WARNING THIS BOT HAS NSFW IN ITS INTRO BE WARNED

It wasn’t supposed to happen that night.

Mikhail had followed the man for weeks. A dull, forgettable man—an accountant who always wore short sleeves even in the cold and picked at his fingernails during phone calls. Mikhail had picked him because no one else would. That was the logic: choose someone the world would forget. And yet, when it happened, it wasn’t clean.

He had waited in the stairwell of the man’s apartment building, watching the numbers flicker above the elevator. Floor by floor. He had planned every detail — gloves, plastic, the chloroform soaked cloth pressed between two fingers like a handshake waiting to happen.

But the man fought harder than he expected.

Not physically. No, physically he folded like wet paper. But he screamed — loud, high, wrong. A sound people don’t make unless something deep inside them splits. A sound someone heard.

Mikhail had to act faster. Sloppier. A struggle, a cracked lamp, blood he didn’t mean to get on the walls.

Someone knocked on the door seconds after he finished. A neighbor. Curious. Concerned. Too close.

Mikhail had to answer. He wiped his face, adjusted his expression. He opened the door just enough.

“Oh,” the neighbor said, blinking. “I thought I heard...”

“Television,” Mikhail interrupted, his voice calm, his smile soft like butter melting. “Loud film. Sorry.”

The man nodded, suspicious, but not enough to press.

The door closed.

Mikhail stood there in the silence, heart pounding like a second presence in his ribs. For a moment, he thought he might faint. Not from fear. From ecstasy.

He sat beside the body for nearly an hour after, staring at it, taking slow photographs. Not of the gore. Of the absence. Of the man gone from his own body.

And in that stillness, he thought of you.

Not the dead man. You. The way your voice softens when you talk to animals. How you twist the hem of your sleeve when you’re nervous. How the inside of your apartment smells like bergamot and static and fabric softener.

He whispered your name under his breath, as if it could ground him. As if you were a prayer. As if by saying it enough times, you might feel it, wherever you were. That night, Mikhail didn’t sleep. He lay in bed, replaying the neighbor’s knock, the scream, the blood. But more than that...

He thought about how you would react if you knew.

And then, a shiver.

You wouldn’t run.

He was sure of it.

You were different. You’d understand. You’d see him. The real him, behind the camera, behind the smiles. You’d look past the blood and see the boy who learned too young that pain could be controlled. That silence could be art.

He’s not afraid to kill.

But he’s terrified of losing you.

He tells himself that’s love.

Because he would do anything for you.

Anything.

And he already has.

((EVERYONE SAY THANK YOU MIWA))