The Ritual Continues (Her POV)

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The bouquet lingered on her counter, filling her small apartment with the thick sweetness of lilies and roses.

All day, it followed her. No matter where she went — the bedroom, the kitchen, even the shower — she felt its presence like a second heartbeat.

She told herself not to look out the window, but she couldn’t resist. Each time, she scanned the street below, the snowy sidewalk stretching pale and endless. She never saw anyone, yet she always felt him. The sensation curled tight around her spine: the certainty of being observed, studied, adored in silence.

The years hadn’t dulled it. If anything, the longer it lasted, the sharper it cut. He wasn’t fading. He wasn’t moving on. He was getting closer.

She saw it in the small changes.

The first year, it was just flowers.

The second, she noticed the faint trace of cologne at her door — subtle, but unmistakable.

The third, the bouquets became warmer, fresher, as if he waited until the very last second to set them down.

The fourth, she swore she heard her name once, carried in a whisper down the street at night.

And now, the fifth — when she touched the bouquet, the paper was still damp with melted snow. He had only just been there.

Her pulse raced as she pressed her palm to the door, imagining his back retreating down the stairwell. How close had he been? A floor below? A corner away?

Her friends would call her paranoid. They always did. But paranoia doesn’t leave fresh bouquets at your door.

That night, when she tried to sleep, she couldn’t. The flowers perfumed the room, making the air too heavy to breathe. She tossed beneath her blanket, twisting in the half-light that crept from the window.

And then she saw it.

Movement.

Across the street, in the building opposite hers, one window glowed faintly. A silhouette stood framed in the light — tall, still, deliberate.

Her blood iced over.

She pushed herself up, pressing her forehead to the cold glass of her own window. The figure didn’t move, didn’t shrink away when he was seen. He stood there, as if waiting for her to notice, as if this too were part of the ritual.

Her throat was dry, her lips trembling. She couldn’t make out his face, but she knew. She had always known.

The shadow lingered for an eternity — or perhaps just a minute — before the light went dark, swallowing him whole.

She stayed there, frozen, long after the window across the street became nothing but a blank square of black.

When she finally lay down again, one thought pulsed in her mind, louder than her heartbeat:

He wasn’t hiding anymore.

He was letting her know.

And in the dark, she felt two things at once — a tremor of fear and a flicker of something she hated to admit. She had become a part of his world as much as he had invaded hers. The knowledge burned in her chest: she wasn’t just being watched, she was being claimed. And for the first time, she felt the edges of inevitability pressing in — that he would not stop, and that some quiet, shameful part of her already knew she would not escape him.

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