FEMALE STALKERS POV.
I listen more than I breathe.
Every echo in this place belongs to me from long before anyone knows : the shuffle of shoes in the hallway, the hushed arguments behind dorm doors, the brittle panic in voices pretending everything is normal. They think they're running an investigation. They think they're uncovering clues. They think they're getting closer.
They don't understand something simple.
Something delicious.
I am not hiding.
I am watching.
Their panic curls around me like perfume. The girl with the trembling hands… riya. she checks the cameras every morning now. As if pixels could ever catch me. Or him. As if glass lenses could see what shadows don't want revealed. She rewinds footage until her fingers ache, searching for the figure that keeps slipping between frames like a glitch in the world's code.
I've been in that hallway a hundred times.
His dorm room.
I know the precise angle where the camera blinks.
Where it flickers.
Where the blind spot yawns like an open throat.
Like he knows mine.
Let them search.
The boy beside her kabir he tries harder than she does. Matching handwriting with suspects, mumbling theories under his breath like prayers. He thinks logic and rules will save him. He thinks they'll lead him to the truth.
He doesn't know the truth isn't something you find.
The truth is something that chooses you.
I chose them long before they ever looked at me.
Their paranoia is a sweet, slow bloom. It looks good on them. The way they flinch at every new black rose left on my table. Every blue rose left in arjun's locker . The way they check their phones twice, thrice, scared of the next message. As if massage would ever come that neve rmeant for them. The way they whisper about the bruises on my lips, on my neck, on my wrist like they're pieces of some cosmic puzzle.
If only they knew.
If only they dared to say it out loud.
That the girl and boy they fear is the same girl and boy sleeping right beside them.
Breathing the same air.
Smiling at the same jokes.
Pretending to be delicate and shaken and confused.
But fear makes people stupid.
They keep looking outward, never inward. They suspect the bullies. The nerds. Professors. Ex-lovers. Anyone who gives them even one wrong vibe.
It's adorable.
I know everything they say when I'm not there.
I know every theory they scribble.
Every list of suspects they cross off in frustration.
Every time they think they're getting closer.
Closer to what?
To whom?
I read their notes before they write them.
I trace the fingerprints they miss.
I shift evidence a quarter-inch just to watch confusion spread across their faces.
I am everywhere they fear.
And everywhere they forget to look.
And then… there's him.
Arjun.
He watches me differently. Quietly. Not with suspicion, but with understanding. A softness that feels sharpened at the edges, like he's peeling away the layers of the world just to see the creature inside me. He sees the shadows around me the way one sees a familiar constellation.
As if he's known them forever.
Maybe he is.
When his eyes linger on the bruises, he pretends concern. Pretends worry. Like he is not the one who gave those to me. He Pretends he wants to protect me. And everyone believes it because he plays gentle so well.
But I know the truth.
He's not scared of what I am.
He's fascinated.
And fascination is the laziest form of devotion.
I watch him unravel in two directions—one part of him tender, trying to soothe the monster in me, the other part whispering secrets to the dark like it's an old friend. There's a reason our shadows overlap so neatly. A reason we keep disappearing at the same time. A reason my heartbeat slows every time his footsteps approach.
He knows the language of obsession.
He speaks it like a lover.
He understands the pull of violence like he's tasted it before.
He doesn't fear the storm in me.
He leans closer to hear it.
They suspect us. Oh, not openly. Not yet. But I see the way their eyes flick to our matching marks. The tattoos half-hidden beneath fabric. The places ink kisses skin. The places where pain presses memory. They saw something on the cameras, and they think they're smart for keeping it to themselves.
Cute, really.
Secrets are useless when you don't know what they mean.
Let them keep watching.
Let them keep doubting.
Let them keep building theories with shaky hands.
They think they're dealing with a stalker in the dark.
They don't know they're the ones being herded like sheep.
There is a rhythm to obsession. A pulse. A dance.
And I am letting them follow it step by trembling step.
Because I want them to feel it.
The shift.
The change.
The moment the world cracks open.
And it did crack today—just a little—when the news anchor spoke with a trembling voice, trying to hide her terror behind professional calm.
Another body found.
Another pattern.
Another signature.
Another message written in blood only I can read.
The serial killer in the city is escalating.
Everyone else in the room paled.
Tensed.
Shivered.
I didn't.
I smiled.
Not a soft smile.
Not a human smile.
Something quieter.
Something knowing.
Something that tasted like truth settling into place.
He looked at me then.
And his expression didn't falter.
Not even for a breath.
As if he expected me to smile.
As if he understood why.
As if something inside him bowed in recognition.
That glint in his eyes wasn't fear.
It was acknowledgment.
Two predators smelling the same blood on the wind.
And the other two standing beside us?
They saw it.
They didn't understand it.
But they felt it.
The air went tight.
Unspoken questions clung to the walls.
I could almost hear their hearts shaking.
Good.
Let the cracks widen.
Let suspicion grow teeth.
Let their fear bloom like something black and beautiful.
The hunt is only beginning.
And prey always runs hardest when they think they're close to the truth.
They think I'm breaking apart.
