I couldn't take this anymore. "What do you want from me?" I demanded.

He lifted both hands, and only then did I notice he was carrying two plastic bags.

"I mean no harm!" Roger said quickly. "I… I shouldn't talk to people. Every time I do, I'm… I'm misunderstood! This is… fruit!"

For a moment, he seemed almost painfully sincere.

Maybe he hadn't been lurking outside my door all that time. Maybe he'd simply gone back to fetch fruit for me?

When I replayed everything in my head, I realized that if I ignored his unsettling tone and those unnerving eyes, nothing he had said actually carried malice.

"But your tone…" I started.

"I… I stutter," he explained. "If I don't force out my words that way, I can't even… finish a sentence. That's why… why people misunderstand me. So I just… I just stopped talking to anyone."

"I see…"

I was about to ask why his eyes looked so frightening, when it struck me: he was cross-eyed.

All day I had been convinced he was a murderer. Of course his gaze would seem sinister to me.

The realization made me want to slap myself.

A stutter. Cross-eyed. Minor defects, yes, but not a crime. I had twisted them into something monstrous. If I kept doubting someone who had only tried to be kind, I'd lose sleep with guilt.

No—wait. I still hadn't ruled out the possibility that he was a killer.

I drew breath to press him further, but he spoke first. His voice had flattened again, stripped of all warmth, and—tellingly—his stutter vanished.

"Sorry for frightening you. I didn't clean off the inspection stamp properly. When I saw you lived across from me, I thought I'd check if you were all right. Then I heard you were pregnant, so I brought you some fruit from my hometown."

He set the two bags down on the floor.

"If you're scared, wait until I leave before picking them up. One more thing, don't make up lies that sound so fake. Otherwise, people will know you live alone."

And with that, he walked away.

I stood frozen, my certainty unraveling. Had I really been mistaken when I saw that tattoo in the soup?

After a few minutes of silence, I cracked open the door, snatched the bags inside, and shut it quickly.

They really were just bags of fruit.

Could Roger truly be a kindhearted man, clumsy but well-meaning? I still didn't dare eat them, but doubt gnawed at me.

That was when my phone rang.

The caller ID made my blood run cold. It was my boyfriend.

He wasn't dead!

Relief surged, followed by a wave of fury. If he were alive, why had he vanished for a month without a single word?

I pressed the phone to my ear, ready to unleash my anger… only to hear his frantic voice spill through the line.

"Amanda! Help me! He's cutting off my skin, piece by piece! Ah—don't kill me—"

His scream pierced the receiver, then the call went dead.

I dialed back instantly. Once. Declined. Again. Straight to voicemail.

His phone had been switched off.

I stood rooted to the floor, heart pounding, unable to breathe. He was alive. And in danger.

And if he was being skinned alive… then that soup—

No. I couldn't let myself finish the thought. I called the police immediately.

I told them everything—every word of the phone call. Not long after, two officers showed up at my door and said they needed me to come down to the station to assist with the investigation.

The seriousness on their faces, the fact that they were taking me to the police station—and not just the local precinct—finally made it feel like they were treating this like it was a real case.

But as soon as I stepped inside, a middle-aged officer stormed toward me, his face thunderous. His voice cracked like a whip.

"You're the one who called this in? Do you want to go to prison yourself?"

The two officers who brought me here rushed over to restrain the middle-aged officer.

"Captain Beckett, what's going on? Calm down, sir..."

Why was this middle-aged officer furious with me? What did he mean by that outburst?

I didn't stop to think. "My boyfriend's life is in danger. Please, you have to—"

"Danger?" His glare sharpened, his voice like a whip. "The police station is swamped right now. Don't waste police resources with your petty relationship drama!"

What? Relationship drama?

He turned on his heel and stormed away.

A few minutes later, another officer approached me with an explanation. "This afternoon, you said your boyfriend had been missing for a month, correct?"

I nodded. "Yes."

"Edmund Rhodes. Twenty-four." He rattled off my boyfriend's information.

"Yes!" I nodded again.

"He's not missing," the officer replied flatly. "Last month, he went back to his hometown. Every Saturday, he calls his parents there. In fact, we just got off the phone with him."

"That's impossible!" I snapped. "He hasn't contacted me for a month!"

"We asked him. He told us he's broken up with you."

My legs gave out. I collapsed into the chair, numb.

Deep down, I'd already accepted that possibility—that he had simply chosen not to reach out. But hearing it confirmed, so bluntly, shattered me all over again.

And now, I understood Captain Beckett's anger. He thought I was clinging to Edmund, unwilling to let go, and had fabricated this story about danger to trick the police into helping me track him down.

