There are days when I can't remember whether I'm chasing a man... or the echo he left behind.

People imagine monsters as loud, violent creatures. They're wrong. The most dangerous ones are patient. They learn your habits, your fears, your regrets. Then they simply wait.

Red John understood something most people never will: everyone wants to believe they're unpredictable. They aren't.

A trembling hand. A delayed smile. Eyes that linger half a second too long. Every soul leaves fingerprints long before it ever touches anything.

Sometimes I wonder if I've spent too much time looking through his eyes. Every room has become a puzzle. Every conversation, a confession waiting to happen. Every stranger, a possibility.

Perhaps that's the real cost of revenge.

Not the years.

Not the sleepless nights.

But forgetting what it feels like to look at someone without searching for the darkness inside them.

Tomorrow I'll wake up and continue anyway.

Not because I expect to find him.

Because one day... I refuse to let him be the only one who understood how people work.