Authors pov
Morning on campus pretended to be ordinary, the way storms pretend to be harmless clouds. The air had that quiet heaviness, the kind that sits on the spine before anything actually happens.
Sona walked between Riya and Kabir with effortless ease, as if nothing in her world had teeth. To anyone watching, she was just another student strolling toward her lecture hall, tucking her half-wavy hair behind her ear, listening to Riya ramble about weekend plans.
But beneath her calm exterior, a quiet current pulsed. A knowing. A secret. A game.
She passed the notice board.
A black rose lay on the lower frame.
Riya frowned. Kabir muttered something about weird psychos needing new hobbies. Sona didn't flinch. She only tilted her head slightly, eyes lingering half a second too long. Almost fond. Almost expectant.
Arjun approached from the opposite hallway, unreadable as ever, his gaze flickering from her to the rose like he already knew she would find it. Like he knew because he had placed it. And mYbe he did, maybe not.
But his expression held that subtle tension again, that alert edge he'd been wearing the past few days. The mark of someone tracking danger… or creating it.
"Another one?" he asked, voice low, pretending concern. Pretending ignorance. Or maybe pretending to pretend.
Riya gave a dramatic sigh. "This is getting creepy now."
Kabir nodded. "If someone's messing with you, we can inform admin—"
"No." Sona's voice was too soft, too calm. "It's fine."
Arjun's gaze snapped to her. She didn't look rattled. Not even close. She looked… amused. But only for a heartbeat before her expression softened into something appropriately fragile, as if she remembered she was supposed to be the one being 'protected'.
He stepped closer, lowering his voice. "Sona… you should take this seriously."
"And you shouldn't overthink," she said, brushing past him toward the lecture hall.
His jaw tightened—not with irritation, but with interest. Like someone recognizing a move in a game he thought he was playing alone.
College life moved around them normally: students laughing, papers rustling, chairs dragging across floors. Yet beneath this everyday noise, something darker threaded between Sona and Arjun.
The black roses appeared more frequently now.
On her desk.
Beside her coffee cup.
Inside her locker.
On the seat of her car.
Always placed with care. Always where only she would see first.
Arjun noticed every single one. He was always near, always watching, always calculating how far this invisible stalker dared to go.
He was too good at noticing. Too precise. Too prepared.
And Sona?
She was too calm.
Too steady.
Too familiar with the rhythm of these threats.
Kabir caught her examining a petal once, running her thumb along the blackened edge with an almost affectionate touch. "You're weirdly chill about all this," he said.
She simply smiled. "Maybe I'm used to strange things."
Arjun's gaze flickered toward her at that, sharp and searching.
As if she had said something she wasn't supposed to.
As if she knew something she shouldn't.
As if she wasn't the only prey here.
After class, Arjun walked her to the canteen. Riya and Kabir followed, chatting loudly, oblivious to the silent war unfolding between the two people beside them.
Arjun's hand brushed Sona's lower back in a protective gesture.
Sona angled slightly into his touch, as if allowing it.
As if indulging him.
But her eyes held something else. Something that watched him watch her.
Inside the canteen, another rose awaited her on the seat she always chose.
Riya gasped. Kabir cursed. Arjun's jaw clenched with the perfect amount of outrage.
Sona sat anyway.
Like she expected it.
Like she wanted it.
Like this was a ritual older than any of them realized.
Arjun leaned down. "You shouldn't sit there."
She met his eyes, her voice quiet. "Then move the rose."
He froze.
A single, tiny freeze, invisible to everyone else.
He didn't move it.
The day stretched on. Everyone assumed Arjun's tension came from trying to protect her. Everyone assumed Sona's calm came from trusting him.
No one questioned why their eyes kept catching on each other.
Why their steps aligned.
Why their breaths matched.
Why danger made them both look a little too alive.
Then, late afternoon, something shifted.
Arjun went to his locker to grab a textbook.
Riya and Kabir waited down the hall.
Sona lingered by the window, pretending to scroll through her phone.
He opened the locker.
A single blue rose waited inside.