But no, wait—just moments ago, Edmund himself had called me, begging for help!

"That's not true!" I insisted. "He really did call me for help!"

The officer's patience frayed. His tone sharpened. "Do you realize false reports can get you detained? I'm giving you only a verbal warning this time."

He didn't believe me.

"But I really—"

He raised a hand, cutting me off, then pulled out his phone. After a few taps, he thrust it toward me. "This is Edmund's number, isn't it?"

"Yes!" I recognized it instantly.

He dialed, put it on speaker.

"Hello?" Edmund's voice answered.

"Tell your girlfriend clearly. Stop filing false reports," the officer barked.

"Edmund? You're okay?" I burst out.

"We've broken up," he said coldly.

"Then what about the call just now? You begged me to save you. What was that all about?"

"I never called you," he replied, baffled.

I froze. My mind blanked.

The officer hung up and tucked away his phone. Then he arranged for a police car to drive me home.

I refused. I explained again and again that I had heard Edmund's desperate cries.

That was when the officer looked at me strangely, as if weighing his words. "Have you been to a hospital recently?"

I understood immediately. He thought I was mentally unstable.

First, I had claimed to find human skin with my boyfriend's tattoo in a bowl of soup. Then I'd insisted he was in mortal danger. Their investigations had turned up nothing but contradictions. To them, I was delusional.

If I were in their place, I might suspect the same.

Shaken, I left the police station.

Had Edmund's departure broken me so badly that I'd actually lost my grip on reality? Was I truly sick?

I resolved to get checked tomorrow.

But the moment I stepped back into my apartment, my phone rang again.

It was Edmund.

"Just now, that wasn't me! Amanda, help me! Help—"

The line cut out mid-scream.

Just now… that person wasn't him?

I glanced at my phone. The call log was there—the most recent call, and the one before it.

Hallucination? Impossible.

I cursed myself for not recording the call.

If I ruled out hallucination, then the person who had just spoken to the police might not have been Edmund at all.

If someone knew how to mimic voices, the distortion over a phone line would make it easy to fool the listener.

And if Edmund really was being held captive, there was only one suspect—Roger.

Edmund had said over the phone that someone was cutting pieces of his skin, and a piece of skin with his tattoo had turned up in Roger's organ soup.

On top of that, Roger had suddenly appeared at my door earlier, fishing for information.

Which meant he knew I was the one who had called the police—and now he might want to silence me.

I was in danger.

Better to risk being misunderstood by the police than to be murdered by Roger.

Knowing their response would likely be slow, I reported it anyway, then packed to hide out at a hotel outside the complex.

But the moment I stepped out my door, disaster struck.

The door opposite mine opened. Roger stepped out.

It was already past two in the morning. He wasn't asleep? Didn't he have a soup shop to run in the morning?

Why would he leave the house at this hour?

Most suspicious of all—why had he come out now, of all times, precisely when I opened my door to leave?

"You're going out so late," Roger asked casually. "Aren't you afraid it's dangerous?"

My heart pounded, but I forced myself to act calm. "What about you? What are you doing?"

"I… I'm going to the toilet. My bathroom's not ready yet."

"Fine. Go ahead then." I ducked back inside and pressed my eye to the peephole.

The sensor light in the corridor was still on. Roger stood frozen in place.

Liar. What bathroom needs to be ready? Even if it did, unless the water was cut off, a toilet would still work.

At least five seconds passed before he finally moved.

He walked down the hall. He had to keep up the act.

I locked the door tight, my suspicion solidifying into certainty. Something was very wrong with him.

I stayed pressed to the door, listening for every sound, watching through the peephole.

Before long, Roger returned. He lingered outside his door for a moment, then abruptly turned and walked toward mine.

He knocked.

My throat tightened. I gulped, frozen in place, trembling despite myself.

"You're in there, aren't you, miss?" Roger's voice was calm. "His name's Edmund, right? You two used to eat at my shop all the time."

I couldn't hold back. "So it was you! You killed him!"

Roger chuckled, the sound sending chills up my spine. "Ah, so you are inside. Young people… so impatient. Just a little bluff and you give yourself away."

"What do you want?" I demanded.

Going to the hotel was no longer an option. But the door was solid iron. For now, at least, I had some safety.

"What do I want?" His voice dipped low. "You already know. Why ask?"

Yes. I knew. He wanted to kill me.

Then Roger turned and walked back toward his apartment. For a moment, I thought maybe he was insane—frightening me for no reason, then crawled back into bed. He surely wouldn't be waiting for the police to come take him.

But the next second, he reappeared carrying a toolbox. He crouched low, out of sight from the peephole.

Then I heard the sound of him picking my lock.