Grace squints, eyes narrowing in disbelief. Her skin prickles with a creeping sense of dread. She abruptly stands and strides toward the window, yanking the curtain aside.
Darkness greets her.
Just the quiet city night.
She's on the twenty-third floor—too high for anyone to see her from the ground. And there's no other apartment facing her window. Nothing but shadow and glass and sky.
Still, she can't shake the feeling.
That cold, crawling sensation. Like someone is watching.
Like he's watching.
"Are you talking about...?" she starts, but trails off before saying the name.
She refuses to give it to him—this stranger. This voice.
But the man answers anyway, like he hears the name in her silence.
"Yes. Julian Lenter," he says, with a quiet, chilling certainty. "I'm talking about him. Don't meet him ever again."
There's something restrained in his voice now. Not rage.
But regret. Or maybe something darker.
"And not just him," he adds, each word deliberate. "Any guy. Don't see any guy. Do you get it?"
Grace is flustered. And annoyed.
Who does this guy think he is?
Telling her not to see people? Ordering her around like he owns her?
Does he… have a crush on me or something?
The thought sends a bitter chill down her spine. This is just like those stalker cases she's seen on the news—an anonymous creep, obsessively possessive, controlling from the shadows.
Still, her instincts warn her: don't provoke him. Not yet.
She takes a breath, steadying her voice. "All right. I get it," she says carefully. "I just want to understand… Who are you really? If you can tell me who you are, maybe we can have some kind of interaction."
She doesn't mean a word of it. It's bait. A calm voice masking a calculated trap. If she can draw out even a hint of identity, she might be able to report him, trace him, get this over with.
But what comes next stops her cold.
"I'm interacting with you almost every day," the man says.
His voice, suddenly closer—intimate in a way that feels all wrong. "So with that being said… good night, Grace Silver."
Click.
The line dies.
Grace stares at the screen. The call has ended. The room is dead silent except for the thudding of her heart.
"…You're interacting with me almost every day?" she whispers to herself.
The words echo in her mind like a riddle.
She should feel terrified. Violated. Watched. But—strangely—she doesn't shiver this time.
Instead, a flicker of something else stirs within her.
Courage.
He says he's close. Watching. Interacting. That means he's not some distant ghost. Not just a voice behind glass. He's near.
And if he's near... maybe she can find him.
"There aren't a whole lot of people who interact with me almost every day… other than the…" Grace pauses, eyes narrowing. "Classmates."
The word lingers in the air like a clue she hadn't considered before.
She immediately unlocks her phone and opens the app, fingers moving with urgency as she taps her way to the classmates list. Her eyes scan the screen quickly, searching for the unfamiliar number—hoping for a match, some name, any clue. But nothing. No one on the list matches the number that just called her.
A quiet unease creeps in.
Not giving up, she switches to her browser and enters the number into the search bar. The screen loads. Her heart beats a little faster.
Nothing. No results. Not a trace. It's as if the number doesn't exist.
Her brows knit together.
Could it be a fake number? she wonders. Probably... The thought lingers in her mind, unsettling and persistent.
She stares at the digits on her screen, the silence around her growing heavier by the second.
That's when the front door creaks open.
She jumps, spinning around with a gasp.
It's her mom, stepping inside with a tired sigh, dropping her bag gently by the door.
"You're still awake?" her mom asks, her voice weary from a long day at work.
"Yeah, Mom…" Grace replies, her voice softer now, as she watches her mother disappear into the master bedroom.
For a moment, Grace considers following her—to tell her everything. The call. The voice. The name.
But her feet stay rooted to the floor.
She knows what will happen if she does. Her mom will panic, lose sleep, maybe even report it before Grace has a chance to figure it out.
No, she tells herself. This could just be a prank from one of my classmates. A bad one, yeah—but a prank all the same.
She turns away from the hallway, murmuring under her breath, trying to convince herself.
"Even if it's not a prank, I can find out who it is. Probably someone in my major courses—Monday, Wednesday, Friday—or maybe from that elective class on Tuesday and Thursday."
She enters her room and gently closes the door behind her.
"It's not gonna be that hard," she whispers, more to herself than to God. "Let's not worry too much."
In the stillness of her bedroom, Grace crawls under her blankets and places her phone beside her on the bed. She taps play on her playlist—soft, slow piano melodies drift into the room, wrapping the silence with something gentle.
She closes her eyes.
"Please… please protect me, Father," she whispers, her voice low but steady. A prayer not just for peace—but for courage.
Wednesday morning.