Fresh. Stark. Cold against the metal.
He inhaled sharply.
Not in fear.
Not in shock.
In recognition.
His fingers hovered just above the petals, not touching, as though he could feel the sender through the air alone.
Behind him, Sona didn't look up from her phone.
But her lips curved.
Barely.
Almost nothing.
Almost.
Arjun shut the locker with a slow, controlled motion. His face smoothed into neutrality, but something new glimmered in his eyes—an acknowledgment. A return move.
He walked back to the others like nothing had shifted.
But the hunt had been reset.
The roles rewritten.
Rules changed.
The board rearranged.
A predator protecting a girl who wasn't prey.
A victim who wasn't helpless.
Two shadows circling each other, each pretending to be the light.
Riya asked something. Kabir laughed at his own joke.
Sona and Arjun walked side by side.
Neither touched the roses again.
Neither needed to.
The message was already delivered.
And the day ended on a note so normal it felt wrong. Too still. Too calm. The kind of calm that cracks open later.
The kind that hides teeth.
And the shadows didn't wait for night.
They came early.
Arjun walked Sona back toward the courtyard while the sky dipped into that dull grey-blue that made everything look colder. Students thinned out. Riya and Kabir trailed behind them, whispering nervously about the black roses as if the flowers had grown fangs.
Arjun reached for his phone. He only meant to check the time.
Instead, his screen lit up with a message from an unknown number.
Did you like your gift?
He stopped mid-step.
Another followed instantly.
You always find what I leave for you. That's why I choose you.
His grip tightened.
His heartbeat didn't spike—no, it steadied, sharpened. Like recognition. Like hunger.
Sona didn't turn around, but her shoulders shifted almost imperceptibly, as if she could sense the tension rolling off him like heat. Riya and Kabir walked straight into Arjun's back.
"Bro, warn us before you become a wall," Kabir muttered.
Arjun quickly locked his screen and forced his voice to flatten. "Just checking something."
He pocketed the phone before they could see the way the corner of his lip twitched. Too close to a smirk.
Later that night, everything pretended to settle. The campus lights buzzed. The dorms flickered with half-open windows and laughter.
Sona, however, didn't laugh.
She rarely did when things got interesting.
She slipped into her room, closed the door, and scanned the space like someone who didn't fear monsters but expected them. Her gaze brushed the window, the desk, the shadows in the corner.
Nothing yet.
She showered, more like out of habit before going to bed but this was different, she stripped off like she was inviting shadows to come and rouch her , have her, steam curling off her skin. The water drowned out the world, but something threaded through it.
A breath.
Soft.
Slow.
Behind her. Again.
She didn't turn. Her fingers paused mid-air, hovering above the tap. And this time A faint smile flickered at her lips. She did felt his touch,
The stalker.
Sigh escape her lips like finally having something she was craving so long. And maybe she was. His touch was deliberate. Feather light soft. Shaky. She froze arches back leaning in, his hands roamed over her bare skin maping her curves, massaging her breasts, sliding fingers right between her legs from behind where she wanted him the most. like he's worshipping the every moment of it.
He finally leaned in lips barely brush against her collarbone from behind, then loud thund broked riya loud as ever enter the room with kabir, and inside that locked washroom they both froze, sona didn't turned back she did let him sigh lick her wetness from his fingers she shivered.
When she finally looked back, there was no one.
But the mirror was fogged in a way that didn't match the steam's natural drift.
As if someone had leaned close.
Watched her. Tocuhed her. Undone her.
Exhaled her name without speaking it.
She wiped the glass.
Still nothing.
She stepped out, wrapped herself in a towel, and walked to the sink.
A black rose sat beside her toothbrush. Again
Not in her hand.
Not on the bed.
Not in the usual places.
Here.
Where she stood half-naked and wet. Still trembling with need, and something dangerously close to facination maybe excitment even.
All for only someone who crossed every boundary could have left it. Her stalker.
This wasn't fear for her.
This was acknowledgement. Of her own inmer monster who crave another.
And tonight She didn't touch it.
She simply whispered into the empty washroomroom, "bad timing riya, always bad timing."
