The morning sun filtered softly through the curtains, casting long, golden lines across Purvi's room. For the first time in what felt like ages, she didn't wake up with the weight of sorrow pressing on her chest. Instead, there was something lighter inside her—like the first breath after surfacing from deep water.
It had been a week since her coffee with Karan.
One week since she'd laughed—genuinely laughed—without guilt trailing behind her smile like a shadow of the past. She didn't know what to call what was growing between them, and she didn't need to. For once, she was letting things unfold without expectation.
She slipped out of bed, her window still fogged from the rain the night before. The weather had shifted again—midway between the last whispers of monsoon and the heavy hush of approaching winter. She reached for her notebook on the windowsill, pausing to glance across the street.
The house opposite hers had always been empty. A grey two-storey structure with peeling paint and shuttered windows. It had been that way for years. But something about it this morning felt... off.
A curtain twitched.
Her heart paused.
She blinked, waiting to see movement again, but the window remained still—drawn tightly shut like it had always been. Maybe she imagined it. Maybe it was the wind.
Shaking off the unease, she turned back to her notebook, flipping open to the page where she'd last written. The words had been flowing lately. Healing had a rhythm—slow, fragile, but steady.
But just as her pen touched the paper, she noticed something that didn't belong.
Tucked between the pages of her notebook—was a folded piece of paper.
She hadn't put it there.
Her breath hitched as she opened it.
"Some windows are meant to stay closed."
Her hand trembled. The handwriting was unfamiliar—sharp and precise, like someone had written it with too much control. A chill ran down her spine. She scanned the room. The door was still locked. The windows, too.
Was someone in her room? Had they been?
She stood, slowly backing away from the desk, heart pounding. Her mind scrambled for explanations. A prank? A coincidence?
Or was it... something more?
Later that day, she met Karan again—this time at the community library where they were organizing a book drive. He was stacking novels into neat piles when he spotted her.
"Hey!" he called out, brushing dust off his jeans. "You look... distracted. Everything okay?"
Purvi hesitated. She wanted to tell him. About the note. The movement in the window. The strange feeling that had begun following her like a cold wind. But part of her held back. She didn't want to sound unhinged. Not now, not after she'd finally started to feel like herself again.
"I didn't sleep well," she lied.
Karan nodded, accepting the answer without pressing. "I get it. Sometimes the past shows up when you least expect it."
Purvi smiled, grateful for his understanding. Still, the note weighed heavy in her pocket.
That night, Purvi lay in bed staring at the ceiling. The house was quiet, save for the occasional creak of wood expanding in the cool air. Her phone buzzed once—an Instagram notification. She turned it over, ignoring it.
She had stopped checking Ayaan's profile.
Stopped trying to decode his life from pixels and captions. It hadn't been easy. Letting go never is. But she was learning, day by day, that peace didn't come from knowing the why. It came from choosing to move forward anyway.
She closed her eyes.
Then came the sound.
A soft scrape.
Like fingernails brushing glass.
Her eyes flew open.
She sat up, pulse thudding in her ears. The sound came again—delicate, like something testing the strength of silence.
She turned toward the window, every muscle tense.
Nothing.
She slipped out of bed and tiptoed across the room. The glass was foggy, but beneath it, she saw it—clear as day.
A smudge.
A handprint.
On the outside.
Her breath caught. She backed away quickly, heart threatening to burst from her chest. She wanted to scream, to wake her parents, to run. But her legs wouldn't move.
And then, just as suddenly—it was gone.
She blinked. No smudge. No sound. Just her own reflection staring back at her.
Was it real?
The next morning, Purvi barely touched her breakfast. Her mother noticed, but said nothing. Her father had already left for work.
When she stepped outside for school, she instinctively glanced at the grey house across the street. The curtains were drawn, as always. But something was different.
The front gate was ajar.
Hadn't it been locked for years?
She clutched her bag tighter and hurried down the lane.
Days passed.
Each one blending into the next, a blur of normal routines layered with quiet paranoia. Every time she passed a window, she felt watched. Every time she opened her notebook, she half-expected another note.
She told herself she was imagining things.
Until one evening, while reorganizing her desk drawer, she found it.
A photograph.
Old. Faded. Torn at the edges.
It was of her. Sitting by the window. Writing in her notebook.
Taken from outside.
Her blood ran cold.
The photo wasn't recent. Maybe two or three weeks old, based on what she was wearing. But she hadn't taken it. And she hadn't shared that moment with anyone.
Someone had been watching her. Closely. Quietly.
She turned the photo over.
On the back was another message.
"You looked happiest when you were alone."
She dropped the picture, stumbling backward, her breath short and shallow.
This wasn't a coincidence.
This wasn't a dream.
Someone was inside her life. Watching. Waiting.
The next day, she confided in Karan.
He listened quietly as she spoke, his expression growing darker with every word.
"You need to tell someone," he said. "Your parents. The police."
"And say what?" she whispered. "That I'm being stalked by a ghost? That someone is leaving creepy notes in my diary and watching me from a house that's been empty for years?"
"If it's empty, how are they watching you from there?"
She froze.
That question had haunted her too.
"I don't know," she said.
Karan placed a hand on her shoulder. "Then we'll find out."
That evening, just before sunset, Karan met her outside the grey house.
The air was heavy, thick with the scent of earth and silence. The gate creaked as they pushed it open. The house loomed like a relic from another time—quiet, forgotten, but undeniably present.
The front door was unlocked.
They stepped inside.
The floors were covered in dust, the air stale. Cobwebs clung to every corner. There were no signs of life—no furniture, no belongings. Just emptiness.
Until they reached the back room.
It was small, windowless, and colder than the rest of the house.
And in the center of the floor—was a blanket. A notebook. A camera.
Purvi's notebook.
She ran to it, flipping through the pages.
Notes. Drawings. Photos.
Of her.
Each page was filled with sketches—of her sitting by the window, walking to school, talking on the phone. Every moment she thought was private—had been observed.
Karan picked up the camera and scrolled through the images. His jaw clenched.
"This person… they've been here for months."
Purvi's knees buckled. She sat on the floor, heart shattering.
"Why?" she whispered. "Why me?"
There was no answer.
Only the silence of a room that had seen too much.
As they left the house, the sky broke open with rain.
Cold, relentless, cleansing.
They didn't speak.
They didn't need to.
But that night, as Purvi sat by her own window, a new kind of weight settled in her chest. She wasn't just a girl with a story anymore.
She was a girl someone had chosen to watch.
And she had no idea why.
Just before midnight, her phone buzzed.
A private message from an unknown account.
"Why did you stop writing about me?"
Purvi stared at the screen.
The girl by the window was no longer just an observer.
She was the observer.