The morning after was worse.
Nina hadn't slept. Not really. Every time she closed her eyes, the dark cover of the book flashed behind her eyelids, heavy and patient like a closed eye, watching. She had tried to shove it into the closet, burying it beneath a pile of sweaters and a pair of jeans she never wore, but even there she could feel it. The air itself seemed to bend around its presence, heavy with an invisible weight.
All night she tossed beneath the covers, flipping from side to side, pulling the blanket up to her chin, then pushing it off when her skin grew clammy with sweat. Every tick of the clock sounded louder than the last. Every shift in the pipes or creak of the floor made her flinch.
By the time her alarm rang at seven, shrill and insistent, she was already lying on her back staring at the ceiling. Her eyes burned, gritty from exhaustion, her mind buzzing with fragments of sentences she had read in those margins. Her name written in neat ink. Her habits described as though catalogued. Her life, dissected.
She sat up slowly, muscles stiff, and pulled on clothes without looking—jeans, a sweater two sizes too big, socks that didn't match. The fabric clung awkwardly to her damp skin. She shoved her notebooks into her bag, then paused.
The book sat on her desk where she had dropped it in the middle of the night, its black cover glinting faintly in the weak morning light. She didn't want to touch it again. She didn't want to feel the strange coldness of the leather or see her name spelled out in that precise, deliberate script.
But she couldn't leave it behind.
Her hand trembled as she slid it into her bag, tucking it between her laptop and a spiral-bound notebook. The weight dragged at her shoulder instantly.
Outside, the city was already awake. Students hurried across the square with coffees clutched in gloved hands. Trams rattled along their tracks, brakes screeching at every stop. The scent of fresh espresso drifted from the cafés, mingling with the faint, greasy warmth of croissants just pulled from ovens.
The rain had finally stopped, but the streets were still slick, the sky swollen with heavy grey clouds that threatened more. Puddles gleamed like shards of glass, reflecting the buildings in broken pieces.
Everything looked normal. Ordinary.
But Nina couldn't shake the feeling that nothing was ordinary anymore. Every time she turned her head, she half-expected to see someone following. Every face in the crowd blurred into suspicion. The hollow behind her ribs ached with unease.
At the university, the lecture theatre buzzed with chatter. Students laughed over paper cups of coffee, shared greasy pastries, whispered about last night's party. Someone's phone blasted music until it was shushed.
"God, Nina, you look like death." Lara slid into the seat beside her, dropping her bag with a thud. Her eyeliner was sharp as always, her lipstick flawless, her presence as loud and bright as the lecture hall itself. She flipped open a notebook with a flourish. "Did you stay up all night again?"
Nina hesitated. Her fingers tightened on her pen. She wanted to blurt it all out, to pull the book from her bag and shove it into Lara's hands, to demand Tell me this isn't real. But the thought made her stomach knot. What if Lara laughed? What if she thought Nina was paranoid, delusional?
"Yeah," Nina muttered instead, forcing her voice flat. "Seminar paper. Marketing case study."
Lara rolled her eyes, her earrings catching the fluorescent light. "You need to live a little. There's a party on Friday. You're coming, no excuses."
Nina smiled weakly. She tried to focus on the lecture as the professor launched into graphs and statistics, but the words blurred together into meaningless noise. She doodled half-formed shapes in the margin of her notebook, her hand restless.
Halfway through, she noticed something.
A folded slip of paper poked out of the side of her bag.
Her stomach dropped. She hadn't put anything there.
Heart thudding, she eased it out beneath the desk, her fingers clammy. It was small, plain white, folded once. She opened it slowly.
The handwriting was unmistakable. Precise. Neat. The same she had seen covering the book.
Don't chew your pen. You'll ruin your teeth.
Her fingers went cold.
She dropped the note into her lap, staring straight ahead as though her body had turned to stone. The lecturer's voice droned on, unbroken. Around her, students scribbled notes and whispered jokes. No one reacted.
No one saw.
Her pulse roared in her ears.
Who had put it there? When?
She hadn't left her bag unattended. Except—yes. She had. For less than a minute, when she'd gone to the vending machine for coffee before class. A single minute.
Anyone could have done it.
But not anyone. That handwriting—sharp, deliberate—was his. Whoever he was.
By the afternoon, her nerves were frayed to shreds. She couldn't focus. She skipped lunch with Lara, brushing off her friend's questions with a muttered excuse about deadlines. Her stomach twisted with hunger, but food felt impossible.
Instead, she fled to the library.
The tall windows flooded the room with pale light, dust floating in beams like fragile ghosts. Bookshelves rose high around her, muffling sound, swallowing footsteps. The smell of old paper and wood polish pressed close.
She settled at a desk tucked into a far corner, away from the main aisle. Her laptop whirred to life. She tried to lose herself in marketing models, in lines of typed text, in the comfort of something logical. But her eyes kept darting up. Searching.
Every creak of the floorboards made her spine lock.
And then she saw him.
Across the room, at a table near the windows, a man sat. Dark jacket, hood resting loose around his shoulders. His head bent slightly, his face hidden. He wasn't reading. He wasn't typing. He was just… still.
Nina's throat tightened. She tore her eyes away, her fingers tapping the keyboard blindly.
Coincidence. Just another student.
But her skin crawled.
A full minute passed. Her curiosity burned. She risked a glance.
The seat was empty.
Her stomach lurched.
She packed her things quickly, leaving the library before her chest could crush itself with panic.
By the time she reached the tram stop, dusk had unfurled across the sky, turning the city violet and bruised. She hugged her bag to her chest, the book's weight pressing down, inescapable.
The tram screeched up. She boarded and scanned the car instinctively. A mother with a stroller. Two students whispering in Slovenian. An old man gazing out at nothing.
Ordinary.
Still, Nina sat with her back pressed to the wall, her reflection faint in the glass. Her eyes flicked to every movement, every shadow.
Halfway home, the tram slowed at a platform. Condensation fogged the windows, distorting shapes outside.
And then she saw him.
A tall figure. Still. Head tilted slightly. Looking in.
Looking at her.
Her breath caught, the air locking in her lungs.
The doors closed with a clatter. The tram lurched forward.
The figure didn't move.
Back in her apartment, the walls pressed close. She slammed the curtains shut, checked the locks twice, then a third time. Still not enough. The shadows in the corners seemed thicker.
The book thudded onto her desk, heavier than it had any right to be. An accusation in leather and ink.
She didn't want to open it again.
But she couldn't resist.
Her hands shook as she flipped the pages. More notes. New ones. Words she hadn't seen the night before.
You skipped lunch today. You shouldn't starve yourself.
You chose the far corner desk in the library. Clever, but not clever enough.
Her skin prickled.
And then, at the very end, a single line curved neatly in black ink:
Don't be afraid, Nina. I'm the only one keeping you safe.
Her stomach hollowed.
She slammed the book shut, shoved it into the drawer as though burying it might silence it. But the echo of those words burned in her skull.
The apartment creaked. A floorboard groaned.
Nina froze.
The sound hadn't come from above or below. It had come from her own balcony.
Slowly, she turned her head toward the glass door.
The curtains shifted slightly, though the window was shut.
A shadow loomed behind the fabric.
Someone was standing there.
Watching.