Her phone buzzed from the near sink.
She didn't rush.
She walked out with the casual grace of someone drifting toward a familiar thrill. When she picked up her phone, Riya's voice shrieked through the speaker before Sona could greet her.
"Sona—open your door! Now! Like right now!"
Sona unlocked it just as Riya practically burst inside, panting, pouting .
"Move, i need to use washroom. And she ran inside past sona.
For the first time sona's eyes widen she left rose inside. And maybe the note. eyes wide, color drained from her face. Just for moment. And then in cue riya screamed.
Kabir and Arjun appeared behind her, breathless but composed. Well—Arjun was composed. Kabir looked two seconds from calling an exorcist. As he dragged her back out of washroom.
Riya grabbed Sona's arm. "Our bathroom. I— in— in there, i— i was- then… then I saw it."
Her voice shook. Riya never shook.
"Kabir dragged me out," she continued, voice trembling. "What the hell, Sona? Who's doing this?"
Sona tilted her head, calm as a lake before a storm. "Show them."
Riya stared. "I'm not going in there alone again."
Arjun stepped forward. "I'll check."
He entered the bathroom, Riya clutching Kabir outside like he was her shield.
Arjun saw the rose.
The placement.
The precision.
The message folded beneath it.
He didn't breathe for a moment.
The note sat as if waiting for his eyes only.
He kept his expression neutral, removed the note, and stepped back out.
Kabir glared. "Bro, what does it say? Something messed up, right? Something like 'I can see you when you sleep'?"
Riya smacked him. "Idiot, don't manifest it!"
Arjun unfolded the note slowly.
"stay away, from what belongs to me."
A chill slid through the hallway.
Kabir let out a tiny, embarrassingly high-pitched, "Nope."
Riya clasped her mouth. "This is getting out of hand."
Arjun looked at Sona.
She wasn't scared.
She wasn't trembling.
She wasn't confused.
She looked… thoughtful, like remembering what she experienced inside what still no one knows but her and her stalker.
As if every new threat was an old memory returning home. His touch gelt lile home.
Arjun knew.
He recognized the flicker in her eyes. His lips twiched.
But he also had a role to play.
"We need to trace these messages," he said, slipping into protective mode. "Find the handwriting. Compare it to students, professors, her ex's. Look for cameras near the dorm. Only we handle this. No admin."
Kabir nodded so fast his hair bounced. "Obviously. Admin will just give us a pamphlet on mental health and call it a day."
Riya hugged herself. "Okay. So we investigate. Together."
Arjun glanced at Sona. "You with us?"
Sona stepped closer, the towel still dripping faintly along its hem, her eyes locking with his.
"Of course," she said softly. "Why wouldn't I be?"
Arjun held her gaze for a second too long.
He was supposed to be the protector.
She was supposed to be the victim.
They were supposed to be on the same side.
But the moment stretched… and something darker pulsed between them.
A shared secret neither could expose.
A mutual hunt wrapped in silk and lies.
Riya broke the moment. "Okay, so step one—we start with the number. Trace it. Then the handwriting. Then—"
"Then we figure out who's stalking her," Arjun finished.
"And him," Kabir added quietly, pointing to the blue rose sticking halfway out of Arjun's pocket the one he did found in locker. Now in memory alone.
He shut up when Arjun stared him down.
Riya paled again. "Right. So you're… both targets."
Neither Sona nor Arjun corrected her.
They let the misunderstanding settle.
They let the fear grow.
They let themselves look like prey.
Because the real hunt hadn't started yet.
Not the one between them.
Not the one no one else could see.
As the dorm hall emptied and the lights dimmed, Arjun and Sona stood a few steps apart, watching each other over Riya and Kabir's frantic whispers.
He slipped his phone into his pocket.
She leaned against her doorway.
Two predators masquerading as victims.
Two victims masquerading as prey.
Two stalkers tracing each other in circles.
And the roses…
The black ones for her.
The blue ones for him.
Their silent language.
Their secret war.
And now, they had an audience.
The game had finally grown teeth.