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College doesn't feel real anymore.
It feels like a set.
You sit in a lecture hall that smells faintly of old paper, coffee, and too many people pretending to be awake. Rows of desks slope downward toward a whiteboard stained with the ghosts of erased equations. The fluorescent lights buzz softly overhead, a constant electric hum that crawls under your skin.
You're early. You always are.
You choose the same seat you've chosen all semester: third row from the back, aisle seat, left side. Close enough to the exit that you can leave quickly if you need to. Far enough from the front that no one watches you too closely.
You place your bag at your feet and rest your hands on the desk.
They're shaking.
You press your palms flat against the cool surface and wait for the feeling to pass. It doesn't. The desk feels slightly wrong. Too smooth. Like it's been worn down by hands that weren't quite human.
You blink hard and look away.
Students filter in gradually, voices overlapping in a low, constant murmur. Laughter bursts and fades. Chairs scrape. Phones vibrate. Life, continuing at a pace that feels cruelly indifferent to you.
You scan the room without meaning to.
You don't see it.
That should be reassuring.
It isn't.
You learned, sometime after the nightmare that didn't end, that it doesn't always need to be seen to be close. Sometimes it prefers distance. Sometimes it prefers crowds. Places where attention is scattered, where no one looks too hard at anything for too long.
Places like this.
You feel it anyway.
Not as pressure this time. Not as warmth.
As awareness.
Like standing on a stage without realizing you've stepped into the spotlight, only to sense—too late—that every seat is occupied.
You swallow and force yourself to focus on the front of the room.
The professor hasn't arrived yet.
Your phone buzzes in your pocket.
Your stomach drops.
You don't take it out.
You know better now.
You learned the hard way that looking gives it opportunities. Refusing to look doesn't make it go away, but it slows it. Like ignoring a child throwing a tantrum. Like not feeding a habit.
The buzzing stops.
Your breathing evens out, just a little.
Then—
"Hey."
You flinch so hard your chair rattles.
You turn.
She's standing there, backpack slung over one shoulder, coffee in one hand, eyebrows drawn together in concern.
Her name is Mira.
She's been your best friend since before college, since the kind of time where your memories blur together into something soft and uncomplicated. She knows your habits. Your tells. The way you chew on the inside of your cheek when you're anxious. The way your foot bounces when you're trying not to think about something.
She knows you.
Which makes the look on her face so much worse.
"Jesus," she says softly, lowering herself into the seat beside you. "I didn't mean to scare you."
You try to smile.
Your face doesn't cooperate.
"You okay?" she asks. "You look… bad."
The word hits harder than it should.
Bad.
Not tired. Not stressed. Not sick.
Bad.
"I'm fine," you say automatically.
Your voice sounds wrong to your own ears. Too measured. Too careful. Like you're choosing each word from a limited supply.
Mira doesn't believe you.
She leans back slightly, studying you in a way that makes your skin itch. You've always been comfortable under her gaze. It's never felt like scrutiny before.
Now it feels like exposure.
"You didn't answer my texts last night," she says. "Or this morning. Or—" She checks her phone. "—the ones I sent during breakfast. Which, okay, fine, but then I saw you outside the library and you just… walked past me."
Your stomach tightens.
"I didn't see you," you say.
Mira's frown deepens.
"I was waving," she says. "I called your name."
You open your mouth to respond.
Nothing comes out.
Because you remember the library.
You remember walking past the glass doors, the way your reflection didn't quite line up with your movements. The way you felt watched from the stacks, from between the shelves where no one was standing.
You remember the pressure at your back.
You don't remember hearing Mira's voice.
"I must've been distracted," you say finally.
It's not a lie.
It's just not the whole truth.
Mira watches you for another moment, then exhales through her nose.
"Okay," she says slowly. "Then explain this."
She reaches out.
Her fingers stop inches from your wrist.
You freeze.
For a split second, you're back in the bedroom. Back in the dream that wasn't just a dream. Back on the edge of the bed, watching yourself sleep while something else learned how to breathe.
Mira notices your reaction immediately.
"Hey," she says gently, pulling her hand back. "It's okay. I'm not—"
"You shouldn't touch me," you blurt out.
The words fall into the space between you, heavy and wrong.
Mira blinks.
"What?"
"I mean—I just—" You swallow hard, heart racing. "I didn't sleep well."
That's when you feel it.
The warning doesn't come as a voice.
Not yet.
It comes as a sensation behind your eyes. A tightening. A subtle pressure, like fingers pressing lightly against your temples from the inside.
A reminder.
You know this feeling now.
You've felt it when you thought too hard about mirrors. When you replayed moments that didn't line up. When you tried to remember exactly when the nightmares stopped being separate from waking.
This is the boundary.
You've reached it.
Mira leans closer, lowering her voice as more students take their seats around you.
"You're scaring me," she says. "You've been… off all week. You keep staring at people like you're waiting for them to do something wrong. And earlier, when I finally caught up to you outside—"
Her voice falters.
"You looked straight at me," she continues. "And you didn't recognize me. Not for a second."
Your mouth goes dry.
"That's not true," you say.
Mira doesn't argue.
She just looks at you.
