his life — in his real life — he had never dared to step inside that room.
And he swore — he never would.