I can see you

Chapter 7

(ROSY'S POV)

I didn't go back to the studio or the café or the bookstore. For three days, I stayed inside my apartment with the blinds drawn, the air heavy and unmoving. I told myself I was resting. Recovering. But that wasn't it. I was trying to remember who I was-and failing because the more I tried to pin down my identity, the more it slipped through my fingers like fog.

That girl's voice echoed in my mind constantly. "She said she had a sister once or maybe she said something about losing a sibling or something." She'd looked so sure. So unnerved like she wasn't lying-but also like she wasn't sure what she'd seen.

Is something like this really possible ? Or was I just inventing a twin to explain my fractured memories? Or... was I the leftover? The echo of someone else?

I spent hours in front of the mirror, staring. Tracing the curve of my cheek. Memorizing the lines around my eyes. Trying to anchor myself to the face that stared back. But every time, something felt off. Like the mirror knew a truth it wouldn't say out loud.

I called the orphanage again but no one picked up. I searched online for old records. The building had been shut down two years ago, just after I escaped. The report said: negligence, unfit living conditions, abuse allegations and trafficking.

Things I already knew. Things I had lived. But no documents. No files. Nothing about me or about any other kids. It was as if we had never existed.

By the fourth day, I broke and went back to the bookstore. Not because I thought Edward would be there but because I needed to know that something in this world still followed a pattern.

He wasn't there. Not at his usual time. Not twenty-seven minutes in. Not even a trace of him. I waited a full hour. Sipping coffee I didn't taste. Staring through the glass. Telling myself I didn't care. But I did. For me it meant that the sun has refused to rise.

That night, I opened the sketchbook. I wasn't looking for comfort anymore. I wasn't even sure what I was looking for. Proof, maybe. That he'd seen me. That I was real. Lately, I've started questioning everything.
What if I imagined it all?
What if Edward was never real?

The way he had looked at me, the way he had spoke-sometimes it feels like a dream I held onto too tightly. Too perfect, too precise, like a story I told myself to survive something I couldn't bear.

But then I look at this notebook. The pages are full of him-his sketches. Proof that he saw me too. There's also the number he gave me, etched into my phone screen. I didn't write it. I couldn't have.

Could I?

If he was just in my head, why do I remember the way his hand felt when they touched mine? Why do I still hear his voice when I close my eyes?

I met him. I know I did.
Didn't I?

The page with the girl was still there. Knees drawn up. Hair covering her face. She looked like she was hiding from the world-or from herself. I touched the drawing like it might speak back.

I tried calling him again the next morning. Not because I expected an answer but because I needed to hear the sound of rejection. To feel something.

It didn't ring. It just straight to voicemail. I said nothing this time. Just held the phone to my ear until the silence turned into static. Then I whispered, "You lied." And hung up. A liar didn't deserve me.

That evening at the grocery store, I saw someone who looked like the girl from the dance studio. I followed her through the cereal aisle. The fluorescent lights flickered above us. My footsteps matched hers, just far enough behind to pretend I wasn't stalking. She turned and I realized-it wasn't her. Just a stranger.

But the look she gave me? Fear. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to laugh or cry.

---

I began dreaming of fire again but it wasn't the house that burned this time. It was me.
My hands glowed red in the flames, fingers blistering. But I didn't scream. I watched it happen, calmly like I deserved it.

The next Friday, I returned to the bookstore one last time. I told myself I was done afterward. That I needed closure. But when I walked in, I didn't find Edward.

I found the sketchbook. The exact same one. Same cover. Same wear on the spine.
Sitting in plain view on a shelf like someone had left it there for me. I picked it up. Flipped through the pages but they were all blank. All of them.

I ran home. Pulled my own copy out from beneath the mattress. It was still full. Still mine and still real. I stared between the two sketchbooks and tried to understand what had happened.

A decoy? A message? A punishment?

I didn't know. But I felt it-this subtle shift. Like I was no longer the one watching. Someone had started watching me.

That night, I tried to write it all down. Everything I could remember. But the memories felt like glass-sharp, broken, hard to hold.

I remembered standing in the orphanage hallway, my palms slick with sweat as I waited outside the director's door. I remembered the sound of him locking it behind me. I remembered running away in the rain with whatever few things I could gather. And waking up in a train station the next day-cold, lost, and clueless.

Sometimes I caught myself whispering things to the drawing in the sketchbook. Just to see if she would blink. Last night I whispered, "Tell me who I am." But she just stared back. Like she was waiting for me to figure it out myself.

I stopped going out after that. Stopped calling and stopped waiting. Told myself I was done chasing someone who never wanted to be caught. But I still sat by the window sometimes. Sketchbook in my lap and my phone in hand. Like maybe-just maybe-he would come find me first.

He never did. Or maybe he already had. I told myself I wasn't obsessed. I told myself I was healing. But the truth? I wasn't watching him anymore. I was waiting. For him I might be a stranger in passing but for me he was my only anchor.

And someday soon...
he's going to give me a reason to stop.