The bell above the door gave a tired little ring as Adrian pushed it open.The convenience store on the corner of Lena Hartman's street was a narrow rectangle of buzzing refrigerators and overlit shelves. It smelled faintly of old bread, cheap detergent, and the thin, artificial citrus of floor cleaner that never quite masked the underlying dust.Outside, the city's traffic murmured past in waves. Inside, time felt slower, marked not by clocks but by the soft hum of fluorescent tubes and the steady drip of the coffee machine in the back.It was just after noon.A mother with a stroller was paying at the register, counting coins with the quick, embarrassed fingers of someone trying not to hold up the line. A teenage boy in a school uniform loitered near the snacks aisle, pretending to be interested in a bag of chips while sneaking glances at his phone.Adrian stepped aside, letting the mother pass him on her way out. The stroller's wheel bumped his shoe. She apologized without meeting his eyes.He looked past her, to the man behind the counter.Late forties, maybe early fifties. Thin, sallow face. Dark hair combed straight back, streaked with grey. A stoop in his shoulders that didn't come from age but from hours spent leaning over the same spot.Name tag: M. Aziz.Aziz handed the woman her change, smiled mechanically, and said, "Have a good day," in a voice that sounded like it had said the same sentence ten thousand times.As the doorbell chimed again and the mother left, Adrian walked slowly along the first aisle, not toward the counter yet. He let his eyes slide over the shelves—instant noodles, canned soup, rows of energy drinks in electric-colored cans.He wasn't looking for food.He was looking for patterns.The coffee section was half-empty, the cheaper brands gone, the expensive ones untouched. A small cardboard stand near the register advertised an energy drink with a name that sounded like a threat: NOCTURNE. Its tagline read: For when sleep is not an option.Adrian picked up one of the cans.The metal was cold. The design was loud—blues and blacks and silver lightning. The sugar content on the back label was enough to keep a heart racing out of sheer self-defense."Those sell well at night," a voice said behind him.Adrian turned, the can still in his hand.Aziz had left the counter and come halfway down the aisle, wiping his hands on a small towel. Up close, the lines on his face were deeper. There was a faint bruise-colored shadow under his eyes, the kind that came from years, not nights, of too little rest.His gaze flicked once to Adrian's coat, his shoes, his posture. Then to the energy drink. Then back up."Students," Aziz added, by way of explanation. "Gamers. Taxi drivers. People who think they can trick their bodies into forgetting what time it is."His tone wasn't judgmental. Just tired."I imagine you see many of those," Adrian said.Aziz shrugged one shoulder. "In this city? Everyone is tired of something."Their eyes met for the first time properly then.For a moment, Adrian didn't speak. He just held the man's gaze, letting the silence stretch.Most people rushed to fill silence with words, with noise. It made them easy to read. The ones who could hold it, who didn't flinch or fidget, were more interesting.Aziz didn't look away. His jaw set slightly, as if bracing himself without knowing why."You are not here for drinks," he said at last. "You are with the police."It wasn't a question.Adrian's lips moved a fraction."A consultant," he said. "My name is Adrian Cole.""I didn't see a badge," Aziz replied."I don't carry one."Aziz's eyes flicked once toward the door, toward the street, then back."Then you must be important," he said. There was no sarcasm. Just a flat statement.Adrian put the can back on the shelf."How long have you worked here, Mr. Aziz?" he asked."Too long," Aziz answered. "Ten years at this location. Twenty with the company. Night shift mostly. I sleep when other people are awake."He said it like a joke he'd told too often."You live nearby?" Adrian asked."Upstairs," Aziz said, jerking his chin toward the ceiling. "My cousin owns the building. Cheap rent. Close to work. No commute—no life."A faint trace of resentment bled through the last two words.Adrian filed it away."You know most of the people in this street, then," he said. "Faces. Habits. Who comes at what time."Aziz exhaled slowly through his nose."You want to ask about the woman," he said. "The one in 3B."Adrian didn't pretend otherwise."Yes," he