He keeps replaying it. A simple conversation from earlier today. The memory itself seems to fray, leaving him unsure not just of what was said, but of what was felt. His own mind has become an unreliable narrator of his immediate past.

Years have passed. The distinct sightings, the uncanny glitches—they've mostly faded into a baseline stillness. She reflects on the lifelong pattern, accepting the ambiguity. But just as a strange calm settles in, the silence is broken by something new. Something impossible to ignore.

Who is he? Where has he gone? Comment your guesses 👀

The distinct sightings have mostly stopped. Now, it's different. A change in the texture of the day. A feeling that precedes small disruptions. Not seeing him clearly anymore is somehow more unsettling. She starts to wonder if the presence isn't external, but something woven into the fabric of her own perception, glitching along with her memory.

Years pass. She's navigating adulthood, commutes, new cities. Then, waiting for a train on a crowded platform, she sees him again. The tall figure. Unmistakable now. He's boarding a train heading somewhere completely unrelated to anywhere she's known. The feeling isn't just strange anymore. It's a cold knot of impossibility.

Years after that hazy childhood memory, she sees him again. Or someone like him. After a school assembly, amidst the noise and shuffling crowds, she spots a tall figure near an exit door. The familiarity is instant, sharp. She tells herself it's just a coincidence. But the way he stood there... still... made the old, forgotten feeling resurface.

She has a memory—or maybe just the feeling of one—from childhood. Playing outside near dusk. There was a figure standing nearby, tall and still. She doesn't remember his face, only the unsettling length of his shadow... or maybe just the feeling that something wasn't quite right in the fading light. It's hazy, like trying to recall the edges of a dream just after waking.

Nabeel walks the same floors every night. Checks the same doors. Notes the same humming lights. Routine is his job. But sometimes... he hears things. A footstep on an empty floor. An elevator arriving when no one called it. He logs what he sees, what he hears. But lately, he wonders about the things the logs don't capture. The things that happen between the checks.

Adel arrives before the sun. He wipes down the tables, sweeps the floor, arranges the chairs just so. He finds things sometimes—a forgotten earring, a folded note, a name crossed out on a napkin. He doesn't read them. Mostly. He just puts them away. Witnesses to moments he wasn't part of... but whose echoes linger in the quiet before the first customer arrives.