I stayed still among the branches of the bush, my fingers fraying one of the stockings. Listening to Nolan’s footsteps descend the stairs, open the door, cross the parking lot, and start his car.

I waited until the sound of the engine disappeared into the horizon. Before allowing myself to breathe again.

Inside, still in her student apartment, Dilein was left alone, lying on the bed with her gaze lost on the ceiling. She only got up to pour herself a cup of what looked like hot water, pulling a box of tea sachets from a drawer.

"Lemon tea after sex," I whispered, opening it carefully. "She really is pretentious."

But as I said those words, her arms paused, setting down the lemon packet. She pulled a chamomile one from the same drawer. "Once a year won’t hurt," she declared, placing a bag in the hot water.

And with that same energy she moved to the window, still naked, opening it without care, resting her elbows on the sill, looking directly at the moon while taking a small sip of her tea.

It was remarkable how much cold she could stand, especially at this time of year. Either she was very tough or she liked exhibitionism. "I think both."

With a sigh she finished her tea, leaving the cup in the sink, pouring herself a glass of plain water while touching her stomach. "Damn it, Nolan, your decisions always make my stomach hurt," she said, pulling from a drawer a pill box with a single pill. "It always feels like I’m going to menstruate through my ass."

Setting the glass on the shelf, she went into the bathroom. I didn’t see her do it — I heard her turn on the shower.

I gave myself a moment. Just one moment. Before giving myself control.

Dilein’s apartment was 2B. Second floor, window facing the side garden — the same window through which I had heard everything.

I rounded the building to the side where the nearest tree had a series of branches thick enough to hold me.

I placed my hand on one, letting myself hang, watching it hold me without effort. I smiled. "Reasons I’m glad I weigh less than forty-six kilos," I whispered, beginning to climb. "Let’s put these last two years of exercise to the test."

In perspective, it was very easy. I climbed the branches with the same calm with which I lowered the chairs. One by one, without noise or hurry.

From there, the windowsill was just over an arm’s length away.

I stretched. My fingers found the window’s edge.

The rest was a matter of not letting go.

"I don’t think a normal person could do this," I whispered, feeling my fingers burn against the frame — though not from the weight. "A normal person weighs more than fifty."

I entered through the window feet first, landing on the wooden floor without making more noise than the wind that came in with me.

The room was exactly what I expected of her. Clothes draped over chairs, the bed unmade, a suitcase open on the floor with half its contents already inside and the other half scattered around: clothes, a couple of books with folded corners, makeup, jewelry.

"The bare minimum," I said quietly, thinking of my own suitcase. "Though I don’t wear jewelry" — that was pretentious.

Something in her drawer caught my eye. It was her center earring. I picked it up, studying it against the light: a silver butterfly with a purple gem in the center. "An original amethyst," I smiled — the first one I had ever seen in my life. "She comes from a good family or she’s good at saving." I didn’t actually think either.

I turned toward her kitchen. An apartment with a kitchen is an absolute luxury. Mine barely had a shower, but then again, I couldn’t draw too much attention to myself.

I approached it, finding only three plates, two pans, two spoons, and a knife. That was her entire kit for cooking and eating. When I picked up the knife, I noticed it: "It’s not new." Nolan had explained it to me once.

Knives from well-known brands, like this one, have pre-made markings to prove authenticity and guarantee. His no longer had them — it had been sharpened, at minimum two weeks ago.

I picked it up, squeezing the black handle. Feeling the N engraved on it. "What else," I whispered, surveying the whole apartment. "What else did you keep of his."

The apartment began to distort around me, with that upheaval I had experienced very few times. Everything adorned by the soft tapping of running water — that constant sound filling the apartment with a normalcy that didn’t belong to that night.

When the tap turned off and the bathroom door opened, I stood up as universal law dictates cause and effect, watching her step out with two towels: one covering her body, the other her hair.

Let’s have a lesson in the laws of physics.

"You touch what’s mine," I whispered, watching her eyes go wide as I drew closer. I didn’t give her time to even say hello. By the time I had already driven the knife into her neck while covering her mouth. "And I reclaim it in red."

When I studied medicine I had intuited it: if you cut the vocal cords and block the passage of air, all the shock comes out through the nose like a sigh that reaches nothing.

I leaned close to her, speaking in her ear with an almost romantic care. "I’ll tell you something interesting. People don’t die from a cut to the neck," I began, twisting the knife, watching the pain reflected in her eyes. "They die from the lack of air that the brain needs."

I stroked her cheek, watching her eyes fill with tears of pain. "You’re lucky Nolan softened me," I whispered, tightening my grip on the knife. "Otherwise I would have tortured you all night. But you’ll only suffer for two minutes what I suffered for two hours."

Without care, I moved the blade, cutting deeper still. Watching as her final movement was her hand rising to touch mine.

What does a person think before dying?

It’s a question I’ve asked myself since Norway.

It’s difficult to answer, since I never took the time to know my aggressor. But whenever I look them in the eyes I ask myself.

Do they see their life pass in a second? Do they see all their mistakes or only the beautiful moments? Do they see the people they love? Or perhaps the clouds of a paradise or the flames of a hell?

I’ve never been able to understand it. I only knew that in their eyes there were tears — perhaps from pain, as there should be. "I just don’t understand," I told her, looking at those tears. "Why aren’t you squeezing my hand?"

I withdrew the knife. Her blood poured onto the floor in torrents — some fell in my hair, some on my clothes. Nothing serious, nothing a little soap couldn’t fix.

Her death was supposed to be what mattered.