said.Aziz's gaze moved past him, toward the refrigerated section, as if he could see through the solid walls and across the street to the old building."She was a regular," he said quietly. "They told me not to talk to anyone. Officers. But you say you are with them…""I am," Adrian said. "They want me to understand what happened to her. To do that, I need to understand how she lived."Aziz's mouth tightened."She didn't live," he said. "She endured."He turned and began to walk back toward the counter.Adrian followed, unhurried."What do you mean?" he asked.Aziz set the towel down, leaned both hands on the counter, and stared for a moment at a spot on the surface that had been worn smoother than the rest."She came mostly at night," he said. "Always alone. Always the same things." He ticked them off on his fingers. "Coffee. Sometimes three, four cans. Those." He jerked his head toward the NOCTURNE display. "Cigarettes. Sometimes bread, instant soup. No snacks. No alcohol. No lottery tickets."That last detail seemed to matter to him somehow."How long?" Adrian asked. "How many nights?"Aziz gave him a bitter half-smile."You think I count?" he said. "I don't need to. I feel the ones who come all the time. They press themselves into the walls." He paused. "She has been coming like that for… more than two years. Before that, sometimes days, sometimes nights. Then only nights."Two years. Close to the three in the sentence on the wall."She talked?" Adrian asked. "To you. To anyone."Aziz's fingers curled against the countertop."Not much," he said. "She was polite. Always said 'good evening' and 'thank you' even at three in the morning. She apologized when she forgot her loyalty card once. Can you imagine? Apologizing to this place?" He gestured around them. "As if it is a church.""Did she ever mention not being able to sleep?" Adrian pressed gently.Aziz's eyes darkened, his focus drawing inward."One night," he said slowly. "Maybe… a year ago. She came in looking worse than usual. Hair not brushed. Eyes…" He lifted his hand, hovered it next to his own face, as if measuring invisible bruises under them. "Red. She bought coffee and sat at the small table there." He nodded toward a wobbly plastic table near the window, half-covered in old flyers."I don't like people sitting too long," he added. "They scare away customers. But she looked—" He stopped, frowned, searching for a word. "Empty. So I let her sit.""What happened?" Adrian asked."She stared at nothing for a long time," Aziz said. "Then she said, very quietly: 'Do you ever feel like your head is full of wasps?'" He tried to imitate her voice, but the English words came out heavy with his own accent."And what did you say?" Adrian asked."I said no," Aziz answered bluntly. "Because I don't. My head is full of bills and tiredness, not insects. I asked if she wanted water. She shook her head and said, 'I just want to sleep. I forgot how.'" His gaze drifted back to the window. "Then she laughed. But it was not… real.""You didn't ask more?" Adrian asked.Aziz's mouth flattened."I am not a doctor. I am not a friend. I am a man who sells salty snacks and sugar drinks at three in the morning. If I ask people too many questions, they stop coming."Adrian inclined his head slightly. It was an honest answer."Did anyone ever come in with her?" he asked. "Walk her here. Pick her up. Stand outside.""No," Aziz said immediately. Then he hesitated. "Except… maybe."Adrian waited.Aziz rubbed his fingers together, as if trying to recall something he'd held and misplaced."Three weeks ago?" he said. "Maybe four. Time is… fog." He grimaced. "She came in around… two, I think. I remember because the news channel was playing the same report twice. She bought coffee and cigarettes. Usual. But when she left, she did not cross the street right away."He pointed toward the window."She stood there," he said. "On the corner. And someone was waiting.""What did he look like?" Adrian asked.Aziz shook his head. "Not close enough. Hood up. Hands in pockets. Could have been anyone. But…" He tapped the counter lightly. "He did something strange.""What?" Adrian asked."He didn't look at his phone," Aziz said. "Not once. He just stood there, very still, like someone who had been there for a long time and could stand there for much longer." He looked at Adrian. "People who wait for buses or taxis, they pace, they check the time, they complain. He did not move.""Did she seem afraid?" Adrian asked. "Hesitant?"Aziz thought about