Day 126

I haven’t seen this man leave his house once. He moves like he’s stuck in slow motion — comes out of his bedroom, drinks water, sits on the couch. Just sits there, doing odd little things at 0.25x speed, then drifts back to bed or passes out on the couch. That’s his whole life. But today was different. He never came out of his room. I sat at the window waiting. Nothing. Why am I even worried? He’ll show up tomorrow. I’m sure.

Day 129

Still no sign. Maybe he slipped out when I was asleep, maybe he’s gone to see someone. Or maybe… I don’t know. Should I check? And say what — that I’m a washed-up old man with no job, no family, who stares at his neighbour through the window like a creep? Of course not. I’ll keep out of it. Yes. That’s better.

Day 131

It’s too long now. Nobody just vanishes like this. I have to do something. I put on a clean shirt, combed down my hair. My varicose veins make even crossing the street a production, but at least the elevator works. Fifth floor. That should be his place.

I knock once. Twice. Three times. Nothing. Then a sound — his phone, ringing inside. Who leaves their phone behind for days? Unless he’s one of those off-the-grid lunatics. My hands shake. Do I call the police? Yes. I must. If nothing’s wrong, I’ll invent an excuse.

The police arrive. They try the bell, knock harder. No answer. The stink hits us first, thick and sour, crawling into my nostrils. They force the door. Inside is chaos — newspapers scattered everywhere, some covered with red circles and underlines, like a madman’s homework.

One officer calls me to the bedroom. I hesitate, then step inside.

He’s there. Hanging. From ceiling to floor. His face swollen blue, his eyes white and cloudy like glass left in dirty water. Flies buzz around him, dive at his skin, crawl over the rope. The sound is unbearable.

I can’t breathe. I stagger back, out of the room, out of the house, out of him. The stink clings to me like a second skin.

I am at the police station now, sitting on a hard wooden chair that makes my back ache. They’ve called me in to identify the man — a man I don’t really know, a man I don’t even identify myself with. The officers shuffle papers, ask me the same questions in different ways, watching for cracks in my story.

I tell them the truth, though it feels pathetic: I am just a nosy old neighbour. Nothing more. I don’t know his name. I don’t know where he worked, or if he worked at all. I don’t know if he had family, or friends, or anyone at all. I just watched him because… because I had nothing better to do.

I say it sheepishly, embarrassed at how small my life sounds when spoken out loud. Their pens pause over their notepads, like even they don’t know what to make of me.

try to recall. It was after I’d lost another job — one more in a long line. By then, getting fired no longer carried the sting of defeat; it felt more like a routine I’d rehearsed too many times. Pack up my desk. Ride the bus home. Let me into the apartment. Straight to bed.

That night, I lay staring at the ceiling, waiting for sleep that never came. Sometime past midnight, I got up and drifted to the window, just to have something to do. That’s when I saw him, across the way.

A shadow of a person, moving callously, like someone underwater, poured himself a glass of water and sat on the couch. For a moment, he was still, then his lips began to move. At first I thought he was humming, but no, he was speaking, quietly, urgently.

To whom? That part puzzled me. His head tilted, his hands lifted slightly, as if he were answering someone just out of sight. I leaned closer to the glass, straining to catch a glimpse of another figure in the room, but there was no one there. Just him, nodding, muttering, and pausing, as though listening to replies only he could hear.

And then, nothing. He sat unmoving for hours, rooted to the couch as though pinned by invisible weight. I waited, expecting him to get up, to switch on the television, to do something. But he remained there, his stillness somehow more unnerving than his strange conversation with the empty air.

I woke early the next day, though it felt like I hadn’t slept at all. The first thing I did — before even stretching, before putting on my slippers — was look out the window. It wasn’t a choice anymore, it was a pull, a compulsion.

And there he was. Standing right at his door, waiting. Not casually, not the way most people linger, but with a kind of eager tension, like a soldier awaiting orders.

When the newspaper hit the floor outside, he snatched it up almost instantly. From his shirt pocket, he produced a pen and bent over the pages with a strange, maniacal focus. His hand scratched across the print in quick, jerky movements — circling, underlining, slashing lines through certain words as though the paper held secrets only he could uncover.

I watched him for several minutes. He didn’t stop to sip his water, didn’t even sit down. Just stood there in the doorway, marking and muttering, like the newsprint had spoken to him directly.

I didn’t try to make sense of what he was doing; I just watched. Plainly, silently. Like a cat crouched behind a wall, eyes fixed on you, ready to bolt the instant you notice it’s there.

I kept returning to the window, again and again, the same view, the same man. Days slipped into weeks. My own routine disentangled, but his… his I knew by heart. I could almost predict his next move before he made it, as if I’d rehearsed it with him. He wasn’t chaotic, not exactly, but there was something off about the way he moved through his own world. He’d mutter to himself, pause halfway through a gesture as if listening to someone I couldn’t see, then snap back into motion. Sometimes he laughed at nothing, sometimes he froze for long minutes staring into the corner of the room, as if waiting for an answer.

