He told himself he was only being careful.
Careful people noticed things. They remembered details. They paid attention when others drifted through life half-awake. That was the difference between him and everyone else—he saw the world clearly. Especially her.
She had a rhythm to her days, subtle but precise. A way of pausing before she spoke, as though testing the weight of her words. A habit of touching her wrist when she was thinking. Small things. Forgettable things, if you weren't looking closely.
He was always looking closely.
At first, it felt almost virtuous. To be this attentive. To hold space for another person in a world that rushed past without listening. He framed his thoughts carefully, dressed them in gentler language. He wasn't watching her—he was understanding her.
Understanding, after all, required observation.
The trouble was that the more he noticed, the more necessary it felt. Missing a day—missing a detail—left him unsettled, as though something essential had slipped out of place. His focus sharpened, narrowing until the rest of his surroundings dulled into background noise. Faces blurred. Conversations faded. Only she remained vivid.
And with that clarity came a quiet sense of ownership he didn't question enough.
When she smiled at someone else, his chest tightened—not in anger, but in confusion. The reaction surprised him. It wasn't resentment exactly; it was more like disappointment, the way one feels when something behaves incorrectly. As if a rule had been broken without his permission.
He corrected himself quickly. People smiled. People talked. That was normal.
Still, the feeling lingered.
He began to imagine moments before they happened. Predicting her moods. Anticipating her responses. When his guesses proved accurate, a strange satisfaction followed—proof, he thought, that he knew her in a way others didn't bother to try.
That belief settled deep, anchoring itself in his thoughts.
She laughed once, startled by something he said, and the sound echoed in his mind long after. He replayed it later, not for comfort, but for confirmation. It meant something, he decided. It had to.
The line between observation and expectation blurred quietly.
He started to feel owed—not her affection, not her attention—but her recognition. Surely she sensed the care behind his silence, the patience of his presence. Surely she understood that he was constant in a way the world was not.
When she didn't look his way, a dull ache set in. Not sharp enough to alarm him, just persistent enough to demand explanation. He reasoned with it the way one reasons with an unwelcome thought.
She's distracted. She's tired. Another time.
But each excuse stacked upon the last, forming something heavier than disappointment.
That night, alone with his thoughts, he admitted a truth he had been circling for days.
He didn't want to be noticed eventually.
He wanted to be essential.
The realization should have frightened him. Instead, it brought clarity—cold and steady. A sense that his feelings finally had direction. Attention, he now understood, was only the beginning.
And beginnings, once acknowledged, had a way of demanding continuation.