I spent the night staring at the ceiling, the flickering streetlights outside casting long, jagged shadows across my room. The air was thick, suffocating in its stillness, but my mind was restless, replaying every second of the night before.

  I replayed Adrian's words, his expression, and the way he had let me tap my fingers against his palm without pulling away. It must have been a mistake. A momentary lapse in judgment.

  Maybe he was just too drunk. People were kinder when they were drunk - more forgiving, more affectionate. But sobriety had a way of sharpening reality like a knife. In the morning he would wake up, rub the sleep from his eyes, and realize he had wasted his time with me.

  Or worse, he'd come tomorrow, smile that same charming smile, and then - eventually - he'd get bored, irritated, exhausted. Because that's what always happened.

  I knew how it worked.

  I had spent my whole life watching people drift in and out, each departure confirming what I had always feared: I was exhausting. A burden wrapped in skin. My parents were the first to prove it.

  My mother, delicate and sharp-tongued, had spent most of my childhood shaking her head at me, exhaling through her nose in quiet exasperation.

  She never hit me, never shouted - but she didn't have to. Her silence was enough. The way she watched me straighten my books three times in a row, wipe the table exactly six times before I could eat, check the locks on the doors again and again, and then sigh.

  It was the same sigh she gave when my father left. A sigh of inconvenience.

  And my father? He had never been mean. Never cruel. Just absent. A shadow I sometimes caught glimpses of in the form of forgotten birthday cards or voicemails left at odd hours. When he spoke to me, his voice was hollow, as if he had already given up pretending to care.

  I never blamed him for leaving, though. Given the choice, I wouldn't have wanted to stay with him either.

  Then there were my so-called friends. I had always been the quiet one, the girl people kept around because I was useful, not because they actually liked me. I was the one who helped with homework, who let people copy my exam answers, who always listened when someone had something to complain about but never spoke when it was my turn.

  They tolerated me, smiled in my face, and whispered behind my back.

  "She's so weird."

  "Did you see the way she lines up her pens?"

  "She does this weird tapping thing with her fingers. It's like she's possessed or something."

  They thought I didn't hear them. I always heard them.

  But the worst part? I stayed. I let them keep me around like a pet because having false friends was better than being all alone. I accepted the quiet taunts, and the little humiliations because at least they were there. Until they weren't. Until they, too, got tired of me.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  So I knew Adrian wouldn't stay.

  It wasn't personal. It was just the way people were.

  Maybe he wouldn't even show up tomorrow. Maybe he'd wake up, remember the strange girl he'd met in the bar, and decide he had better things to do than entertain a headcase. Or maybe he would show up, but only to amuse me for a while, like everyone else.

  He'd smile, be nice, listen. And then, after a few days, a few weeks, he would change.

  People always do.

  He'd start shifting in his seat when I talked too much. He'd look down at his phone when I started typing. He'd stop asking questions, and stop looking at me with that mixture of curiosity and something else I couldn't put my finger on.

  And then, one day, he'd just stop coming. It was inevitable.

  So why did I still feel that stupid little flutter in my chest when I thought of him? Why did I still think of his hand, warm beneath mine, firm as he let me press my fingers against his palm?

  I turned onto my side, squeezed my eyes shut, and willed myself to fall asleep.

  It was just a joke. A fleeting moment. A mistake.

  And it would be over by tomorrow.

  I took a slow breath and pressed my fingers to my ribs, trying to calm the erratic beating of my heart. It was just a stupid, fleeting moment. A man humouring a woman he'd never speak to again. I knew that, and yet my body reacted as if it had been hit by something sharp and unexpected - hope and I hated hope.

  I closed my eyes, forcing myself to focus on something else, something steady, something real. And then I saw it - the deep red against my palms, the way it had seeped into the creases of my skin, thick and warm, dripping between my fingers in lazy trails.

  Her blood.

  The memory settled over me like a weighted blanket, thick and suffocating at first, but then - something else. Something softer. A stillness.

  The moment she had gone silent, the air had changed, as if the world had taken a breath and decided to be quiet just for me. It had been an accident. A terrible, stupid accident.

  And yet, staring at her lifeless body, there had been an eerie kind of peace, as if the noise in my head had finally died down to a whisper.

  I curled my fingers into my palms, remembering how it had felt, how warm it had been, how it had clung to my skin. The way it had slowed my heartbeat instead of speeding it up.

  For the first time all night, my pulse evened out.

  I exhaled.

  And then the snap in my head.

  A sharp, ugly crack of sanity pushed its way back into my consciousness. My eyes flew open, and suddenly my hands weren't warm. They were cold, icy cold, and empty. My chest tightened, my stomach clenched, and the breath I had just exhaled turned to stone in my throat.

  I had killed someone.

  It had been a mistake. A terrible, irreversible mistake. But I had felt calm about it. I had let that calm envelop me as if it was something I deserved.

  A sickening, rotting wave of guilt washed over me and made me sit up straight. My heart pounded against my ribs, my hands twitched, and my vision blurred at the edges. I had to move. I had to fix something, anything.

  I stumbled into the kitchen, fingers already reaching for the cutlery drawer, ripping it open with trembling hands. The knives had been moved. Not by me. I hadn't put them back properly. The thought sent a violent shudder down my spine.

  Fix it. Fix it. Fix it.

  I dropped to my knees on the cold tiled floor and started rearranging them, lining them up in perfect parallel rows, the handles facing the same way, the spaces between them the same as the millimeter. I did it once. Twice. A third time.

  It wasn't right.

  My breathing became shallow and my head twitched, a sharp, involuntary jerk to the side, my brain screaming at me that I was still wrong.

  I shoved all the utensils out of the way and started again.

  One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

  Five times. Five was a good number. It felt like a safe number.

  But my hands kept shaking.

  I clenched my jaw, my nails digging into my palms, squeezing hard enough to leave crescents in my skin. I closed my eyes and counted again, whispering to myself.

  "One. Two. Three. Four. Five."

  I waited. Silence.

  My heart was still pounding.

  My fingers and head twitched.

  I clenched my jaw tighter, my stomach twisting into knots. I clenched my hands into fists and pressed them against my temples, trying to squeeze the guilt out of my skull, but it wouldn't go away. It stayed, sinking its claws into me, whispering, laughing, reminding me that no matter how many times I reordered the damn cutlery - I had still killed someone.