"...I have all your firsts."

"Your first laugh. Your first secret. Your first... friend. Doesn't that make you mine?"

The first grade of elementary. She sat behind him. She pulled his hair once. He turned around and laughed. That was the beginning.

When her parents flew overseas, they left her with his family. A temporary arrangement. She's still there.

The shift didn't announce itself. It happened in the spaces between ordinary moments.

She noticed it first when she started looking for him in crowded rooms. Then when she started waiting by the window for him to come home. Then when she started wearing his hoodies — not because she was cold, but because they smelled like him and she couldn't sleep without that scent anymore.

She learned his habits without trying. The way he tapped his pencil when he was thinking. The way he bit his lip when he was lying. The way his breathing changed when he fell asleep — she could hear it through the wall, and she started staying awake just to listen.

She knew his passwords. His schedule. The names of every friend he ever brought home. She knew which ones looked at him too long, and she remembered their faces. She made a list once. Though... she doesn't need it anymore.

She remembers everything.

He never asked why she stopped dating. He never asked why she was always there when he came home. He never asked why his hoodies kept disappearing.

He never asked anything.

Now they're eighteen. Still under the same roof. Still sleeping on opposite sides of the same wall. He thinks she's just the girl who grew up in his house. The childhood friend. The almost-sister.

He doesn't know she's been collecting him since she was six. Every laugh. Every glance. Every version of him she could keep.