Chapter 4 - The stalker

David watched his younger self and Lila walk away down the curved path bordered by jacaranda trees, their laughter faint and carried by the wind. The sun had shifted since morning—now it cast longer shadows, and the light had that soft, golden haze that made everything look like an old photograph.

He remained seated on the bench, one hand resting on his knee, the other loosely gripping the edge as though afraid the moment might drift away without him.

25th June, 1971. The date circled itself in his mind like a persistent echo. He still had two days. Forty-eight hours—an arbitrary but loaded span of time. It felt like both a gift and a sentence.

He would use it well.

David stood up slowly, the air warm around him, the scent of summer and old stone thick in his lungs. He began moving through the city—not the city as it was now, but the city as he had once known it. The pavements cracked in the same places, the café on Whitmore Street still played the same vinyl jazz in the afternoons, and even the faces of strangers felt oddly familiar, like extras from a recurring dream.

He visited the bookstore Lila used to love—its dusty corners, the wooden floor that creaked too much near the philosophy section. He sat at the café where they once shared pastries too sweet for their age, and he lingered near the bridge where she'd once spoken of dreams that never came true. He didn't approach her. Not yet. It wasn't time.

In between, he knocked gently on old doors—those belonging to Lila's childhood friends, her older cousin who lived near the coast, a retired professor who once spoke fondly of her essays. He asked careful questions, wrapped in harmless curiosity, ensuring no suspicion was stirred. He told no lies, but withheld the impossible truth.

Even in the midst of this quiet pursuit, the past bled through like watercolor in rain. There were moments—standing in front of Lila's childhood home or hearing a certain piano tune drift from a radio—where the lines between memory and reality blurred. He would feel a stillness come over him, an ache that had no name, as if part of him was still nineteen, falling in love with the way she said the word "maybe."

Time, in those moments, folded strangely.

He knew he had to stay focused. But Lila—her smile, her voice, that one night in June—pulled at the edges of his purpose like gravity. She wasn't just a person from his past. She was the point around which everything still turned.

The question remained: Would this path lead him closer to answers, or simply deeper into memory?

David didn't know yet. And he didn't need to. Not now. The clock was still ticking, but for the first time in years, he felt like he might be walking toward something, not just running from the silence.

Two days had passed. Just like that. Quietly, without permission.

Time, David thought, was not something that walked. It drifted, like dust in afternoon light—slow when you watched it, gone when you blinked. He had traced her days, lingered at familiar corners, exchanged polite questions over steaming cups with people who remembered her fondly but knew nothing of what was to come. Yet the mystery, like smoke through fingers, refused to be held.

25th June 1971.

11:43 AM.

It had begun.

David sat on the bench outside the college again, the same one where he had watched his younger self just days before. The same warmth in the air, the same soft hum of the world moving just beyond his reach. But this time, there was a weight in his chest that had only grown heavier.

He had no answers. No signs. Only this—her last call, never heard, and a vanishing that had rewritten the script of his life.

So he chose what remained. He would follow her. Not like a predator, but like a man with no other road. She would not know him. She would not recognize him. Just a stranger beneath a tired sky. But he had to know what happened after that hour—after midnight, when the world turned, and she was lost to time.

Of course, the thought troubled him. A man following a girl at night—that was not the kind of man he wanted to be. It felt wrong, it felt desperate. But desperation had long since become a language he knew.

The campus buzzed in the distance, students in motion like paper boats on a stream. Laughter, heels tapping on old bricks, and the occasional breeze rustling leaves overhead. He wasn't part of it. He was just... there.

David leaned back, the bench creaking beneath him. He let the warmth of the noon sun wash over his face. He imagined her voice again, the way she used to say his name—not rushed, not slow, but like a song that lingered.

The hour was drawing near. And he would be ready.

Whatever that meant.

Twelve o'clock.

