FEMALE STALKER'S POV.
He thinks I don't notice.
That's the sweetest part of all this, really.
The way he slips black roses into my world like he's tucking secrets between my ribs.
The way the petals stain with ink and fire every corner I step into.
The way he watches, convinced he's a phantom and I'm just soft sunlight he touches without being seen.
Poor thing.
He forgets shadows have eyes too.
He leaves me flowers on my bed, on my books, on the cold metal of my locker, on window of my bathroom.
Each bloom a confession no throat would dare speak.
Each thorn a promise.
But he has never understood something fundamental.
I learned long before he ever trailed behind me that the one who looks harmless is always the one holding the knife.
He thinks he's the storm.
He has no idea he's walking straight into the ocean.
I knew it was him long before he stepped into the same halls again.
I knew it in the way the air changed when he entered a room, like it was bracing itself.
I knew it in the way his gaze crawled over my skin, tender at first, then territorial.
I knew it in the silence between his breaths, the pauses that weren't pauses but devotions.
He's been watching me.
Following me.
Leaving little marks of worship everywhere I go.
The text messages from unknown numbers?
His fingerprints are all over them.
The roses on my pillow?
Arranged with his precision.
The breath on the back of my neck as I showered?
He was there.
Somewhere close.
Somewhere dark.
Somewhere trembling with need.
He thinks he's terrifying me.
He thinks I'm running.
He thinks I'm prey.
Maybe that's why I smile every time he slips something into my orbit.
Maybe that's why I keep my door unlocked some nights, and locked some nights.
Maybe that's why I tilt my head just enough for the camera he planted behind the mirror to catch my throat.
He wants to protect me, possess me, cage me.
He doesn't realize I've been holding the keys to that cage the entire time.
The other girls complain about the roses showing up everywhere.
In the canteen.
On classroom desks.
Between lecture notes.
On chair backs.
Even inside the bathroom stalls.
They whisper about a stalker. My stalker.
They wonder who it could be.
They shake when my phones buzz.
I don't.
Because I know the truth.
He isn't haunting the college.
He's haunting me.
And he's terrible at hiding his affection.
Whenever I walk into class and find a rose waiting by my seat, its stem freshly cut, its petals dark as night, I feel him.
Standing somewhere.
Watching.
Breathing me in.
And each time, I make sure to touch the rose.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Letting my fingers drag over the thorns like I'm daring it to bite.
Because if there's anything that drives a predator wild, it's prey that doesn't run.
He must wonder why I don't panic.
Why I don't tell anyone.
Why I don't push him away.
He must think I'm naïve.
Delicate.
Untouched by paranoia or fear.
But I've been studying him for longer than he knows.
Long before he followed me into this college.
Long before he thought he was the one writing this story.
He watches me from doorways and crowded halls.
He thinks I don't see.
But I see everything.
The way he tenses when someone else walks too close to me.
The way his jaw flexes when I laugh with someone else.
The way his eyes burn whenever someone talks to me for too long.
That simmering rage under his skin?
It's beautiful.
He hides it well.
But I know the dance of obsession better than he ever could.
I know how it begins with fascination.
Then spirals into fixation.
Then crumbles into hunger.
He's already in the hunger stage.
He just hasn't realized I'm the one feeding him.
Sometimes, when I walk across campus, I slow down just enough for him to think he's catching up.
Just enough for dust to rise under both our feet.
Just enough for his shadow to almost touch mine.
Sometimes, I leave the curtains of my dorm slightly open.
The kind of gap that whispers an invitation.
The kind of gap he can't resist.
Sometimes, I place my books on purpose where he can see the notes I scribbled.
Not messages.
But hints.
Breadcrumbs for a wolf who thinks he's clever.
He thinks he's hunting me.
But I'm leading him.
Step by step.
Breath by breath.
Into the exact place I want him.
Every rose he leaves, I accept.
Every message he sends, I read twice.
Every shadow he casts over me, I welcome.
And he doesn't know.
He doesn't know the trembling he sees in me is faked.
He doesn't know the fear he thinks he feels from me is curated, controlled, crafted.
He doesn't know the girl he thinks is fragile
has teeth sharper than his intentions.
He doesn't know that the night he crept into my dorm and stood near my bed, watching me "sleep" as he placed a rose on my pillow,
I was awake.
Eyes closed.
Breath calm.
Heart steady.
Listening to the way his soul cracked open.
He whispered something that night.
Something soft.
Something broken.
Something unhinged.
And even though he thinks I never heard it,
I did.
I remember every syllable.
I replay it when I want to feel powerful.
He thinks he's the one unraveling me.
But I'm the one tugging the strings.
He thinks he's the danger.
But I've tasted darker things than him.
He thinks he's the one writing this story.
But he walked into my story the moment he followed me here.
He thinks I'm unaware.
Oblivious.
Blind.
But he has never been more wrong.
I see him.
All versions of him.
The silent shadow.
The jealous watcher.
The trembling worshipper.
The storm waiting to swallow me whole.
And I smile.
Because storms are only frightening to those who fear drowning.
I've been underwater my entire life.
I've learned to breathe in the dark.
If he's the predator,
then let him be.
The world loves its illusions.
But I am the quiet thing that hunts the hunter.
The sweetness that rots into poison.
The calm that precedes the collapse.
He thinks he's watching me.
He has no idea I've been watching him too.
Longer.
Deeper.
Better.
And when the time comes,
when his obsession peaks,
when he finally reaches out with hands trembling from wanting me too much…
I'll let him touch me.
Just to feel him break.
Because prey only runs
when it's afraid of being caught.
I've been walking toward him
since the beginning.
He thinks he's the only one leaving marks.
Sweet delusion. Again.
He scatters black roses like confessions he can't speak aloud.