Grace arrives early—intentionally so. The hallway is quiet, too quiet for a university building. As she approaches the lecture room for her major course, her hand hesitates for just a second on the door handle before she pushes it open.
It's exactly 8:00 a.m.
She steps inside, her footsteps echoing faintly in the empty room. Rows of desks stretch out under the pale morning light that filters through tall windows.
Of course no one's here yet, she thinks.
She walks to the very back row and sits down, her bag thumping softly against the floor. She wants the distance—wants the vantage point.
She just has this feeling.
Some strange, intuitive pull that if she watches closely enough today… if she really looks at her classmates… she'll recognize the voice from last night. The man on the phone.
That's when the door opens again.
She flinches, instinctively tightening her grip on her bag strap.
"Good morning," the girl says casually, stepping inside with a large tumbler in one hand, wearing gray leggings and a hoodie that nearly swallows her frame.
"Hi," Grace replies with a small, polite wave.
The girl heads toward the front row, completely at ease.
What was her name again? Mila?
Grace tries to remember, recalling how Professor Candice had called on her during a past lecture.
She's a woman… so not her. But then again, Grace leans back in her chair, what if someone used voice modulation tech?
The thought is ridiculous. But is it really? After what happened last night, nothing feels too far-fetched anymore.
Still, something in her gut tells her it isn't Mila.
No. Not her.
Grace exhales and mutters under her breath, trying to shake off the spiraling suspicion. "Okay… let's not take this too seriously. Maybe."
She opens her laptop and navigates to her novel file. The familiar sight of her words brings a flicker of calm.
She types quietly, the rhythm of the keys matching the calm murmur of her thoughts.
Her novel—the one born from the dream—is nearly caught up now.
It's strange how clearly she remembers every scene, every word exchanged in that otherworldly world her mind once conjured. A world that came to her night after night like chapters being whispered from a place she couldn't name.
But now, the dreams have stopped.
Grace pauses, her fingers resting on the keyboard, the cursor blinking at the end of the last paragraph.
I kind of miss it, she admits to herself. The dream.
She gives a small smirk, shaking her head.
It's silly… how I cry every time I wake up from it, and now here I am, wishing it would come back. Just so I can know what happens next.
A soft click breaks the silence.
The door opens again.
Grace instinctively lifts her gaze.
Her breath catches slightly.
"Frank…" she murmurs under it.
He steps into the room without looking around, moving in that slow, almost invisible rhythm he always has.
Frank. A familiar name, a familiar face.
They were in the same master's major course two years ago. Most of their classmates have long since graduated, but somehow Frank still lingers—like a book someone left halfway read on a dusty shelf.
She'd seen him again after her own one-year break from the program, and at some point, quietly wondered if he had taken a similar detour.
But they've never really talked.
Not beyond the occasional shared silence during group work, or passing glances when finding a seat.
He wears those thin, round glasses that look like they belong in another century. A constellation of freckles dots his cheeks, and as always, he's in a flannel shirt. He looks tired—but not fragile. Studious, but never withdrawn.
Just... there.
And yet, Grace has noticed, now that she thinks back, he's looked at her before.
Not just casually.
Longer than necessary.
Across the classroom, through crowded lecture halls. Always when he thought she wasn't looking.
Her heart does a small, nervous skip.
Could it be…?
She watches him as he makes his way to the middle row.
Then—he looks up.
Their eyes meet.
There's a pause, thick and soundless.
Neither of them blinks.
It's Grace who breaks the stare first.
She clears her throat lightly and says, "Hey, Frank."
The moment the words leave her lips, she feels a flush rise beneath her skin.
I just said his name. We've never said each other's names out loud before. What am I doing?
But she keeps her expression calm, unreadable.
Frank doesn't respond at first. He just stares—too intently. Then, finally, he gives a slow nod. No smile. No words.
And quietly, he settles into a seat three rows ahead of her. Grace exhales silently, leaning back in her chair.
Soon after, the lecture room gradually fills with the hum of footsteps, voices, and chairs scraping against the linoleum floor. The once-quiet space becomes a familiar buzz of morning energy.
As expected, Harry drops into the seat next to Grace in the back row.
"Oh, you got the back seat for this major course too?" he says, opening his laptop with a smirk. "I thought you liked sitting in the front rows for major courses."
Grace doesn't look at him. Her eyes remain fixed on the screen, though the cursor hasn't moved for several minutes.
"Well, I had to," she murmurs.
"You had to?" Harry raises a brow. "What do you mean?"
"I'm…" She hesitates, the word investigating flashing in her mind like a red light. She glances sideways at Harry—briefly, quickly.
No… it can't be. But still… What if?