I could almost predict him, yet he always left me unsettled. One moment, he seemed fragile, like a man lost in his own head. Next, there was a sharpness to him, a flicker of something wild behind his eyes that made me catch my breath. It wasn’t a routine I chose to memorise—but I couldn’t stop. It felt less like watching and more like keeping him tethered, as if my eyes were the only thing holding his world together. A strange compulsion, yes, but also a quiet conviction: if I stopped looking, he might stop moving, and that felt like a wrong I couldn’t commit.

I recalled all that I could to the police, how he would press his palms hard against his ears, rocking back and forth, mouthing words too quickly to follow. Once, I saw him scribble something over and over on scraps of paper, then tear them into pieces so violently it looked like he was fighting the page itself.

And the strangest thing—he’d stare at the window for long stretches of time, like he knew I was there, like he was watching me watching him. Sometimes his lips moved, but not a sound came out. Other times, he’d grin suddenly, wide and eerie, like he’d just shared a private joke with someone standing right beside him—only there was no one there.

Once I was out of the police station, there was a cloud of sadness and grief following me, but why? I didn’t even know the man. But in some ways, I guess I did. I just can’t stop picturing him, or should I say remembering him, now that he is gone. The way he used to scrawl something furiously on scraps of paper, crumple them, and throw them into the corner, only to fish them back out moments later and read them again, nodding like they held the truth or he used to press his palms hard against his ears, I watched him argue with something invisible, laugh at it, and sometimes even back away from it in terror.

Was this strange? This behaviour? I mean, I guess it was. There must be a reason why… but maybe I should stop thinking about him. He’s gone. I should concentrate on finding another job.

Day 200

I tried, I really did, but the habit of looking for him lingered. Every time I walked past that street, my eyes flicked up to the window without meaning to. Just glass now. Just empty curtains shifting in the draft. Still, I’d catch myself staring too long, waiting for a silhouette that would never come.

There’s a knot in my chest that refuses to loosen. Why did he die like that, alone and unseen until it was too late? I can’t help feeling that his death wasn’t just the end of his suffering, but a message I was too blind to read while he was alive. Something in me tells me that I missed something vital, something that could explain the quiet tragedy of him. And now that thought won’t let me sleep.

Day 210

I remember seeing something on his desk, his therapist's number, some medicines on his nightstand…maybe they could tell me what I yearn to know.

I have to go back to his house, even though the thought unsettles me. The air there will still carry his absence, every object pressed with his touch, left there in silence, never to be used again. Maybe in the stillness of those rooms, between the prescriptions and the papers, I’ll find some trace of him explaining what words never could. Or maybe I’ll only find more silence. Either way, I have to step back inside.

The air feels heavy when I push the door open, like the place itself knows he won’t be walking in again. Everything is exactly where he left it—mugs on the counter, a jacket slumped over the chair, his books piled like he planned to come back in the middle of reading them.

I don’t know where to start, so I just move slowly, opening drawers, looking at papers I don’t fully understand. In the middle of a stack, I find a small slip of paper with a name and number written neatly. It looks like a therapist’s.

For a while, I just sit there, staring at it. My hands feel too clumsy to hold the phone, but eventually I dial.

A calm voice answers. I clear my throat, introduce myself, and explain who I am. There’s a pause on the other end, then the voice softens. They told me he had been their patient. That he had schizophrenia. For a long time, the therapy and medication had helped, but he stopped coming. Stopped taking what was prescribed.

I press the phone tighter to my ear, trying to take in each word, but the room seems to shrink around me. Suddenly, the things I never understood about him, his absences, his silences, his sudden edge. start to make a different kind of sense.

I hung up the phone and just sat there, the silence heavier than any noise could have been. Schizophrenia. I didn’t know. How could I have known? And yet, the thought kept biting into me, should I have? The way his eyes sometimes drifted off, the sudden edge in his voice, the way he always looked half elsewhere. They were there, weren’t they? Signs. Maybe I ignored them because I didn’t want to believe something was wrong. Or maybe I was just too wrapped in my own world. Now I’ll never know what was slipping through his mind in those last days. All I have is this sharp ache in my chest, the feeling that I should have done something, even if I don’t know what.

All this time, I thought I was the one silently watching him. But the truth is, he knew. The man in the window always knew.

The voices told him. At first, just whispers at night,  “someone is watching you.” He fought them off, tried to keep his life stitched together with scraps of routine. Tea at the same time every evening. Lights out exactly at midnight. Never turning toward the window.

But the voices grew louder, pressing into him like a weight he couldn’t throw off. He’s still there. He hasn’t blinked. He knows what you’re doing.

Soon, he stopped knowing what was real and what wasn’t. Was I really there, outside his window, or just another echo in his head? Did he see me? Or was he inventing me out of paranoia?

What I do know is that, in the end, we were both caught in the same gaze. He couldn’t escape the feeling of being seen, and I couldn’t stop looking.

Now he’s gone, and I still find myself staring at that empty glass across the street, waiting for a shadow that will never return.

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