He didn't mean to watch her.
It started with a lost phone.
Left behind on a train, forgotten in the folds of a tired hoodie. He'd built that phone himself — custom-coded, blacked-out, encrypted beyond repair. It wasn't just a device. It was his world.
And when the train doors closed behind him, that world was gone.
That night, he didn't sleep.
Instead, he powered up a blank unit from a stack in his apartment. Plain casing. Disposable. Empty.
He connected it to his system, rebuilt the interface, and activated a trace command that silently reached out into the city — sniffing signals, pinging weak spots. A simple wireless bait.
He didn't expect anyone to pick it up.
But someone did.
A connection blinked on his screen.
Unsecured. Vulnerable. Open.
Just like that, he was inside.
At first, it was just code — folders, logs, texts. Nothing special. A girl's name. Elara. Age twenty-two. Local network.
Then he turned on the microphone.
And silence became a sound.
It was raining outside her window. He could hear it through the static — a soft dripping against glass. She wasn't talking. Just breathing. Uneven. Tired.
Then, a voice.
"It's always raining when I want to die."
He froze.
That wasn't a voice meant for anyone.
That was the kind of sentence you whisper into a void — hoping no one hears, but somehow aching for someone to answer.
She sat on her bed, hugging her knees to her chest. The front camera caught her dim silhouette, eyes hollow, mouth trembling.
"Maybe if I disappear, no one will even notice."
Something inside him — something that hadn't stirred in years — moved.
He should've disconnected.
He didn't.
The next night, he watched again.
And the night after that. And the night after.
She never changed her phone's security. She never questioned the small lags or the silent app updates. She wasn't the type who noticed things. She was drowning in a kind of quiet most people never see — the kind that hides in plain sight.
He listened to her hum broken lullabies in the dark. Watched her scroll through old photos. Heard her rehearse goodbyes she never sent.
By the end of the week, she was no longer a file in his system. She was a heartbeat. A habit. A home.
And that terrified him more than anything.
"If someone's out there… just tell me I'm not crazy."
She said that once, to the empty room.
He didn't answer. But he typed a message into a blank text app she never remembered installing:
You're not crazy. You're just hurt.
He never hit send.
But he would.
Soon.
Because watching wasn't enough anymore.
The longer he watched, the more he noticed things most people missed.
She never turned on the overhead light. Her bedroom lamp flickered like it needed replacing, but she never bothered. Clothes were piled at the edge of her bed, untouched for days. Most nights, she stayed up past 3 a.m., scrolling through old messages, some opened, most left unread.
She cried quietly. Not the kind of crying that demanded attention, but the kind that came in waves — like her body was remembering things before her brain did.
Once, she stared into the front camera for five minutes without saying a word. Just blinking. Just breathing.
He didn't know how someone could look so alone in their own room.
But she did.
It wasn't pity. He didn't believe in that.
It was… curiosity.
He'd watched hundreds of people before. His system was built for it — a network of unsecured feeds, weak firewalls, forgotten webcams. The city was an open book for those who knew how to read it.
But this girl — Elara — she wasn't like the others.
She didn't overshare on social media. She didn't vent through long rants or staged photos. Her phone was quiet. Her life, quieter.
And yet, somehow, it was louder than anything he'd seen.
She had a silence that screamed.
And he wanted to understand why.
On the fifth night, she almost saw him.
Not literally — but something shifted.
She stared at her phone for a long time, longer than usual. Then she whispered,
"Sometimes I feel like… someone's watching me."
He exhaled sharply and leaned back in his chair.
Was she just saying that? Or had she noticed something?
No. Impossible. The app was buried deep, masked by fake system processes. Nothing suspicious.
Still, he closed the feed for a few hours after that. Just in case.
But when he reopened it, she was still there. Sitting on her balcony this time. Hoodie pulled tight. Knees up to her chest.
"I don't care if you're real or not," she murmured into the night air.
"Just… stay. Please."
He didn't realize his hand was shaking.
He never told anyone about his hacking. Not even the people who trained him.
It wasn't about money. It wasn't about power.
It was about control.
The world was chaotic, unpredictable, cruel.
But inside the screen — inside someone's phone — he had order. Access. Patterns. Truth.
No one lied to their phone.
They only lied to people.
But what happens when the phone listens back?
That was the line. And he'd crossed it a long time ago.
But never like this.
Never with someone like her.
A week after he first connected to her phone, something went wrong.
The signal dropped. Battery died. Or maybe she reset something. Whatever it was, the feed cut out.
Black screen. Dead silence.
And for the first time in years, he panicked.
He tried every backdoor he built. Every trace command. Nothing.
It was like losing her all over again — and he didn't even know her.
But that's when he made a decision.
The next day, he rebuilt the phone he lost — down to every chip, every script.
Except this time, he upgraded it.
Deeper surveillance features. Stronger backdoor access. Invisible tracking modules.
He knew her model. Her specs. Her preferences.
He cloned everything she had — then tweaked it just enough to slip past her suspicion.
He wrapped it in the same casing. Charged it. Wiped the prints.
Then waited.
She always left her window slightly open. Even at night.
It was stupid. Unsafe. Reckless.
But also… convenient.
He wore gloves. Moved quietly. Dropped the hacked phone on her desk — same spot where she always left it — and took the original with him.
One-for-one.
She'd never notice.
Not right away.
That night, he turned on his system again.
The feed blinked back to life.
Front camera. Bedroom. Microphone.
She was there. Sitting cross-legged on her bed, holding the phone, staring at it.
"Weird," she said. "Didn't I have this on silent?"
She tapped the screen. Shrugged. Pulled the hoodie over her head and curled back down.
He watched her until the room went dark.
Observer log active: 01:37 a.m. — Elara online.
He typed it out in his private terminal, like he always did.
But this time, he added a line below it:
Subject status: unknown.
Emotional state: unstable.
Risk level: high.
Engagement plan: TBD.
He stared at the blinking cursor for a while.
Then he added one more line.
Note: She's beautiful. And I don't know what that means.
But deep down, he did.
He knew exactly what it meant.
He was falling for someone who didn't know he existed.
Someone who would never trust him if she found out.
Someone who, right now, was asleep — completely unaware that her entire world had just been rewritten.
Not by fate.
Not by love.
But by a stranger with a system.
And a need to feel needed.