Kat_licious =link= Link

Lena quickly locked her phone. The room plunged into true darkness. She could still see the afterimage of Kat’s eyes on her retinas. The question hung in the air: Who’s watching?

Lena zoomed in on the hands. There was a tiny scar on the left thumb. She wondered if it was from a knife, a fall, or something else entirely. kat_licious

She realized, with a jolt, that she wasn’t watching Kat at all. She was watching a version of herself she had been too afraid to become. And in doing so, she had forgotten that the person on the other side of the screen was just as lonely, just as curious, and maybe just as scared of being truly seen. Lena quickly locked her phone

She imagined Kat, somewhere in a similarly dark room, scrolling through her own analytics. Seeing a single username— lena_scribbles —hovering over her stories at 2:00 AM, night after night. Not liking, not commenting. Just… looking. The question hung in the air: Who’s watching

She had been Kat once. Or maybe she had never allowed herself to be. She was the version of Kat who organized her bookshelves by color, who RSVP’d “yes” to parties and then found a reason to cancel, who posted photos of sunsets because they were safe. Her own profile, lena_scribbles , was a museum of quiet things: a well-made bed, a perfectly centered coffee cup, a shelf of plants with not a single brown leaf.