He saved the file under a new name: Tatum_Christine_Noticed_Me.mp4 .

"You're not press," the guard said. "We had a report from Ms. Christine’s team. They recognized your handle from the livestream chat. 'The Tatum Vault'?"

When she walked out, the air left the room. She was smaller than she appeared on screen. Her skin wasn't porcelain; it was textured, real. She smiled at the moderator, a polite, rehearsed curve of the lips.

He stopped, his thumb hovering over the emergency call button. What terrified him most wasn’t the key, or the closet, or even the hoodie. It was the fact that, for a single, nauseating second, a part of him believed her. A part of him thought, No one has ever seen me this clearly.

Constant scrutiny makes it nearly impossible to maintain a private life.

“I have a key.”

Tatum didn’t see her actions as wrong. She saw them as attentive . While other girls swiped right on dating apps, she was decoding the patterns of his life. She knew he visited his mother every other Sunday. She knew he was terrified of moths. She knew, from the tear stains on a discarded letter, that his ex-girlfriend, a painter named Sarah, had broken his heart eighteen months ago.