By the fifth encounter, he stopped pretending it was coincidence.
By the tenth, he stopped pretending it wasn't deliberate.
Elias learned her routines the way some people learned constellations. Slowly. Patiently. Without certainty. He discovered which café she favored on Wednesdays. Which route she walked when she seemed especially tired. The hospital badge she wore, always tucked just out of sight, the lanyard hidden beneath her jacket.
Hospital.
The word sat heavily in his chest.
He told himself he wasn't following her. That would imply pursuit. Desire. Intention.
This was alignment, he reasoned. Adjustment. He simply placed himself where the world already seemed intent on putting him.
Every encounter went into the notebook.
He didn't write her name. He didn't know it.
He wrote impressions instead.
Encounter Seventeen. She laughed on the phone. It surprised me.Encounter Twenty-One. She looks kinder up close.Encounter Thirty. I think she's sad about something that isn't today.
Somewhere along the way, the number became a promise.
One hundred meant something. He wasn't sure what. Completion, maybe. Permission.
If he reached one hundred, then he would speak.
If he reached one hundred, then whatever happened after would be earned.
What he didn't write down, what he refused to articulate even to himself, was the quiet fear pressing in around the edges of every page.
That he might not reach it.
That time might interrupt him mid-sentence.
That love, like everything else lately, would arrive just a little too late.