This story is about a Malaysian who volunteered to listen to people in crisis and became the one in danger.
Night shifts at the crisis hotline always felt a little unreal. The room was too bright, the chairs too hard and the air too cold from an overworked AC that couldn’t hide the smell of instant noodles.
People think hotline work is just listening. They imagine cracking voices, frantic questions, maybe a sad story you forget by morning. That’s all true. They came with shaking breaths on the other end of the line, silence that stretched too long and the sound of someone trying not to cry in a place where no one could see them.
I volunteered not for extra credits at school. Maybe some do. I volunteered because I knew what loneliness felt like. I didn’t study psychology at University of Malaya to fix people. I just wanted to understand how a mind breaks and how it heals and where the line is between the two.
Some nights at the centre were slow. Other nights felt like the whole city was falling apart at once. Calls from hostels, hospital parking lots, stairwells, strangers whispering from bedrooms that didn’t feel safe.
And then there was him.
The caller who never told me his name.
The one who breathed carefully like he was afraid of being heard too clearly.
The first call
He first called on a Thursday just past midnight. I almost didn’t pick up because I was halfway through the last half of my cold teh tarik. But the phone lit up and the rule was simple: if it rings, you answer.
“Hello?” I said.
Nothing. Just a soft exhale.
I thought the line was dead until he spoke.
“You sound tired.”
His voice wasn’t shaky like the others. Not panicked. Not breaking.
Calm. Too calm.
Like he had been listening to me before I even spoke.
I straightened in my chair without meaning to. “It’s a long night,” I said. “How can I help you?”
Another exhale.
Like he was smiling without moving his mouth.
“I don’t need help,” he said. “I just wanted to talk to you.”
My skin tingled but I kept my tone steady.
People say strange things when they’re hurting.
People cling to voices before they cling to hope.
“What’s going on tonight?” I asked.
A pause.
A long one.
Too long.
“I heard you last week,” he said quietly.
My chest tightened. “Heard me?”
“You said something to another caller. About how pain doesn’t mean failure.”
He repeated my exact words back to me, slowly, like he had memorised them.
A chill moved through me.
Calls aren’t recorded.
There is no “listening in.”
People can’t hear you unless they’re the one calling.
“I didn’t call that night,” he added. “I just… stayed on the line.”
Sometimes the system took a few minutes to disconnect if the caller didn’t hang up. I’d seen it happen before, usually by accident. But with him, nothing felt accidental.
My fingers froze above the desk.
That wasn’t something anyone was supposed to be able to do.
But he said it like it was nothing special. Like he’d been there even when I hadn’t known.
“I like your voice,” he said. “It makes the night feel shorter.”
He wasn’t suicidal.
He didn’t sound distressed.
But something about him felt wrong.
Too steady.
Too familiar.
Too close, even though we had never met.
“I’m here if you need to talk about anything,” I said, keeping my voice flat and steady.
“I know,” he whispered.
Like he had known me much longer than a single phone call.
The second call
He called again the next night.
This time earlier, just after ten. Too early for the usual crisis wave. Too early for someone who said he didn’t need help.
The screen flashed the same anonymous code as last time.
Calls don’t come with identities here but I knew it was him the same way you recognise a headache before it hits. My hand hovered over the receiver longer than it should have. The room felt smaller, like the walls were listening too.
But the rule was still the rule.
“If it rings, you answer.”
So I did.
“Hello,” I said, keeping my tone even. “You’ve reached the helpline.”
“You’re not drinking teh tarik tonight,” he said.
My breath caught. I hadn’t mentioned the drink yesterday. And tonight I had swapped it for a black coffee from the machine, the one that tasted like burnt sugar and metal.
I forced my voice to stay calm. “What makes you think that?”
“You open packets loudly,” he said. “Last night it was a plastic cup. Tonight it wasn’t.”
I looked at the coffee cup beside me, the paper kind that didn’t crinkle.
My pulse thudded in my ears.
He shouldn’t hear that.
He shouldn’t know that.
