Chapter 3 Chapter 3

The city felt different the next morning, as though someone had turned the colour down on everything.

Rain had stopped, yet water still clung to every surface—tiny mirrors that caught the grey sky and threw it back in fragments. Buses hissed through puddles, trams clanked over the bridge, and somewhere a church bell tried to sound cheerful and failed.

Nina moved through it all like a ghost.

She hadn’t eaten. She hadn’t really slept. Every time she closed her eyes, she heard the knocks again, soft and measured, and saw the white rose gleaming against the window. She had thrown it away before dawn, but the faint trace of its scent lingered in the room, sweet and unreal.

At the university, she went through the motions: lectures, notes, coffee, conversation. People spoke around her, but their words slid off her mind like rain on glass. Every reflection made her flinch—the windows of the lecture hall, the polished steel of a vending machine, the puddle outside the faculty doors. Somewhere in each, she thought she saw movement that didn’t belong.

By noon, she couldn’t stand it anymore.

She skipped her afternoon seminar and fled to the library.

The library was her refuge—three floors of old paper and dust, the smell of ink and silence heavy enough to muffle thought. She chose a corner table by the tall window, unpacked her laptop, and tried to convince herself that studying meant safety.

Outside, clouds bruised the sky. A single tram passed on the bridge, its sound echoing up through the streets like a sigh.

She opened her presentation. Marketing strategies. Consumer psychology. Words that used to mean something. Now they looked like a foreign language.

Her eyes blurred.

When she blinked, a folded note rested on the keyboard.

She stared at it.

There hadn’t been one a second ago.

Her pulse spiked. She looked left, right—students hunched over textbooks, headphones in, absorbed. The nearest girl was typing so fast the keys clicked like rain. No one could have reached her desk without her noticing.

Her fingers trembled as she unfolded the paper.

Only three words, written in the same neat, deliberate hand as the book.

Look up, Nina.

Her body obeyed before her mind could stop it.

Across the street, beyond the window’s reflection, a man stood beneath the awning of the closed café. Dark coat. Umbrella tilted against his shoulder. Too far to see his face clearly, yet she knew.

The posture. The stillness. The way the world seemed to move around him instead of through him.

Her breath caught in her throat.

He wasn’t watching her with open intensity—he didn’t need to. His gaze was a pressure she could feel even through glass and distance, a silent claim that no one else seemed to notice. People passed between them, umbrellas flashing like blades of colour, but his focus never shifted.

Nina crumpled the note in her fist and forced herself to stand. The chair scraped the floor, loud in the hush.

No one looked up.

She shoved her things into her bag, almost dropping the laptop, and pushed through the double doors into the damp air.

When she reached the street, the spot beneath the awning was empty.

Only the faint ring of water on stone marked where he’d stood.

Rain returned that evening, thin and restless. It tapped the windows like fingers searching for a way in.

Nina kept every light on.

The apartment looked smaller under full brightness—too many corners, too few exits. She tried to distract herself: cooking, cleaning, sorting old lecture notes. But her eyes kept drifting to the desk where the black book lay, its cover catching the lamplight like an eye half-open.

She told herself not to touch it.

She touched it anyway.

The leather felt warm, almost alive, beneath her fingers. When she opened it, the pages fell to a new entry, written in that same dark ink.

You shouldn’t run.

You look beautiful when you stop.

Nina’s throat closed. She flipped to the next page. Blank. Another. Blank. Until near the back—fresh ink again.

I’ll keep you safe.

Her vision swam. She slammed the book shut and shoved it into the drawer, slamming it hard enough to rattle the frame.

Silence filled the room. Then her phone vibrated.

Unknown number.

Her stomach twisted.

You left the café too quickly.

It wasn’t safe there.

Her fingers hovered over the screen. Who are you? she wanted to type, but fear stopped her.

Instead, she switched the phone to silent and buried it beneath a stack of notebooks.

Minutes crawled by. Then an hour. The rain deepened, whispering against the windows like a lullaby she couldn’t trust.

When the clock struck midnight, she finally moved to the window and looked down at the street.

Nothing.

No shadows. No figures.

Only the empty bridge glistening under the streetlamps.

She exhaled, long and shaky, and turned away—

—and froze.

On the inside of the glass, just above the latch, a single fingerprint glimmered in the condensation.

Too high for her to have left it.

Too recent to have faded.

Her heart lurched. She backed away slowly, gaze locked on that print as if it might move. The room seemed to tilt, the air thickening.

Then her phone vibrated again, muffled beneath the papers.

She didn’t pick it up.

But the message preview flashed across the screen:

Don’t be afraid. You were sleeping when I left.

Nina’s knees gave way. She sank to the floor, hands pressed to her mouth to keep from crying out.

The book drawer was closed. The windows locked. The door bolted.

And still, he’d been here.

Morning brought pale light and a fragile silence. The fingerprint was gone.

Nina didn’t know whether she’d wiped it away herself in some half-dream or if he had.

She skipped class, claiming a migraine, and wandered the river paths instead. The air smelled of damp leaves and diesel. Trams rattled by, each one sending ripples through her reflection on the water.

She reached the old market square, where vendors were packing up crates of wilted flowers and bruised fruit. The sound of a violin drifted from somewhere under the arcades—a sad, thin tune that wound itself around her thoughts.

For a moment, she almost felt invisible again. Almost safe.

Then a voice spoke behind her, low and calm.

“You shouldn’t walk alone this way.”

Her heart stopped.

She turned slowly.

A man stood a few metres away, dressed in dark clothes that fit too well to be accidental. His hair was damp from the mist, his expression unreadable. Not him—not exactly—but something in the stillness, the measured tone, echoed him.

“I’m sorry?” she managed.

He smiled faintly. “You dropped this.”

He held out a folded umbrella.

Her umbrella.

She hadn’t even realised she’d forgotten it that morning.

When she reached for it, his fingers brushed hers—cool, deliberate, too sure of themselves.

A spark shot up her arm, not warmth exactly, but recognition. The kind that makes instinct and logic pull in opposite directions.

“Thank you,” she said, voice unsteady.

He studied her for a moment longer than politeness allowed. Then: “Be careful, Nina.”

Her breath caught. “How do you—”

But he was already walking away, melting into the crowd before she could finish.

That night, she found the umbrella propped neatly against her door again.

And tied around its handle was a strip of black ribbon.

Printed on the satin, in small silver letters, was a single word:

CAGE.

Nina stared at it until the hallway light flickered and died, plunging her into darkness.