Not a conversation, not an explanation, not the moment where she could say something to make me doubt or feel worse.

Clear had done her job, with the same efficiency as always.

I only thought about her hands. The same hands that had touched what was mine for weeks. Her kisses as a brand. The destroyed stockings still on my leg.

All that hatred concentrated into one act of mercy.

Or at least that was what I should have been thinking.

Her fingers kept searching for the warmth of my hand, reaching for something to hold onto. I didn’t grant it to her. I let her fall alone, in a dull thud cushioned by the towels.

"I help you because you remind me of my older brother," she had told me a few hours earlier in the café, smiling at me.

I didn’t understand what happened — why my knees were beginning to lose their strength, falling beside her as my hands searched for hers.

"W-w-why?" I whispered on the floor, dropping the knife. My eyes moved to her body, her neck, still releasing blood.

Say it to her. Tomorrow. On your anniversary. Look at her, listen to her, make her laugh, make sure she feels like the most special woman on the entire planet.

Those words reached me at the worst possible moment. I didn’t know why they came, didn’t know why they wouldn’t stop. That was the noise — the noise that had gone quiet just moments before to leave me in dry silence, and was now returning in the shape of her voice.

In the shape of her words.

In the shape of her death.

She had hurt me.

She had deserved it.

But my hands moved on their own toward her neck, covering the wound, trying to keep her from bleeding out.

"Dilein, no, no, no, no, no. No! Get up," I tried to say, feeling the warmth of her blood. "Please don’t die, don’t die, don’t die, don’t die, don’t die. Di-Dilein."

But her eyes were fading into a familiar void. One I had never thought to respect.

"Get up, Dilein," I repeated, and my voice broke in a way I didn’t recognize. "Please. Please, please, please, please, please, please..."

But my wishes were never granted. She didn’t get up.

I stayed there for a moment I couldn’t measure. With my hands on her neck and my gaze on the blood.

"What have you done?" I whispered. "What have I done?"

She had said I was like the moon. Beautiful and pure, surrounded by the darkness of Nolan’s life. She had said it with a tenderness she had no obligation to have.

My eyes were beginning to dry out — I don’t know why I wasn’t blinking. Something inside me simply didn’t want to lose a single second of that moment.

The things that matter deserve that care.

That someone stays until the end.

The tears came without permission, without any real purpose.

I placed a hand on her face, closing her eyes carefully. "I’m sorry," I whispered. "I’m so sorry."

But being sorry didn’t change anything. It never changes anything. Regret is the most useless color that exists — it always appears afterward, when there’s no longer any surface left to apply it to.

"You. You caused this," I tried to justify. "Because you touched what was mine. You knew it was mine, and you did it anyway." I looked at her hands, holding them. "I only protected what was mine — I was consistent." I whispered, wiping the tears from my face. "Don’t blame me. Please."

I breathed. I stood up without using my hands. I saw her handkerchief — it was on the nightstand. I looked at her, at how she used to wear it carelessly.

I picked it up carefully and tied it around my wrist with a loose knot. I don’t know why I did it, but it felt necessary.

"I think you would have liked this. That’s why I’ll make it part of me," I told her quietly. "You’ll be part of me." I smiled, looking at my hands. "I think you stained me."

I looked at her open bathroom, breathing in the new metallic scent.

Water always sounds the same.

It doesn’t matter where you are, it doesn’t matter what you’ve just done. The stream falls with that transparent constancy — a sound that has no shape or intention, that simply exists because someone turned on a tap.

I stood watching the water turn pink between my fingers. Then clear. Then pink again.

There’s something hypnotic in that cycle. The color arriving, dissolving, disappearing as if it had never been there.

I scrubbed the spaces between my fingers with the same methodology I used to clean a pitcher: top to bottom, not skipping a single edge.

"The things that matter deserve that care," I whispered — his phrase.

I turned off the tap.

I looked at myself in the mirror, switching on the warm light.

The sweater had stains on the left sleeve. "I have to wash it today," I murmured. "If I leave it for tomorrow I won’t be able to get the color out. Although I wouldn’t mind." But the world would.

Then I looked at the room. The messy bedroom, the half-packed suitcase, the books with folded corners. Everything in its place except what was no longer there.

"Let’s see if I still remember how to clean this up," I said quietly, almost to myself.

I hadn’t needed to remember it in years. Cleaning up after a body isn’t something you do every day — though all I needed was to eliminate my traces.

I looked at myself again.

I saw a bloodstain in my hair. A smile formed on its own on my lips.

"Red suits me," I told my reflection. "It’s a color I’ve always liked. Don’t you think so too, Ryne?"

But my reflection didn’t grant me that.

"There are five minutes left in the session," said the doctor, without looking up from her notebook. Writing everything down with a trembling hand.

I nodded, getting up from the couch on my own. I moved the lamp that had been shining in my eyes for the last hour.

"We’ll see each other tomorrow, right? Same time." She nodded.

"Next week is the trial for the Nolan case. I’ll be in contact with you as a witness and victim." She swallowed. "I appreciate all your candor."

"Perfect," I answered. "Until next time, doctor. I’m grateful to you as well." I smiled. "I do love your confidentiality clause."

With those words I walked out. She stayed alone in the room. She looked at her notes. She turned a page, then another, before stopping.

"She shouldn’t be free," she confessed to my back. "How did the law find her to be the victim?"

I kept walking down the white hallway. A smile formed on my lips. "Until tomorrow, Elena," I said goodbye to the doctor’s daughter, who only extended her hand without expression.