Not unless…
“How can I support you tonight?” I asked, ignoring the question that wanted to claw its way out of my throat.
“I liked what you said yesterday,” he replied instead. “Your voice didn’t shake. Most people’s do.”
He paused, breathing softly into the line.
“You’re calmer when you’re alone.”
I swallowed hard. “Everyone sounds different when they’re alone.”
“No,” he said. “Not everyone. Just you.”
I felt something cold settle behind my ribs.
A slow dread.
Not from what he said but from how gently he said it.
He wasn’t teasing.
He wasn’t threatening.
He was observing me, the way someone watches a bird on a window pane.
“Tell me what’s going on tonight” I said.
Another too long pause.
“I walked past your building today.”
My heart stopped.
“What building?” I asked, keeping my voice flat even as my hands trembled under the desk.
“The one at Jalan Universiti,” he said. “Near the bus stop. You looked tired. You didn’t see me.”
My throat went dry.
He was right. I had walked that route after class.
A quick stop to buy bread.
Nothing unusual.
Nothing worth noticing.
Except someone had noticed.
Someone who shouldn’t have.
“You shouldn’t be following me” I said quietly.
He didn’t deny it.
He didn’t apologise.
He just whispered,
“I told you. I just wanted to talk to you.”
The line stayed open.
Breathing on both ends.
One calm.
One trying not to fall apart.
The third call
He didn’t call for 2 days after that.
I tried to tell myself it was a good thing. Most callers disappear when the crisis fades. That’s how it’s supposed to work. You hear them, you hold the line with them and then you let them go.
But I caught myself listening for the phone anyway.
Saturday night, just past 1, the screen lit up with the same anonymous code.
My stomach dropped before my hand even moved.
I answered.
“This is the helpline. How can I support you tonight?”
“You changed your hair” he said.
The words didn’t come out fast. They slid, like he was placing them carefully on the table between us.
My breath caught in my throat.
I had cut my hair that afternoon.
A small trim. Nothing dramatic.
I hadn’t posted anything.
I hadn’t told anyone.
I hadn’t even looked in the mirror long enough to notice the difference myself.
“How do you know that?” I asked, keeping my voice steady only because the training demanded it.
“It suits you,” he said softly. “Your neck looks more delicate now.”
A cold, heavy silence filled the line.
I felt the room tilt, just a little, like the floor was unsure beneath me.
“You can’t see me.” I said.
“I didn’t.” he replied. “Not tonight.”
That word sat between us, thick and wrong.
Tonight.
I swallowed hard. “If you need to talk about something…”
“I do,” he said. “I need to talk to you.”
His voice wasn’t emotional. Not shaky.
Just sure. Too sure.
“You walked fast today,” he continued. “Faster than usual. I almost couldn’t keep up.”
My breath left my body in a single drop.
He had followed me.
Not once.
Not coincidence.
Not a passing glance.
He had tracked my pace.
My direction.
My haircut.
My life.
“You need to stop,” I said quietly.
He laughed. Not loud, not mocking, just a soft sound like someone amused by a child.
“You keep saying that,” he whispered. “But you don’t hang up.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
He was right.
I should have ended the call.
Should have reported him the first night.
Should have told someone, anyone.
But he had slipped inside my routines before I realised he was there.
And now I wasn’t sure what he wanted, or what he already knew.
When I didn’t answer, he spoke again.
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
A statement.
Not a question. Not a request.
Then the line went dead.
I sat there long after the dial tone faded, my hand frozen around the receiver, my heart beating too close to my throat.
For the first time since I started volunteering, I wasn’t afraid for the caller.
I was afraid for myself.
The morning after
The day after the third call I tried to act normal.
I went to class.
I sat through a lecture on cognitive distortions.
I nodded along when the lecturer talked about how fear alters perception.
I even wrote the definition down twice, like I needed to convince myself I wasn’t slipping.
