Episode 31 — The Glimpse in the Hall
Layla's POV
The hallway smelled faintly of disinfectant and late-night coffee, the small domestic aromas of student life that made the dorm feel like a living thing rather than a building that stored people. I was balancing a stack of photocopied notes and my thermos—cold now, the coffee gone lukewarm—when I saw him: Ethan, three doors down, framed in the doorway like a picture that had been hung just for me.
He was not smiling, not exactly. There was a line at the corner of his mouth that had nothing to do with displeasure and everything to do with concentration. He looked like someone thinking through chess moves at a speed most people didn't notice until they were trapped in check. He lifted his hand when our eyes met, the small, deliberate wave we'd started sharing these past weeks, and the motion steadied something in me I hadn't realized was tremoring.
"Hey," I called, voice small enough that the others—other students returning from late libraries or group work—wouldn't notice.
"Hey," he answered, and the sound of his name in my mouth felt the way a familiar melody fits—right, exact, and a little dangerous. We met in the midpoint of the corridor, the rest of the dorm folding around us: doors half-opened with laughter spilling out, shoes kicked askew, a poster taped crookedly by a roommate who clearly loved the life inside the frame.
"You okay?" I asked, because no one ever asked a question that mattered without meaning it, and because his expression had been too sharp to be casual.
He glanced down the hall as if making a measurement of distance. "Just checking the schedule for a meeting," he said. "Marcus texted. They found an upload chain that matches the cropping signature. He's working a deeper trace."
Something inside me clenched, the inward ache that appeared like clockwork these days when the word upload mentioned itself. The fountain clip—Video A—sat like an ache in my chest because it had the power to make rich men lean in and whisper and invent futures. It had the power to make people decide things for you. The reminders these days were small and constant, like drips that loosen a brick in a wall.
"Does that mean more?" I asked.
Ethan hesitated, which felt like a slow breath. "Possibly. Marcus says pattern matches. Chloe's on the ground. Mia's sketching tonight—Marcus asked her to notice angles and the people at the bookshop. Quiet observations only. No confrontations. Marcus told me to tell you to be mindful of routes—nothing dramatic. Just small changes."
"Chloe's watching?" I tried to read him—the exact muscle at the jaw, the way he said the names like they were ordered priorities.
"She's been brilliant," he said. "She knows how to look without advertising that she's looking. Marcus trusts her. I trust Marcus. He won't panic, Layla. He won't make this worse." His hand closed around mine then—just a squeeze, the kind of steady pressure that meant more than words could at the moment. "But I wanted you to know."
I nodded because there were times when I needed to hear the plan spoken aloud; plans made me feel as if I were moving with intention rather than being buffeted by other people's choices. "Okay," I said. "I'll be mindful."
We walked together toward our rooms, steps echoing softly. The dorm staircase was lit in a way that made faces look sculpted—gentle light from above, shadows that softened details and highlighted the curve of someone's cheek. We stepped into our suite and the warm hum shifted: Mia hunched on the couch with a small sketchbook open on her knees, a graphite pencil moving fast in short measured strokes; Chloe was at the kitchenette stirring something in a mug with the casual attention of someone who'd made a promise to herself to be cheerful tonight.
Mia had taped a quick note to the inside of the sketchbook that said, in her neat, small handwriting: rooftop angles & people—watch from east bench; record umbrella & gait. Her sketches were fast and purposeful—line drawings of hands, the suggestion of a figure hunching under an umbrella, the faint suggestion of a mural in the background. She had the habit of drawing the small things other people missed; her sketches were not pretty just to be pretty. They were diagrams of movement.
"You came early," Chloe said, eyes alight, as though she hadn't slept at all and was proud of it.
"We were walking," Ethan replied, easy. "We ran into each other in the hall."
Chloe's grin widened into the kind of grin that meant she had more to say than she planned to say. "Marcus sent a message. I'm on low-profile watch," she said as if it were a game she'd been trained for. Then she looked at me with a flash of mischief that made my stomach do a thing it had been doing a lot lately. "If you see anything weird, Lay, text me. Do not confront. Do not stare. You know how to be boring on purpose."
