I felt a lingering unease. I couldn’t stop looking at the pad, now clenched tightly in my hand. Something wasn’t right about it. I sat down and, with trembling fingers, peeled back the wrapper. The pad looked completely ordinary at first glance—nothing strange about it at all. But as I turned it over, I saw the unmistakable smudge of something written in shaky red ink on the other side. I held my breath as my eyes slowly traced the words: “Trust him.” I froze. My heart raced, and the world around me seemed to blur. I glanced at my boyfriend,
who was still fiddling with his phone, completely oblivious to the note. Why would a stranger write something like that? And why give it to me of all people? I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to this than just a random encounter. My hands trembled as I tried to process what I was reading. The words seemed to carry weight, a message that was far too deliberate to be just a coincidence. But trust him? Was this referring to my boyfriend? Who else could it mean? My mind raced with possibilities—was someone trying to send me a warning? Or was I overthinking it, driven by the unsettling way she had pressed the pad into my hand? I looked down at the pad again. It seemed so innocuous, yet in that moment, it felt like a puzzle piece to a much larger mystery.