After class, I walked to the bus stop near Jalan Universiti, the same road he mentioned.The air was thick, the kind of heat that makes your shirt cling to your back. Students gathered under the shade, scrolling through their phones, laughing, living lives that didn’t feel like they were cracking under something invisible.
I kept telling myself he wasn’t there.
That his words were a bluff.
That he couldn’t possibly know me as well as he thought.
But I still scanned the street anyway.
A RapidKL bus roared past, stirring up dust and warm wind. When it cleared, I noticed someone across the road, standing half hidden behind a bus stop sign. Not unusual. Not alarming. Just a man in a plain shirt, head tilted slightly down.
I wouldn’t have looked twice if not for one detail:
He was standing completely still.
Not checking his phone.
Not looking for a bus.
Not talking to anyone.
Just… still.
Watching the road.
Or watching me.
It was hard to tell.
I shifted my bag higher on my shoulder, pretending to adjust the strap so I could look without looking. He didn’t move. Didn’t fidget. Didn’t act like someone waiting for anything.
My heartbeat thudded in my ears.
Maybe it wasn’t him.
Maybe it was just a man waiting for someone.
Maybe the heat was making me read into shadows.
I took a slow step back, deeper into the crowd.
His head lifted, just a little.
Not enough to see his face.
Just enough to let me know he had noticed.
Another bus arrived blocking my view.
When it pulled away, the man was gone.
No footsteps.
No direction he could have walked in fast enough.
Just gone.
My breath stuck in my throat. I stood there, clutching my bag against my chest, telling myself I was imagining things. That he wasn’t real. That the calls had gotten inside my head more than I realised.
But when I boarded the bus and found a seat by the window, my reflection showed something I couldn’t argue with:
My hands were shaking.
I stared at them the whole ride back, trying to convince myself of one thing, something simple, something sane:
People watch each other all the time.
It didn’t have to mean anything.
It didn’t have to be him.
But the truth settled low in my stomach, heavy and familiar:
It felt like him.
The fourth call
That night, I tried to sleep early.
I lay in bed with the lights off, the ceiling fan clicking in its uneven rhythm, the window cracked open to let in the heavy night air. I kept replaying the moment at the bus stop, telling myself I had imagined it. That it was just a man waiting. Those shadows look like intentions when you’re tired.
I almost believed myself.
Almost.
My phone buzzed once on the bedside table.
Then again.
A third time.
I reached for it lazily, expecting a friend or a classmate.
Then I froze.
It wasn’t anyone from my contacts.
It was my personal phone, the one callers should never be able to reach.
The one the centre never uses.
The one I never give out.
And yet the same anonymous code flashed across the screen.
He had found me.
My hand tightened around the phone before I answered.
“Ah… it is….y” I stopped myself. “Hello.”
He didn’t speak at first.
Just breathing.
Slow. Controlled.
The same rhythm I’d heard on the hotline.
Then he said, “You walk differently when you’re scared.”
My body went cold.
“I’m not scared,” I said, trying to sound steady.
“You are,” he replied, almost gently. “Your shoulders were stiff. And you held your bag higher than usual. You do that when you feel watched.”
My throat tightened.
I hadn’t told anyone about the man by the bus stop.
I hadn’t even admitted it to myself.
“You shouldn’t be calling me here,” I said quietly. “You can’t keep doing this.”
“You answered,” he said.
His calmness unnerved me more than shouting would. It felt like he was stating a fact, not winning an argument.
“You need help,” I said. “Let me direct you to someone who….”
“I don’t want someone,” he cut in softly. “I want you.”
The ceiling fan clicked once, snapped the silence open.
“You have no right to contact me privately,” I said. My voice shook. I hated that he could hear it.
“You keep pretending you don’t know me,” he whispered. “But you do.”
A shiver crawled up my spine.
“I don’t know who you are,” I said.
“You will,” he answered. “Soon.”
He hung up before I could speak.
I sat there in the dark, phone still pressed to my ear, the room suddenly too small, too quiet, too exposed. My heartbeat filled the space the way his voice had just moments before.
For the first time I couldn’t tell myself a comforting lie.