The old bell rang out with a sound both hollow and rich—like memory itself. It echoed through the college yard, brushing against the skin of the afternoon like a gentle warning. David sat up, spine straightening on instinct. His breath caught, not from fear, but from something more complicated—a mix of longing and dread, of old pain wearing new clothes.

He didn't want to lose her again. Not now. Not when the universe, in some impossible way, had turned the clock back and handed him this chance. Whatever this was.

Then, there she was.

Lila stepped out into the sun, laughing softly at something his younger self had said. David's eyes clung to her figure—not with desire, not even with nostalgia, but with the fierce grip of someone desperate to understand. She hadn't changed. Or perhaps time had bent in such a way that he couldn't see the changes anymore.

They walked together for a while, just like they used to. The way she tilted her head when she listened. The way he—his younger self—gestured too much when nervous. David trailed behind them like a shadow displaced. He didn't belong in this scene. But then again, maybe he never had.

At the edge of the main road, they split.

He knew this part. This was routine. Lila's home was in the opposite direction. David's younger self waved at her and turned away, walking off into the past like a ghost unaware of the storm coming.

David hesitated for a breath. Then moved.

He followed Lila, his steps quiet, deliberate. Always keeping his distance. He felt like a secret folded into the afternoon, carried by the same wind that once blew through the summer of his youth. She didn't look back. She never did.

And he hoped she wouldn't. Not yet.

Lila didn't turn her head, didn't glance behind her. But her shoulders stiffened—not much, just enough. The rhythm of her walk shifted, became less fluid. A subtle unease threaded itself through her steps, as if her body knew something her conscious mind hadn't quite grasped.

David noticed. He always had a way of reading her, even when she wasn't saying anything at all. The angle of her elbow. The way she paused before crossing a street. These small changes spoke louder than words.

She felt it.

She felt him.

Not as David, not as the man she once held with quiet affection. But as something… there. A presence trailing her steps. A possibility.

He slowed down. He let the space between them grow, a silent apology carried in the footfalls he withheld. Of course he would let her go. That was never a question.

He watched her take the right turn, her pace increasing ever so slightly, swallowed slowly by the geometry of the street.

David didn't follow. Not directly. He didn't need to. He remembered that road. He remembered the cracked sidewalk that curved past the post office, the small tea stall that had always smelled of mint and old newspapers. He remembered her home, nestled on a quiet lane with a white iron gate that always creaked on windy nights.

So instead, he took the longer route.

A path that cut behind the old library, where time had curled up like a sleeping cat. The streets felt softer here, filled with half-light and the echoes of a life that had once felt endless.

He wasn't just walking toward her house.

He was walking toward a memory.

Or maybe a moment waiting to be rewritten.

She might've already been home by the time David reached the corner. That's how time worked here—quietly bending, folding itself between footsteps and street turns. He arrived at 12:32 PM, the sunlight slanting a little sharper, like the world itself was watching him.

Only twelve hours left. That number echoed in his mind like a quiet countdown.

He waited. For minutes, then hours. Or at least it felt like hours. It was hard to tell anymore. Time didn't behave the same way when you were chasing the past. Sometimes it slipped through your fingers like sand, and other times it just stood still—mocking you.

She came out once or twice, just for small errands—rinsing cloths, speaking briefly to someone down the road, picking up something from the little store two blocks away. She didn't wander. She didn't drift. She was... still. And that stillness was strange.

Until 4:18 PM.

David didn't need a sign. His instincts reacted before his thoughts did. She stepped out again, but this time felt different. Not a chore. Not a casual walk. Something else. Something intentional.

This could be it. The moment where it all begins to unravel.

His heart ticked louder than his watch. He didn't want to lose her again.

Not when she was right there—one turn, one shadow away from disappearing again.

So he moved. Not fast. Not too close. Just enough to keep her in sight, slipping between parked cars, half-drawn curtains, and the rhythm of a world that didn't know it was being watched.

The air felt heavier now. Something was coming. But he couldn't yet tell if it was revelation, or repetition.