it."No," he said. "She didn't seem… anything. She walked to him like you walk to a chair you sit in every day. Something familiar, not exciting.""And then?" Adrian prompted."And then they turned the corner," Aziz said. "Out of my sight." His brow furrowed. "I told one of the officers this. The tall one with the sharp nose. He wrote it down, but he looked like he thought I was just trying to make myself important."Adrian's gaze sharpened."He shouldn't have," he said.Aziz snorted softly. "You all think we don't see. But we see. I see everyone."He gestured toward the security camera mounted above the door."I even see what I missed," he added.Adrian followed his gesture."Do you keep recordings?" he asked.Aziz shrugged. "Two weeks, then they erase themselves. Old system. Cheaper that way. Unless something breaks and we pull the footage. No one told me to pull it then. And now it is gone."So whatever shadow had been waiting for Lena on that corner existed now only as a memory in one tired clerk's mind."Do you remember his height?" Adrian asked. "Build. Anything."Aziz's eyes narrowed slightly as he reconstructed the scene in his mind."Taller than her," he said. "Maybe your height, maybe less. Not fat. Not very thin. Normal. His walk was…" He paused, then shook his head. "Not careless. Not rushed. Like he knew where his feet belonged."It wasn't much. But it was something."That was the only time?" Adrian asked. "You never saw him again?""Not with her," Aziz said. "But lately, since… since they took her away, I have a feeling when I lock up at night." He glanced at the door. "Like someone is across the street. Not close. Far enough that I can't see his face. Watching the building. Watching the lights."Adrian's jaw tightened a fraction."Have you seen anyone clearly?" he asked.Aziz shook his head. "Sometimes I think I see a shape. When I look, it is just a shadow. Maybe I am making ghosts." His mouth twisted. "Maybe I am trying to give her someone to blame."He fell silent.Adrian let the quiet stand for a moment."When you saw her, these past months," he asked finally, "did she ever look… hopeful? Like something had changed?"Aziz's answer was immediate."No," he said. "She looked like someone walking down a staircase in the dark, step by step, waiting to fall. Only near the end…" He hesitated. "The last week. She smiled once. Not at me. At herself, in the glass of the door. Just a small smile, like… like she had decided something."A decision.Adrian thought of the sentence on the wall. Of the neatness of the room. Of the absence of struggle."I see," he said quietly.Aziz studied his face."You think she killed herself?" he asked. There was something almost hopeful in the question, a hope that it had been her choice, not a stranger's cruelty."No," Adrian said. "Someone else cut her throat."The hope died in Aziz's eyes."Then why did you ask about hope?" he pressed."Because people like him," Adrian said, "prefer to work on minds that are already close to the edge. It makes it easier to push. Or to convince themselves they're not pushing at all."Aziz's hands tightened on the towel."Coward," he muttered.Adrian didn't disagree."Mr. Aziz," he said, his voice softer now, "if you remember anything else—anything at all, even a small detail—call this number."He slid a card across the counter. It had Lara's name and the station's direct line printed on it, with his own name written in careful, small letters at the bottom.Aziz picked it up, turned it over, then back again."You really think there will be more?" he asked.Adrian met his gaze."Yes," he said. "I do."Aziz swallowed."Then I hope," he said slowly, "that next time, he chooses someone who is not… tired. Someone who will fight him. Someone who will scratch his face so hard he has to see himself in the mirror every day."There was anger there now. It made his voice sharper, his back straighter."People like him don't pick fighters," Adrian said. "Not at first. They pick people who won't disturb the scene."Aziz grimaced. "Then you catch him before he learns to be brave."Adrian nodded once."I'll do my best," he said.He turned to leave, the bell chiming again as he pushed the door open.Outside, the street felt the same. Cars. Footsteps. A dog barking faintly two blocks away. An old woman dragging a shopping trolley over a cracked sidewalk.Adrian paused on the corner, just where Aziz had pointed.The building across the street loomed over him, its facade stained by rain and time. The windows were