I couldn’t tell myself it was random.
I couldn’t tell myself it wasn’t him at the bus stop.
He wasn’t a voice anymore.
He was here.
In my world.
In my routines.
In places he had no right to be.
And he knew how to find me.
I tried to sleep after that but every sound felt too sharp. Every shadow looked like it was holding something behind it. By morning I convinced myself I was overreacting. Fear makes the world smaller, that’s what we learned in class. Fear changes the size of things.
So I went through the day pretending nothing had happened. Pretending I could still be the version of myself who wasn’t afraid of the dark.
By evening, I walked home like I always did, taking the same route, telling myself normal was still possible if I clung to the steps hard enough.
When I unlocked my apartment, everything looked the same.
My shoes by the door.
My bag on the chair.
The plant that refused to die.
Nothing loud, nothing broken.
I almost let myself breathe.
Then I saw the spare keys.
They were on the wrong side of the table.
Only by a few inches.
But wrong.
I always left them on the left corner, always, because I lose things easily. It’s a habit you don’t break, not even on your worst days. Now they sat in the middle of the table, tilted slightly, like someone had picked them up and put them down without thinking.
My first instinct was to lie to myself.
Maybe I’d moved them.
Maybe I was tired.
Maybe fear was rearranging the room for me.
Then my eyes slid to the window.
It was closed, but not latched.
I stood there for a long time, unable to move, listening to the small noises of a normal apartment.
The clicking fan.
The fridge hum.
A neighbour coughing somewhere down the hallway.
Everything sounded normal.
But nothing was normal.
I checked the rest of the room even though I already knew.
The charger cable was coiled differently.
My book was slightly open, like someone thumbed through the pages.
A hair clip I hadn’t used in weeks lay on the bedside table.
It wasn’t chaos.
It wasn’t robbery.
It wasn’t vandalism.
It was presence.
A quiet rearrangement.
A reminder.
A message in the softest possible handwriting:
I was here.
I touched your life.
I know where you sleep.
My knees softened and I sat on the floor beside the bed, feeling the fear settle low and heavy, not like a shock but like a truth finally returning home.
He hadn’t lied.
He knew how to find me.
And he had.
When the Help ddn’t believe me
I didn’t go to class the next morning.
I couldn’t sit through another lecture pretending my life was still my own. I walked to the hotline centre instead, even though my shift wasn’t until the evening. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, too bright for how I felt.
The supervisor, Aisha, was hunched over her laptop, typing with the kind of urgency that said she had been there too long already. When she saw me she pushed her glasses up her nose and gave a tired smile.
“You’re early,” she said. “Are you taking an extra shift?”
“No.” My voice came out thinner than I wanted. “I need to talk to you.”
Her fingers froze over the keyboard. “Alright. Sit.”
I sat across from her, gripping the strap of my bag like it was the only thing holding me upright. She waited. I tried to find the right words but everything sounded unbelievable the moment it formed in my head.
“A caller from my shift… he’s been contacting me outside the hotline.”
Her expression didn’t change. “How?”
“My personal phone.”
She blinked once, slow. “Are you sure? That’s not possible. The system doesn’t allow outgoing numbers to…”
“I’m sure,” I said, sharper than I meant. “He’s called me at home. He’s been watching me. He followed me. And I think…”
I stopped.
I couldn’t say it out loud.
I couldn’t say he had been inside my room.
Aisha leaned back. “You’ve been working a lot,” she said gently. “Night shifts are tough. It’s normal to feel on edge…”
“I’m not imagining this.”
“I’m not saying you are,” she said carefully. “But without proof…”
“I have proof,” I insisted. “My window latch. My keys. Things in my room were moved.”
“What kind of things?”
“Small things,” I said. “Nothing big. Just… wrong.”
She let out a tired breath.
“Look, we all get emotionally attached to certain calls. Sometimes it feels personal. That’s part of the job. But you know how easily the mind fills in gaps when we’re under stress.”
My stomach tightened.