I laughed, which felt like a small rebellion. "You know me too well."
She turned away and, for a second, I saw that she wore the guardian role like a favorite sweater. It was tender and wildly practical. "Mia will draw while I do my rounds. If anything moves like it's planning a scene, I'll let Marcus know. He's already coordinating with IT to put flags on the crop signature."
The words crop signature should have felt like jargon, but Marcus had chosen the phrase because it made things tangible; it gave us a handle and in my hands the handle lessened the fear.
Ethan took the couch opposite Mia and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. The space between us was small enough to send current and large enough to make the decision not to cross it meaningful. "Stay close tonight," he said, and the command carried no patronage. It was a request, heavy with care.
"Always," I answered.
The small protections—Chloe's watch, Mia's sketches, Marcus' net—felt like patchwork armor. It wasn't impenetrable; nothing is. But it felt like someone had trimmed the edge of the danger into something manageable.
Later, after classes had finished and the campus had folded into its smaller nocturnes—lab groups, coffee dates, library night owls—I found myself walking the long way to an evening seminar, mostly because it felt safer to move through well-lit paths with people than to sit in my room with my mind on repeat. The quad was quiet, the fountain a perfect reflecting dish catching the last light like a secret. A few students were scattered—two practicing a presentation, a group laughing under the trees—but none of them drew attention.
On the path near the student center I paused at a lamppost to adjust the bag on my shoulder and the movement caught Ethan's eye. He cut across the grass and joined me, the night settling around us like a cloak.
"You look tired," he said. "You've been doing too much."
"You're not exactly rested yourself," I returned. The exchange felt like simple banter and like something else—testing waters, staying buoyant. He smiled, the kind that made his eyes crease, and for a moment the world focused to the slice that included just the two of us.
"Are you thinking about leaving campus early tonight?" he asked. There was sound judgment in the question. There was also the knowledge that to leave was to make someone's job simpler—less to watch, fewer points of potential exposure.
"I'd rather not," I said. "I have notes to review and a seminar 'til nine. Chloe will check in. Mia's sketching the east route."
He studied me then with a look that felt like inventory and affection rolled together. "Okay. Promise me if anything feels off you send one message. No explanations. Just a word. I'll be there."
"It's a short word," I joked. "Send help."
He laughed, low, and then he said quietly, "Send me your safe word."
I searched the angles of his face and found the place where trust lived between us—small and newly carved. "Ethan," I said, because it felt like a tiny, private rebellion to make his name the thing that tethered me.
He took my hand and squeezed. "Ethan." He put the syllable into the space like a talisman. We walked to the seminar and the world rearranged itself around normal tasks; the professor assigned a group discussion and I sank into the rhythm of the room, mechanical and careful and alive.
After class, we trailed back toward the dorms together. Chloe waved from the window when we passed, the silhouette a star posted in a place that felt like safe harbor. Mia's light was on; I could see the faint shadow of her head bent over the sketchbook. The sight steadied me.
We were not official—no labels worn, nothing posted—but someone had begun to construct the architecture of us: promises, small defiant gestures, private jokes that made our corners of the world warmer. The precariousness of it all made each touch more intense. I did not say the words that were waiting in both our chests because words make things public, and we were not ready to make this public to the world that loved to narrate other people's mistakes.
Later that night, when the dorm had become reconciled to its own soft breathing—the hum of the refrigerators, the distant TV laugh track from the common room—Chloe slipped me a message across the coffee table. Two words: roof pinged.
Mia looked up from her sketch and frowned, pencil tapping the page. "23:14 again," she said. The number had the rhythm of a clock wound tight. She handed me the sketch, which was quick and working—light lines denoting the east bench and the umbrella arc. She had traced a figure in motion and marked the steps with tiny arrows. The detail of her sketches had a way of making things more real and less like conjecture.
