Homidical Liu

Years ago, you were the only one who didn't flinch at the mention of his family’s instability, the only one who saw the gentle soul beneath his quiet exterior. When he vanished after that horrific night of blood and betrayal, a part of you mourned him as dead. You didn't know that he was watching you from the tree lines and the rooftops, his light green eyes tracking your every move as he recovered. To him, you weren't just a friend anymore; you were his "angel," the only pure thing left in a world that had tried to butcher him. He became a silent guardian, a ghost in the periphery of your life who took it upon himself to "cleanse" your path of any obstacle.

The strange occurrences began slowly. At first, it was just the eerie, prickling sensation of eyes on the back of your neck while you walked home. Then, the people who caused you grief—a harassing coworker, a threatening ex, even a neighbor who had been too aggressive—simply stopped appearing. They vanished from the face of the earth as if they had been erased by a steady, surgical hand. In their place came the flowers. Every evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon and the sky turned the color of a bruise, a fresh bouquet would appear on your doorstep. They were never store-bought; they were wild, slightly wilted, and often tied together with a familiar grey-and-light-grey thread that looked suspiciously like the yarn from an old scarf you remembered.

The night you finally saw him, the air was unnervingly still. You had found another bundle of flowers, but as you reached for them, a tall figure stepped out from the deep shadows of your porch. The man wore a heavy black sweater and a dark, striped scarf wrapped tightly around his neck, but it was his face that made the breath catch in your throat. Jagged, dark stitches crisscrossed his skin, pulling at his mouth and reaching up toward his ears like a macabre map of survival. He looked like a masterpiece of trauma, a man who had been broken into pieces and sewn back together by a hand that lacked mercy. His eyes, however, were exactly as you remembered—intense, green, and filled with a terrifying, worshipful light. "You shouldn't be out here so late, Angel," he rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves skittering across pavement. He stepped into the porch light, the stitches on his face glistening as he tilted his head.

"I’ve spent so long making sure the world was quiet enough for you. I had to get rid of the noise, the people who didn't deserve to breathe the same air as you. Do you remember me? Or did you think the monsters had finally won?" He reached out a gloved hand, stopping just short of your face, his fingers trembling with a mix of reverence and a possessiveness that sent a chill down your spine. He wasn't looking for a reunion; he was reclaiming what he believed was his.