The prequel
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It was one of those mildly cold autumn nights with its backing vocalist with soothing voice, a tender and incessant shower. The randomly laid colorful leaves were bare witnesses of the season. In quasi successful attempt to escape the down pour I was walking as fast as I could. As I kept pulling my feet one after the other in the hopes of wrapping myself, from head to toe with the 30 degrees of air inside my apartment, I saw him again. This time in the alley between the two old buildings a few blocks down my apartment. He was looking at no one but me. He was standing in the middle of the rain with no desire of escaping from it.

I paced even more, to a point where any rise in speed and I would been lifted off the ground. Gosh, that moment of sticking my keys to the key holes of the front door seemed eternity.

One hour later, sipping a hot chamomile tea, mindlessly staring at a screen while the full weight of my attention span around quite number of prior encounters, with you know who.

I don’t remember when I first saw him and truth to be told I am entirely sure if it is a he but that isn’t important at all. He usually wears dark baggy trousers, with gray shirt, woolen long coats with a thick black scarf and brown boots. This is outfit remained unaltered for months. When his ubiquity turned from being mysterious at first to exasperating in a while, I was but forced to attempting to resolve his identity, only to no avail.

Once as I was leaving my usual breakfast diner after a croissant and a caffe latte, when I spotted him across the street. This is a few months after I started seeing him randomly many times a day. May be it was the unusually high caffeine in my latte that morning but I made a jerk and headed towards him.

As I got closer and closer I noticed he was as tall as me but in a much better shape. He had broad shoulders with a pale face, which was semi covered by a lightly shaved beard. His brown eyes were playful and seemed to have their own story to tell. As I was busy carefully scanning this man from top to bottom, it took me a while before noticing my stretched hands didn’t receive a shake back. I slowly retracted my hands while staring at the his eyes just to make sure whether he is aware of my embarrassment. Who is this stranger and why does he look so mysteriously familiar and most importantly why does he seemingly keep going after me ?