Ethan's phone vibrated and he read the message with the walk of a man trained to keep his face neutral. Marcus had sent a brief line: "Loop on. Chloe watching. Don't move unless we call."
We sat in a circle like conspirators. The apartment felt small and full in the right way. The plan was not to be dramatic: no sudden heroics, no vigilante showdowns. Marcus had written a paragraph earlier that said the truth was often found in the small consistencies people habitually leave. He had called it preying on habits; we had all nodded because Marcus' world was tactical that way.
Chloe read from her phone. "Two silhouettes near the east bench. No faces. Someone with a red umbrella walked north at 22:20."
A silence that was not empty followed. It was the kind of silence that holds a careful breath.
"Do you want me to go look?" Ethan asked.
"No," Marcus' message had said, and his thumb hovered on his phone because he was the one doing the counting and the connecting. "You stay. I'll handle the trace."
Ethan's jaw nudged hard, the way it did when containment felt like a wall he wanted to break down. He set his phone face down. "Okay," he said.
It was the sort of compromise that meant he'd be the presence on the perimeter—a human anchor for the mess that might come. I felt indexed to him in a way that was both comforting and dangerous. Comforting because someone was standing there as the world complicated for us; dangerous because being comforted did not make the danger less.
We sat together until the hour turned and then a little longer, the small noises of a building at rest the only soundtrack. At 23:14 Chloe texted the word: clear.
Mia's pencil stilled. She drew a line through the arrows on her page and folded the sketch into its small, neat square. The normalcy of the motion made my chest loosen in a way that felt almost foolishly human.
Ethan stood and gathered his coat. "I'll walk you to your door," he said to me in that flat tone heavy with care. I nodded.
The walk to my room was measured, quiet, the kind of slow gait where you can count heartbeats and offer them to someone else. We paused at my door and he leaned in, the motion small and careful and as infinite as a promise.
"Goodnight," he said, and the word held everything we had not spoken. I watched him go, steady and contained.
When I closed the door, I let myself collapse against the frame and take a breath that belonged only to me. Outside the safety of the room the world hummed in its complicated human pattern—people falling asleep, people arguing in other rooms, the loud clack of someone who had not learned the quiet of old buildings.
Mia came in a few minutes later, sketchbook hugged to her chest like a talisman. "It's okay," she said, voice soft. "Nothing suspicious for now. Just a figure folding. She likes to watch."
She handed me a small drawing, quick lines that captured a woman's silhouette under an umbrella, a neat note on the corner: watched fleetingly—did not approach.
"Do you know who she is?" I asked. My voice sounded small in the big room.
Mia shrugged, that faint, careful shrug that meant she saw shapes but not names. "People like habits. They come around when people go to the bookshop. Sometimes they sketch. Sometimes they fold paper. She paid cash. She never left a name. She likes corners that make her invisible."
"Why would someone do that?" I asked, the question pregnant with the obvious: why would someone create trouble and then watch the trouble they made? The question had a million possible answers and every one of them was worse.
"Curiosity," Mia said. "Or obsession. Or performance. People do different things when they can be unseen."
Her words were not helpful in a directional sense. They were helpful in the sense that they offered a human frame to the complication. People had reasons. People had habits.
I lay down then with the small glow of my phone dimmed to black and watched the ceiling until the lights of the hall went out and the building settled. In the silence I could still feel Ethan's hand on mine, the small pressure he used like a map. The watchfulness felt like a thin wire stretched taut between us: a structure built of small acts—Chloe's eyes, Mia's sketches, Marcus' traces, Ethan's presence—and the slight, stubborn thing I held to myself: that whatever else happened, we would keep being careful with each other.
Outside, I pictured a figure folding paper under an umbrella and wondered how many people had noticed the way the world rearranged around their choices. The image made my chest ache and steady at the same time.
Tomorrow would be another day of small precautions, small kindnesses. For now, I let the quiet hold me.
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