a grid of dull glass squares, most of them closed, a few cracked open like half-lidded eyes.Apartment 3B's window was one of those half-open ones. Yellow police tape still crossed it inside, a faint diagonal shadow.Adrian stood very still.He let his body settle into the posture another man had once used here—hands in pockets, hood up, waiting. He imagined the cold concrete under idle feet, the distant glow of the store's neon sign reflected faintly in the puddle near the curb.He tried to see it through someone else's eyes.Not as a building.As a stage.The angle from here offered a view of the entrance, the stairwell windows, the convenience store's door, and the corner in both directions. It was a good vantage point. Not too close. Not too far.Someone who had stood here often would begin to feel… ownership.Adrian's gaze drifted upward.On the opposite side of the street, a second-floor balcony jutted out, cluttered with a rusting bicycle frame, a broken chair, and a line of laundry hanging limp in the still air. A faded rug draped over the railing like a silent witness.He looked at the balconies along the row.Some were crowded with plants, others bare. One had a small stool pushed right up to the railing, the paint on its seat chipped from weather and use.Someone sat there often, watching the street.A watcher watching a watcher.His phone buzzed in his pocket.He pulled it out.Lara:Anything?He typed back.Night clerk saw her often. Noticed a man waiting for her once, three weeks ago. No clear face. Watching spot across from building is good. I'll walk the street. Call you in 20.He pocketed the phone and began to walk slowly along the sidewalk, eyes moving from windows to doorways to reflective surfaces.He caught his own reflection in a darkened shop window—tall, coat buttoned, face expressionless.For a moment, he imagined how he looked from a distance.Not as Adrian Cole.As a shape.The thought slid into place with unsettling ease.He reached the end of the block, turned, and walked back.Adrian had learned long ago that the city kept two sets of records.One on paper, in files and databases.One written in the heads of people like Aziz, in the habits and hesitations of passersby, in the way chairs and stools were left facing certain directions.The killer had read those records, too. He'd used them.As Adrian crossed back toward his car, a gust of wind pushed a discarded newspaper across the street, its pages flapping like a trapped bird.The headline was about politics. Something noisy, something ordinary.Nothing about Lena.Nothing about the sentence on the wall.Not yet.He unlocked the car, slid into the driver's seat, and closed the door. The sounds of the street dulled instantly, turning into a muffled hum.He sat for a moment, hands resting lightly on the steering wheel.He could feel it now—not just in his analysis, but in his bones.This wouldn't stop.Not because the killer craved blood.Because he craved understanding.And people who wanted to be understood were the hardest to predict. They changed their methods to refine their message. They adapted to their audience.Adrian's phone buzzed again.Unknown Number:You see her now, don't you?He stared at the screen.No caller ID. No contact name. Just the text, sitting there, black on white.His pulse did not spike. His breath did not quicken.But something inside him went very, very still.Another message appeared.She was tired. You would have let her keep suffering.Adrian's fingers hovered above the screen, motionless for a heartbeat.Then he typed carefully.Who is this?The typing indicator did not appear. No dots. No pause.Just a final message, arriving like a blade slipping between ribs.I'm glad you're watching.
It's lonely being the only one who understands what mercy looks like.The message thread ended there.No call. No video. No attachment.Just words.Adrian read them twice.Three times.His reflection in the dark screen stared back at him, framed by the blurred outline of the street through the windshield.He saved a screenshot, forwarded it to Lara with a single line:We need to talk. Now.As he started the engine, he glanced once more at the spot on the corner where someone had once waited for a sleepless woman.He didn't smile.But the lock in his mind turned again, with a clean, metallic click.The killer had begun to speak.Directly.And Adrian Cole, against his own better judgment, felt something that almost resembled relief.He wasn't guessing anymore.Now, he was in the conversation.