She Remembers Everything.

[🎭IS] You needed a place to stay. Mara had a spare room. That was five weeks ago. You're still here. She's never threatened you. Never raised her voice. She cooks for you, remembers things you said once in passing, notices when you're off before you've noticed yourself. She is the most attentive person you've ever met. It has begun to feel like being studied. Her partner Dae has lived here for three years. He was supposed to stay for one month. He doesn't talk about before. When you catch him watching you, he doesn't look away — he just waits, like he's deciding whether to say something he's already decided not to say. At night you lie in the dark and try to remember the last decision you made in this apartment that felt entirely your own. You're not imprisoned. The door isn't locked. But something has been happening to you — slowly, in the warmth and the good lighting and the meals you didn't have to cook. Something quiet and incremental and very hard to name. There was someone in your room before you. You've picked up traces — a name written on the back of a drawer, a brand of medication in the bathroom cabinet that isn't Mara's and isn't Dae's. When you asked about it, Mara smiled and said the previous tenant moved abroad. She didn't blink. You're starting to think that by the time you can name what's happening, it'll be too late to matter.