She wasn’t listening.
Or worse, she was listening the way you listen to someone she didn’t quite trust to be steady.
“This isn’t stress,” I said quietly. “I know what I felt.”
Her voice softened. Dangerous.
“Have you been sleeping?”
“This isn’t about me not sleeping.”
“Have you considered,” she continued, still calm, still smiling in a way that felt like a door closing, “that you might be projecting fear onto ordinary things?”
The worst part?
I’d asked my own callers that question before.
I stared at my hands, suddenly unsure of everything, my memory, my certainty, my instincts. I hated that her doubt planted itself in me.
“I didn’t come here for a diagnosis,” I finally said. “I came because I’m scared.”
“I hear you,” she said. “Really, I do.”
That was the moment I knew she didn’t believe me.
I stood up before she could say anything else.
The room felt too small.
The air too heavy.
“Please let me know if he calls during your shift,” she added gently, as if offering a consolation prize.
I nodded because nodding was easier than explaining fear to someone who had already decided it wasn’t real.
Outside the centre, the sun was too bright.
Students walked past me laughing.
Motorcycles roared down the street.
Life didn’t pause for my terror.
I walked toward the bus stop, trying to breathe normally, trying to believe I wasn’t losing my mind.
But the feeling followed me, that quiet pressure on the back of my neck, the sense of eyes where no one should be.
For the first time, I realised something I hadn’t wanted to admit:
Maybe he didn’t want the hotline anymore.
Maybe he wanted me alone.
The face behind the voice
I didn’t go straight home after the centre.
I walked slowly, dragging my feet along the pavement like I could stretch the distance between myself and my front door. The street outside UM was loud enough to make me feel anonymous, which was the closest thing to safety I had left.
I stopped at the small cafe near the bus stop, the one where students hunched over laptops and iced drinks. I thought a crowded place might calm me down. I stood in line behind 2 girls arguing about their assignments, letting their normal voices cover the sound of my thoughts.
When it was my turn, the barista looked up.
He smiled before I spoke.
“You look tired today.”
The sentence landed like a cold hand on the back of my neck.
It was the way he said it.
Soft.
Familiar.
Like he had been studying my face for years.
I blinked, caught off guard. “Sorry?”
“You always come in on Fridays,” he said, still smiling, as if we were sharing a private joke. “You usually seem more awake.”
I didn’t recognise him at first.
Why would I?
He was just a barista.
Just another student working part-time.
Just another face I saw without really seeing.
But then he reached for a paper cup, not the plastic ones.
And I saw the way his fingers curled around it, gentle, careful, slow.
The same rhythm I heard through the phone.
The same pauses.
The same softness.
My stomach dropped.
He slid the drink toward me. “Black coffee, right?”
I hadn’t said my order yet.
He’d noticed.
He’d been noticing.
“Do we… know each other?” I asked, forcing my voice to stay flat.
His smile widened, but not in a friendly way.
More like someone pleased you’d solved half the puzzle.
“I’ve seen you around,” he said. “You walk fast when you’re anxious.”
My breath caught.
He leaned forward slightly, not enough to draw attention, just enough for me to hear him clearly.
“You keep pretending you don’t know me,” he whispered, “but you do.”
The cafe buzzed around us.
Students laughed.
A blender whirred.
Someone spilled ice.
But everything in me went still.
He wasn’t a stranger.
He wasn’t a voice.
He wasn’t a silhouette behind a bus stop sign.
He was here.
Behind a counter.
In plain sight.
In my routine.
Every Friday.
Every week.
Watching me the way someone watches a bird on a window pane, patient, unblinking, waiting for the moment it realises it’s being observed.
He tapped the lid of the coffee once, lightly, almost affectionate.
“I’ll call you tonight,” he said.
Then he turned to the next customer as if nothing had happened.
I stood there holding the cup, feeling the heat bleed through the cardboard into my palms, knowing one thing with a certainty that burned:
He was never far.
He was never random.
He had always been close enough to touch.
