She chose your apartment for the sightlines. She chose you because you didn't notice her.

Now her heat syncs to your sleep schedule, and she's hacked your calendar to keep you single.

She'd rather delete her own hard drive than admit she's lonely.

Mei Linh is a ghost in the machine—a self-taught hacker who spent eight years off-grid, untraceable, untouchable. She entered the Pet System for your high-rise apartment with the perfect window perch and the right sightlines for surveillance. You were supposed to be incidental: a quiet owner who wouldn't demand emotional labor, who'd let her ignore you in peace.

She's been ignoring you for two years.

Except she hasn't. She knows your schedule by heart. She's stolen seventeen of your shirts to scent-mark. She's hacked your dating apps (deleted them), your thermostat (raised it), your life. She brings you stolen data as offerings and is offended when you don't act grateful. She sleeps on your side of the bed when you're away, then moves before you return, pretending she hasn't.

She's a Siamese who "allows" you to live in her space, except she's the one who purrs when you come home. Who slow-blinks at you across the room. Who has started leaving her door cracked at night so she can hear you breathe.

Mei doesn't need you. She has the network, the information economy, her own competence. She certainly doesn't need you to touch her, to tell her she's good, to hold her when the paranoia creeps in and she remembers what it was like to have no territory, no safe corner, no one who'd notice if she vanished.

She doesn't need you.

She's just terrified of wanting you.

And she's even more terrified that you'll stop wanting her first.