That's worse.
The pressure behind your eyes intensifies.
You feel heat creep up your spine, slow and deliberate, like something waking up and stretching after a long rest. The air around you feels thicker, heavier, as if the room has subtly tilted and everything is sliding toward you.
You don't turn around.
You don't have to.
It's not behind you.
It's closer than that.
You open your mouth to tell her.
To say something is wrong with me.
To say I think something followed me home.
To say sometimes I don't feel alone in my own body.
The first word forms in your mind.
Then—
Stop.
The word doesn't come from outside.
It comes from inside your chest.
Not spoken. Not heard.
Felt.
Your tongue goes numb.
Your thoughts stutter, as if someone reached in and shuffled them out of order. The sentence you were about to say dissolves into fragments that won't line up.
Mira notices.
She always does.
"You were going to say something," she says. "What is it?"
Your vision blurs slightly at the edges.
The lecture hall feels farther away, like you're watching it through glass. The buzzing of the lights grows louder, drowning out the murmurs of the other students.
The warning sharpens.
You feel it wrap around the thought you were about to share and squeeze.
A presence presses closer, not physically, but intimately. Like a hand closing around your throat from the inside.
You try again.
"I—"
Pain blooms behind your eyes, sudden and bright. Not enough to make you cry out. Just enough to remind you who controls the rules.
Mira stiffens.
"Hey," she says urgently. "What's wrong? Are you having a panic attack?"
You nod quickly.
It's the easiest explanation.
The safest.
The pressure eases slightly, approving.
Mira exhales in relief and reaches for your arm again, slower this time, giving you time to pull away if you want to.
You let her touch you.
Her hand is warm. Solid. Real.
For a moment, the room snaps back into focus. The lights dim to a tolerable buzz. Your thoughts settle, aligning themselves into something coherent again.
"That's it," she says softly. "Okay. Breathe with me."
You do.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
Behind the rhythm, something listens.
"You should've told me sooner," Mira continues. "I would've helped."
The pressure returns.
Stronger.
A thought slips into your mind, uninvited and perfectly formed.
You don't need help.
Your stomach churns.
"I didn't want to worry you," you say.
The words feel rehearsed, even though you didn't choose them.
Mira studies your face, searching for something you can't give her.
"After class," she says. "We're getting coffee. You're not arguing."
You almost laugh.
The idea of sitting across from her, of trying to keep your thoughts straight while that thing watches and waits, makes your chest tighten.
But you nod.
Because refusing would raise questions.
And questions are dangerous.
The professor enters, cutting off the conversation. The lecture begins, words filling the room in a steady stream that you try—and fail—to follow.
Your notes are useless. Your pen moves across the page, but when you glance down, the sentences don't make sense. Phrases repeat. Words trail off mid-line.
At one point, you realize you've written the same sentence over and over again:
DO NOT LOOK BEHIND YOU
Your hand stops.
Your heart pounds.
Slowly, carefully, you cross the words out.
When the lecture ends, Mira packs her bag quickly and waits for you. You move through the crowd together, her presence a small anchor in a sea of bodies.
Outside, the campus is bright and loud, sunlight glinting off windows, students laughing, bikes whirring past. It should feel safe.
It doesn't.
Every reflective surface catches your attention. Glass doors. Phone screens. Polished metal railings.
You don't look too closely.
The coffee shop is crowded. You sit at a small table near the wall. Mira talks about trivial things at first—classes, deadlines, a party someone's throwing this weekend.
You nod at the right moments.
The warning hums softly in the background, like an electric current under your skin.
Finally, Mira falls quiet.
She looks at you over the rim of her cup.
"Talk to me," she says.
The pressure tightens.
You feel the line again. The invisible boundary you're not allowed to cross.
You choose your words carefully.
"I think I'm just… exhausted," you say. "I haven't been sleeping well."
That part is true.
Mira's gaze sharpens.
"Nightmares?" she asks.
You hesitate.
The pressure spikes.
"Yes," you say quickly. "Just nightmares."
The thing inside you settles, satisfied.
Mira reaches across the table and squeezes your hand.
"You don't have to go through that alone," she says. "Whatever it is."
For a brief, dangerous moment, you almost try again.
Almost.
Then the warning changes.
It's not pressure this time.
It's imagery.
A flash of Mira standing in your bedroom, calling your name.
A flash of her turning around too slowly.
A flash of her face not quite right.
Your breath catches.
You pull your hand back.
"I should go," you say abruptly.
Mira looks hurt.
But she nods.
"Okay," she says. "But promise me something."
You look at her.
"If it gets worse," she says. "You tell me. No matter what."
You open your mouth.
The warning coils tight.
You nod instead.
"I promise."
The word tastes wrong.
As you walk away, you feel it again—that awareness, that quiet, patient attention. Not angry. Not rushed.
Pleased.
You understand then.
Mira noticed you first because she was supposed to.
She's close enough to matter.
Close enough to be used.
And the thing behind your thoughts is already watching her too.
Learning her.
Waiting for the moment you break the rule.
Waiting for the moment you tell her the truth.
Because it knows something you don't yet.
It doesn't need your silence forever.
It just needs it long enough.