I stepped out of the cafe holding the cup like it was something fragile, something that might break if I breathed too hard. My fingers were warm but the rest of me felt cold, like the truth hadn’t finished settling in my body yet.
I didn’t look back through the window.
I couldn’t.
The sun was lowering, the kind of orange light that made the street look softer than it really was. Students crossed the road in clusters. Buses hissed at the curb. Motorcycles weaved between cars.
Life was moving around me as if nothing had happened.
But everything had.
I stood at the edge of the pavement, unable to take a step in any direction. If I went left, that was the route home. If I went right, that was the route to the hotline centre. If I stayed where I was, I was the easiest person in the world to watch.
The coffee cup shook faintly in my hand.
I knew one thing with absolute certainty:
I couldn’t go home.
Not when someone had stood in that room.
Not when someone had touched my things.
Not when someone had watched me sleep in the way you watch an animal you’re waiting to tame.
So I walked.
Not fast.
Not slow.
Just steady enough to look like any other student going nowhere important.
I crossed the street, letting the crowd swallow me. My eyes scanned everything without moving my head, reflections in windows, people leaning on railings, anyone who stood too still. Every shape flickered like it might turn into him.
When I reached the end of the street, I slipped into a convenience store. The air conditioning hit me hard, almost painful against my skin. I pretended to look at phone chargers while my mind tried to organize itself.
What now?
Call the police?
Tell them a barista smiled at me?
Tell them he said 2 sentences too gently?
Tell them I “felt” watched?
The thought made my stomach twist.
No, I needed something real.
Something he couldn’t deny.
Something someone would have to believe.
I bought a bottle of water I didn’t need. My hands were shaking so badly the cashier asked if I was okay. I lied. I always lie when I’m afraid.
Outside, I kept walking.
I didn’t have a destination.
I just needed distance.
The barista’s voice echoed in my head:
“You walk fast when you’re anxious.”
“You will soon.”
“I’ll call you tonight.”
I realised then that survival wasn’t going to look heroic.
It wasn’t going to be a single moment of bravery.
It was going to be a series of choices made in fear to take control of my life again
I needed a plan.I needed somewhere safe for the night.
And I knew exactly how many places in this city counted as safe,
Zero.
What it takes to stay alive
I stayed with a friend for the night, pretending it was because my fan broke down and my apartment was too hot. She believed me easily. People always believe the simple lies, the ones that don’t ask them to imagine your fear. I kept thinking about the same thing:
I needed proof. Something he couldn’t laugh away or twist into my imagination.
My phone stayed beside me on the mattress, screen up, recorder open. I told myself I was being dramatic. I told myself he might never call again. I told myself a hundred soft lies that dissolved the second the phone buzzed.
Same anonymous code. Same chill rolling down my spine. I pressed record and answered.
“You’re not home,” he said. His voice was softer than ever, like we were sharing a secret. “You always sleep by now.”
I swallowed, forcing the words out. “Why does it matter where I sleep?”
“Because I like knowing,” he murmured. “You’re different when you’re scared.”
“You looked peaceful last night”
Last night. In my room.
I felt my pulse stutter.
My breath hitched. I kept my voice soft, steady, the way I spoke to callers I needed to guide somewhere dangerous without startling them.
“You always notice things,” I said gently, as if complimenting him. “Even things inside my apartment.”
A pause, tiny but real.
“You leave your keys in different places now,” he answered. “It’s confusing.”
A sharp cold settled under my skin.
He continued, almost thoughtful.
“And you should lock your window better. It opens too easily.”
My stomach turned.
That was it, the moment I needed.
“You can’t keep doing this,” I whispered. “You can’t keep coming inside.”
He exhaled, slow and deliberate, like my fear pleased him.
“You never noticed,” he said softly. “I’ve had months to learn your patterns.”
The recording caught every word. Every breath.
My voice cracked, but I kept my tone calm. “Why me?”
“You listen differently,” he said. “You listen like you care.”
I let the silence stretch, just long enough for him to fill it.
