The next day was a total wash. By the time I dragged myself home, the hundred dollars and that midnight ad felt like a fever dream I'd already slept off. I collapsed onto the couch, my thumb hovering aimlessly over a food delivery app.
Ding-dong.
Too fast for delivery. I hauled myself up, bracing for a solicitor.
She stood on the welcome mat, her silhouette soft and unassuming under the porch light. White tee, light-wash jeans, and a suitcase the size of a dorm fridge. Wide, round eyes and a smile that seemed to radiate a gentle, desperate warmth.
"Hi," she said, her voice kitten-soft. "I'm Luna."
My irritation evaporated on the spot. "Come in, please."
She rolled her suitcase inside—no squeaks, not even the friction of rubber on wood. High-end silent wheels, I thought, making a mental note to ask her for the link later.
We talked for a bit. Recent grad. No job. Nowhere else to go. She seemed almost pathologically grateful for the room. When my food finally arrived, she politely declined to join me. Instead, she rolled up her sleeves and set to work without being asked.
I sat in the living room, watching her move.
She was efficient, gliding through the space with a near-silent grace. She washed, scrubbed, and restored a Zen-like order to a week's worth of my clutter. When she finally brought the folded laundry over, the air was filled with a faint, familiar scent of roses.
"I changed your sheets, too," she mentioned casually. "I saw two different detergents in your cabinet. The platform's profile said you prefer the rose scent, so I used that one and left the lavender alone."
I froze.
There were indeed two bottles in the back of my cupboard. The lavender one had been left by my mother during her last visit; she'd always loved that heavy, medicinal herbal scent. But I'd never liked it—to me, it was sharp and suffocating—so I'd shoved it into the furthest corner. I only ever used the rose.
I had never told Luna that. There had been no "lifestyle questionnaire" on that sketchy midnight ad.
It wasn't just the detergent. Over the next thirty minutes, I realized she had successfully bypassed every single one of my domestic pet peeves. She color-coded the cleaning cloths, arranged my books by height, and even placed my coffee mug with the handle facing left—exactly the way I always did.
Every detail was a perfect mirror of my unspoken habits.
A flicker of cold traced my spine. Watching her glide through the kitchen, a thought took root: Has Big Data really become this terrifying? It felt as if someone had peeled back my skull and downloaded my life's log. It knew exactly which scent I found irritating and which small, neurotic habits I'd never even shared with Daniel.
This perfection felt like a secret, quiet invasion.
Next morning. 7:30 a.m.
Something was off.
My curtains were usually left half-open, the sunrise slanting across the bed like a natural alarm clock. Now, they were drawn tight—not a single gap, not a single stray photon of light.
I pushed open my bedroom door—
And thought I'd stepped into a high-end model home.