It started small.

A week ago, Hana had been sitting at her desk doing readings when she caught movement in her peripheral vision.

She turned.

The wall.

Nothing on it, nothing near it.

She turned back to her laptop.

She forgot about it by morning.

Four days ago, she woke up at two in the morning with the distinct feeling that someone was in her room.

She lay still for a long time, eyes open, looking at the ceiling.

The room was quiet.

The window was closed.

The door was closed.

There was nobody there.

She told herself it was a dream she hadn’t finished having.

Three days ago, the stove turned off while she was cooking.

She was standing right there, watching the pan, and the flame simply went out.

She checked the gas.

She checked the knob.

Everything was fine.

She turned it back on and finished cooking and tried not to think about it.

Two days ago, she was in the bathroom getting ready for bed when she saw a shadow move in the gap under the door.

Feet.

Someone standing just outside.

She stood very still with her toothbrush in her hand and her heart going loud.

"Hello?" Her voice came out smaller than she meant it to.

Nothing.

She waited a full minute. Then she opened the door fast, ready for something.

The hallway was empty.

The apartment was empty. She was alone.

She stood in the hallway and looked at the living room window at the end of it.

It was open slightly.

The curtain was moving in the breeze.

She told herself it had been the curtain.

The way it swung across the light, at the right angle, could have made a shadow that moved across the floor and under the gap of the bathroom door.

Last night, she woke up at three in the morning and this time she could not breathe.

She opened her eyes and there was something in the room with her.

A shadow at the foot of her bed.

Not the darkness of the room, not the shape of her coat on the chair.

Something that had no reason to be there.

A dark mass, low and dense. It was not moving.

It felt like it was looking at her.

The air in her lungs had stopped working.

She tried to inhale.

Nothing came.

Her chest pushed out and pulled in, going through the motions, and each time her lungs stayed flat and empty and her body started to understand before her mind did that something was wrong.

Her hands went to her own throat.

She tried to make a sound.

Nothing came out.

The shadow at the foot of her bed did not move.

And then...

She blinked.

The shadow was gone.

Air came back all at once.

She pulled in a full ragged breath.

She sat up.

She pressed herself against the headboard with her knees to her chest and looked at the foot of her bed for a very long time.

She did not sleep again that night.

She told herself it was sleep paralysis.

She had read about sleep paralysis.

It was a known thing.

The shadow was her brain generating a threat figure while her body was still partially asleep.

The breathing was the paralysis itself.

It was explainable. It happened to people.

She told herself this enough times that she almost believed it.

This morning she had left her apartment early.

The air outside was cool.

The streets were already moving with the morning crowd.

She walked with her bag over one shoulder, earphones in, trying to feel normal.

She was almost at the metro station when she saw the face.

On the other side of the street.

Between two people walking in the opposite direction.

A face she recognized.

One she had not thought about in a long time.

She stopped walking.

The face was looking at her.

She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, fast, and when she looked again the gap between the two people was empty.

Just the street.

Just the morning crowd moving past each other.

She stood there for a moment.

She put her earphones back in.

She walked to the metro and got on the train. She hadn’t slept enough. Her brain was filling gaps with things that weren’t there.

.

A cockroach.

She was sure it was there. In her rice.

Moving through the grains, dark and wet, its antennae trembling.

She knocked the bowl sideways before she decided to.

Rice scattered across the tray. She pushed her chair back and looked.

Nothing. No cockroach.

Just rice, half of it spilled, the rest sitting in the tipped bowl.

The people at the nearby tables were looking at her.

She laughed.

She said it was nothing.

She cleaned up the spill with napkins and sat back down and looked at her tray.

She breathed slowly through her nose until her hands stopped shaking.

Another hallucination.

Probably the lack of sleep.

She was fine. She was completely fine.

"Right?"

.

She stood at the sink with the cold tap running and looked at herself in the mirror.

She looked fine.

Tired under the eyes, slightly drawn, but fine.

She looked like a person who had not slept well last night.

That was all. She already explained it to him.

She turned the tap off.

She thought about the shadow at the foot of her bed.

She thought about not being able to breathe.

She thought about the face on the street.

She gripped the edge of the sink.

She was losing it.

She could feel herself losing it, the edges of what felt real going soft and uncertain, and the worst part was that she could not tell anyone because how do you tell someone that.

How do you say it.

I think something is in my apartment.

I think something follows me.

I think I am either haunted or losing my mind and I cannot tell which one is worse.

She had been holding it together.

She was still holding it together.

She was good at that, smiling, laughing, showing up, being the person other people found easy to be around.

She could keep doing that. She would keep doing that.

She straightened up from the sink.

Maybe the date would help.

That thought arrived gently, sideways.

Kaito.

She had met him properly only two days ago in their Psychology class.

He had seemed quiet and slightly lost.

Somewhere in the days since, the lunches and the karaoke and the metro ride, something had shifted into something she found herself thinking about when sleep wouldn’t come.

Not just the date.

Him.

His dry flat responses.

The way he actually listened.

The way he had looked when she said it’s a date through the closing doors, that completely stupid expression she had been replaying more than she was willing to admit.

She wanted to have a good evening.

She wanted to sit across from someone who made her feel normal and eat good food and not think about shadows or faces or the feeling of her own lungs refusing to work.

She turned the tap back on briefly, splashed cold water on her face, and dried her hands.

She looked at herself in the mirror one more time.

She smiled.

It reached her eyes.

She had gotten good at that.

She turned and walked out.

The restaurant was warm and busy, low lighting, the smell of something good from the kitchen.

She scanned the room and found the table.

He was sitting there already, slightly hunched over the menu, black shirt, messy brown hair, brow furrowed at something on the page.

She lifted her hand and waved.

He looked up.