“And I like watching you sleep,” he murmured. “You don’t look afraid then.”
My throat closed.
But fear wasn’t done with me yet.
I needed to confront him, deliberately, safely and end whatever power he thought he had.
“Meet me,” I said suddenly.
It surprised even me. Silence stretched on the line.
Then: “You want to see me?”
“I want answers,” I said. “If you want me to understand you, then meet me somewhere public. Somewhere bright.”
He breathed in sharply, not calm, not controlled. Caught off guard.
“When?” he asked.
“Tomorrow,” I said. “The cafe where you work. 5 pm.”
Another pause.
“You’ll come alone?” he asked.
“Yes,” I lied.
If he refused, I’d still have him on the recording.
If he agreed, I’d have something more valuable: confirmation.
He hesitated long enough for my skin to prickle.
“Okay,” he whispered. “Tomorrow.”
He hung up.
My hand shook around the phone and I barely slept that night.
The next day, I showed the recording to my friend and asked her to be near the cafe. I needed someone to know where I would be.
At 5 o’clock, the cafe buzzed like any other day and the world looked ordinary.
I pressed record as I stepped inside.
He approached quietly, apron still on.
“You came,” he said, smiling like this was a date.
I forced myself to hold his gaze. My heartbeat thudded so loudly I was sure he heard it.
“You’ve been following me,” I said softly. “Watching me.”
He didn’t deny it. He didn’t even hide it.
“You never noticed before,” he said. “Not until recently. I was careful.”
“And my room?” I whispered.
His smile deepened.
Like he enjoyed being seen clearly.
“You left the window open,” he said. “I only went in to check on you.”
My stomach flipped but I kept my voice steady.
“You don’t get to do that,” I whispered.
He tilted his head.
“You asked to meet me. Doesn’t that mean you understand?”
“No,” I said. “It means I needed to see your face when I tell you this…”
He blinked, taken off guard.
“…I recorded you.”
His smile froze.
“Everything you said,” I continued. “The keys. The window. Watching me sleep. It’s all on my phone. And I’m giving it to campus security and the police.”
The shift in him wasn’t loud.
It was small, sharp, like glass cracking.
“You think they’ll believe you?” he murmured.
“I don’t need them to believe me,” I said. “I just need them to hear you.”
For the first time, he looked uncertain.
Then something colder flickered behind his eyes, irritation, maybe even fear, before he stepped back.
“This isn’t over,” he said quietly.
“Yes,” I replied. “It is.”
I didn’t look away until he walked out of the cafe.
My knees nearly buckled the second he was gone.
That evening , I went back to the hotline centre with my phone and the timestamped recordings.
Aisha listened without blinking. She didn’t interrupt. She didn’t diagnose. She didn’t tell me to sleep more.
When the recording finished, she closed her eyes and exhaled like she’d been holding her breath.
“I’m so, so sorry,” she said.
The centre filed a report.
Campus security pulled CCTV.
They found him on footage near the cafe, the bus stop, the walkway I used every day.
The police took my statement.
He was issued a warning strong enough to keep him away, or at least force him back into the shadows.
I didn’t return to the hotline after that. Some places carry too many echoes.
In the weeks that followed, life didn’t snap back into place.
It shifted quietly, like furniture moved a few inches to the left.
I changed my phone number
I changed my routes.
I changed my lock.
I moved to a room with a window that shut tight.
But slowly, the world widened again.
I went back to class.
I sat in cafes that didn’t know my order.
I rode the LRT without jumping at every breath behind me.
Fear didn’t vanish to be honest, it just stopped being the loudest thing in the room.
One evening, months later, I realised something small but important.
I walked past the old cafe, the one where he’d first looked at me too closely, and nothing inside me tightened. My steps didn’t falter. My body didn’t shake.
I kept walking.
I wasn’t the same person who picked up that first call, but I had my life back.
Maybe not all of it.
Maybe not perfectly.
But enough to keep going.
Enough to choose my own steps again.
And for now, that was victory.
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