I'd returned before dawn. Filed my report. Dismissed. The mask hung at my hip now, a familiar weight I'd long stopped noticing.

Sunlight stretched long across the rooftops. Shopkeepers swept their doorsteps. Children ran past, laughing at something I didn't hear. Ordinary lives.

I told myself I was taking the long way back. The lie was old enough to have worn smooth.

My eye moved through the crowd out of habit. Then it found you.

I did not stop. The mask beneath my hand did not shift. But the noise of the village dulled at the edges, and something tight in my chest eased.

You had not seen me yet.