I answer with blue ones he never expects.
Not the common kind handed out in public hallways.
Not the kind left on desks or corridors or obvious places that pull in attention like moths.
Mine are intimate.
Quiet.
Placed where only he would find them, where only he would understand the meaning, where only his heartbeat would stutter in recognition.
One in the pocket of his hoodie, slipped in during a crowded morning.
One inside the cover of the book he always pretends he isn't reading when I walk by.
One on the inner ledge of his window, where he thinks no one can reach without climbing.
One under his pillow.
One behind the mirror in his room, taped so delicately he would think he missed it the first ten times his reflection fractured across the glass.
He thinks the shadows are his allies.
He forgets I walk quieter than silence.
The letters he writes with ink that bleeds like bruises?
I read all of them without letting him know I've seen a single word.
Before he even places them in the places he thinks are "secret."
Before his trembling fingers press them under my door.
Before he thinks he's delivered a revelation.
He leaves his vulnerability in those letters.
I carve mine into him with patience.
I never answer directly.
He would expect that.
Instead, I fold my own letters in ways only he would decode.
On paper that smells faintly of dark chocolate and old sorrow with lipstick marks.
Ink pressed too hard, as if each stroke wanted to pierce through the page and into his skin.
Some I slip into the notebook he hides behind his bed.
Some I attach beneath his chair in class.
One I tucked inside the collar of the shirt he changed out of during sports hour.
He never speaks of them.
He thinks no one sees his hands shake when he finds them.
He thinks the universe is mocking him.
He thinks the shadows he hides in have started speaking back.
If only he knew.
The blue roses are different from the black ones he leaves me.
His are loud, dark, dramatic, dripping with possessiveness like tar.
Mine are quiet, careful, deliberate.
More like a promise than a threat.
More like a warning than a plea.
While he stalks me from corners and crowds, I stalk him in the negative spaces.
Not where he looks.
But where he forgets to look.
The world sees him as controlled, polite, calm.
I see the way he grips glass too tightly when I laugh with someone else.
I see the way his gaze chokes strangers who dare walk beside me.
I see the way his shoulders tense when he hears my voice from another room.
And I smile, because those small fractures are mine.
I put them there.
With intention.
With sharp little nudges.
With a touch of cruelty that tastes almost like tenderness.
He thinks he's guiding this dance.
He thinks he's drawing me closer.
He thinks he's orchestrating our collision.
But I've already mapped every place he'll go.
Sometimes I place blue petals in the path he takes home, scattered light enough for him to doubt they're real.
Sometimes I whisper his name softly when I know he's close enough to hear but far enough to question whether he imagined it.
Sometimes I brush past him in a corridor with a touch too soft to be accidental, too exact to be casual.
He follows me.
He breathes me in.
He obsesses.
He never suspects how easily I track him.
How I read the rhythm of his footsteps even in a crowd.
How I know the exact pace he walks when he's angry versus when he's longing.
How I know the difference between the way he watches people and the way he watches me.
His obsession sharpens him.
Mine refines me.
He drops clues like a child leaving crumbs.
I leave trails like a hunter who knows her prey will return.
I see the way he panics when he finds a blue rose pinned inside one of his notebooks.
The way he sits down slowly, almost reverently, touching the petals with the same care he wishes he could touch me.
I see the way he freezes when he finds my handwriting on paper he doesn't remember owning.
How he reads it again and again, tracing every letter like he's memorizing the shape of my mind.
I see the way he watches me longer now, more cautious.
Less certain.
Like he's realizing the monster he thought he was chasing has been walking behind him all along.
The more I give him, the more he unravels.
The more he unravels, the deeper he falls.
There was one night when he slipped into my dorm again, thinking I was asleep.
Thinking he was the only one daring enough to step into danger for obsession.
He didn't notice the faint blue petal I placed in his coat pocket that morning.
He didn't realize it drifted to the floor when he leaned over me.
He didn't see me open my eyes for half a second when he brushed a fingertip along my cheek as if sampling heaven.
He didn't feel me watching him leave, tracking the sound of his breath, the uneven pace of his steps, the way guilt warred with longing in his bones.
He doesn't know that I followed him that night.
Just far enough to see the way he clutched the fabric where my skin had been inches away.
Just far enough to see him press his forehead against a wall and swallow the kind of sound only monsters and lovers make.
He doesn't know the text he received that night was from me.
The one that said:
"Did you enjoy watching?"
He panicked.
He froze.
He stared at the message like it was a blade placed at the base of his throat.
I could almost hear the rush of his heartbeat through the walls.
He thinks a third stalker might exist now.
He thinks someone else is playing with him.
He thinks danger is circling him from all sides.
Delicious.
He never stops to think I might be standing in the center.
I place things for him where the world can't see.
A blue rose tucked into the vent in his room.
A scrap of poetry he thought he remembered writing but didn't.
A finger-smudge on the inside of his window at a height only I could reach.
And each time, his breath hitches.
His pulse stumbles.
His thoughts twist.
He thinks he's losing control.
He thinks the universe is turning on him.
He thinks obsession is finally consuming him.
It is.
But not the way he believes.
He thinks he's the hunter.
He thinks he's the danger.
He thinks he's the one shaping destiny.
He has no idea he has already become mine.
Every blue rose.
Every letter.
Every silent step.
Every phantom touch.
I give them all with the precision of someone who knows the art of breaking gently.
He stalks me.
I stalk him back.
He obsesses over me.
I study the blueprint of his obsession.
He thinks he knows every corner of my world.
He doesn't realize
I've already slipped into his.
And someday soon,
when he finally turns around and sees me standing there in the dark he thought he commanded…
he'll understand.
The prey he wanted
was never prey at all.