That the bruises, the nightmares, the sleepless circles under my eyes are symptoms of fear.
They hover closer now, whispering to each other when they think I'm not listening. They exchange looks they can't hide, the kind that smell of dread and suspicion mixed together like a cocktail meant to steady shaking hands.
They're scared of what they don't understand.
They're terrified of what they're starting to suspect.
But him…
He looks at me like I'm becoming something he's been long waiting for.
There's no fear in his gaze. Only worship.
A calm, reverent hunger.
Like he's kneeling inside his own mind and calling it devotion.
But he doesn't say it.
Of course he doesn't.
He lets the others panic while he watches me unravel and re-weave myself into something far sharper.
They're starting to notice the disappearances.
The hours I vanish without explanation.
The excuses I give that don't make sense if examined too closely.
I feed them just enough truth to keep suspicion from turning into confrontation.
Just enough lies to keep them dizzy.
They think I'm going somewhere dangerous.
Somewhere foolish.
Maybe to a secret lover.
Maybe to run from the stalker they invented in their heads.
I let them believe it.
I let their imaginations spiral.
Because the real answer would make them choke.
I disappear to follow a killer.
Not the one they fear.
A different one.
An older one.
A creature whose violence isn't poetic or intimate like mine.
Someone methodical, cold, clean in their execution.
The serial killer leaving corpses like offerings across the city.
The story the news gasps about.
The monster they're terrified of.
I trail them like a ghost.
I walk behind their footprints, watch the pattern of their choices, trace the rhythm of their murders like a composer memorizing a symphony.
The killer.
He kills in circles.
He repeats numbers.
He revisits alleys as if they're shrines.
He thinks he is unknowable.
But I know the shape of his mind already.
I know how he selects.
How he stalks.
How he toys with his victims by letting them think they're safe two minutes before they die.
He fascinates me.
Not because he is powerful.
But because he is predictable.
Predictable monsters bore me eventually.
But predictable monsters are useful.
I watch him because I write him.
They think my nights are restless because I'm fragile.
Because I'm breaking under pressure.
But the truth is simpler:
I am working.
My fingers bleed ink.
My mind spins violence into narrative.
I breathe in murder like oxygen and exhale stories the world calls "fiction."
Not one of them knows that the name they mention with reverence online…
the anonymous bestselling crime author who never reveals their face…
the one who writes killers so convincingly scholars debate whether they're ex-police, ex-military, or something worse…
That author is me.
I learned long ago that readers crave authenticity.
And authenticity requires proximity.
So I shadow killers.
I study them.
I learn their heartbeat.
I collect details the world refuses to see.
Their habits.
Their sins.
The way their victims scream in silence before it becomes sound.
And then I go home, wipe my shoes clean, and type.
The world calls it genius.
Art.
Talent.
Gift.
They don't know the cost.
They don't know the weight of carrying stories carved from bone.
But he… Arjun.
the boy whose gaze melts and sharpens every time I breathe…
He knows something.
Not everything.
Not the truth.
But he's close.
Too close.
He tracks my disappearances with quiet fascination.
He notices how my pulse slows after certain nights.
How my eyes light up when new murders hit the news.
How my hands tremble—not with fear, but anticipation—when patterns reveal themselves.
He's starting to map me.
The girl who pretends to be prey.
The girl who is anything but.
And the others?
They are beginning to sense the cracks in the picture they painted of me.
Especially now that they have started investigating behind our backs.
They search my bags.
My drawers.
My notebooks.
They analyze my handwriting.
Match it with threats.
Match it with roses.
They think they're subtle.
They're not.
Their fear leaves fingerprints everywhere.
And his disappearance times?
He thinks I haven't noticed they align with mine.
That we vanish into separate corners of the city like two predators tracing different kills.
He studies me while I study another killer.
He hunts me while I hunt someone else.
We orbit death in different ways.
Different speeds.
Different hungers.
But our shadows intersect.
They all feel it.
The tension.
The wrongness.
The magnetic pull between two people who should never have met, never have looked at each other the way we do.
And then today… something shifted.
They found something.
In my things.
Papers.
Notes.
Scraps of thoughts I left carelessly.
A fragment of analysis on the killer's pattern.
Not a confession.
Not evidence.
But enough to scare them.
Enough to make their breath stutter.
I saw her. Riya.
The friend who pretends to be brave.
She froze.
Her hand tightened on the paper until it wrinkled like skin under pressure.
Her eyes widened—not at the content, but at the implication.
She understood one thing:
I know more than I should.
She didn't say a word.
She just ran.
Straight to him. Kabir.
The boy who lives by rules and panic.
They locked themselves in a room.
Whispering.
Panicked.
Frightened of what I might be.
Frightened of what I already am.
They think they've uncovered something dangerous.
Something huge.
They're right.
But not in the way they think.
And my smile?
The one I wore when the news announced the latest body?
That smile lingered long after the screen turned black.
Because the pattern is almost complete.
Because I know where the killer will go next.
Because I won't be the only one following him next time.
He will be there, too.
The boy who worships monsters.
And that's when the real story begins.