**The first pages moved slowly.**
An essential style, short sentences, many silences between one line of dialogue and the next.
*The house was silent, too silent to feel familiar.*
Aurora took notes in the margin, automatically — a professional reflex. *Good tension. Essential dialogue. Well-built male character.*
She kept going.
A girl moving into a new apartment. A cold, distant roommate. The slow build of something that didn't have a name yet.
One chapter. Then another.
At some point the pen stopped on the page.
*You're just irrelevant.*
She reread the line.
Took a sip of coffee, now lukewarm.
Kept going.
The pages went on — a scene in the kitchen, a walk in the rain, an umbrella passed from one hand to another without a word.
She got to a later chapter — a scene at the cinema, a girl crying silently, a guy watching her without comforting her, just observing.
She felt her eyes burn.
A tear slid down her cheek, before she even noticed.
She wiped it away with the back of her hand, almost annoyed.
She checked the clock. It was late.
She closed the folder.
She stayed still, her gaze lost in the darkness beyond the window.
---
The next day, the mall was full of its usual noise — overlapping voices, background music, the hum of escalators.
"Come on, let's go in here," Mia said, pulling Aurora toward a storefront.
The shop was lit up, full of people rifling through the racks. Aurora followed Mia in, distracted, her eyes drifting over the clothes without really settling on anything.
"This would look good on you," Mia said, pulling a jacket off a hanger.
Aurora glanced at it. "Maybe."
On the other side of the store, beyond the window, the flow of people moved steadily — families, groups of kids, someone already loaded down with bags.
A man walked among them, hands in the pockets of his gray hoodie. A full tracksuit, matching pants and hoodie, a white t-shirt peeking out at the collar. The hood pulled up, headphones hanging around his neck, off.
Another man walked beside him, phone in hand.
"We need to swing by the other side too," he said, not looking up from the screen. "There's that thing with the editor to sort out."
The man with the hood gave a small nod.
"Sure."
They walked past the store.
They didn't slow down. They didn't stop.
Inside, Aurora turned toward the nearby shelf, her hand running along a row of sweaters.
For a moment, she froze.
She looked up toward the window.
Outside, the crowd kept moving — heads, shoulders, shopping bags. No one who looked familiar.
She shook her head slightly and went back to the sweaters.
"Look at this," Mia said, showing her a color.
"Cute," Aurora replied, without really looking at it.
Outside, the two men had already disappeared around the corner.