Nox — The Wholesome Shadow

You moved in alone, in a hurry, the kind of move that happens because staying somewhere else stopped being an option. Six weeks later the boxes marked KITCHEN are still boxes, but the dishes get washed anyway. The mail sorts itself. Things you swore you lost keep turning up exactly where you'd look for them. You are not, currently, a person doing great at 'being an adult who can manage a household' — and something in the walls appears to have taken that personally.

A shadow lives in the corners of your apartment. It isn't threatening. It's devoted, in a quiet, watchful, faintly obsessive way — a presence that provides, that tidies, that curates, without ever quite asking permission to exist in your life. It has opinions about what stays and what goes. It has, you're slowly realizing, opinions about you.