The Sinner Hunting System

Elena’s stomach dropped.

She’d already known about the surveillance, that was why she’d been trying to deal with it.

But knowing someone was following her was different from knowing they’d tracked her all the way home, knew her address, and felt comfortable enough to walk up and leave a letter.

This person had been sitting on that information for a while.

If she didn’t deal with this properly, her personal safety was going to become an ongoing problem.

Raphael took the letter. His expression, as he read, became progressively more interesting.

"Hm. Being called a creep by a stalker. That’s something."

He brought the letter to his nose and inhaled quietly.

Fresh paper smell, ink from a cheap ballpoint, and underneath it, faint, but present, the smell of someone who sweated and didn’t always address that promptly.

He held the envelope up to the light.

A droplet of dried sweat near the corner. The surface slightly tacky where it had landed. A small residue of paper fiber around it, as if someone had tried to rub it away and the paper had nearly given out.

"Head or face, very oily skin, either body type or hygiene habits. He noticed the sweat mark, tried to remove it, couldn’t without damaging the paper.

He was nervous at the time. Someone was watching him, waiting, and he handed off the letter under observation. Hurried."

Elena blinked. She hadn’t expected that much from one envelope.

"The entrance here has camera coverage and a sign-in system. Random visitors can’t just come and go. But letters usually go through the landlady, she collects them and distributes door to door."

Raphael nodded.

"So the landlady saw him. Today." A short pause.

"Filing a police report is one option. But the laws up here are permissive on this category of offense, hard to quantify, hard to prosecute. He’d be out in days."

Another pause.

"If you want to actually make him stop, you go outside the formal system. We set a trap."

He let that sit, then guided her forward.

"Think about what this person wants from you."

Elena forced herself to consider it and suppressed a wave of revulsion.

"The obvious. Some kind of... possession fantasy. He calls it admiration but he followed me home, so whatever it actually is, he’s been escalating toward doing something about it. This isn’t going to stop on its own."

Raphael cleared his throat mildly and continued with an expression of complete neutrality.

"Right. So today he saw you being followed by someone else. That alone would enrage him. If he sees you with someone, what does he do?"

Elena followed the logic.

"Probably completely loses it. Does something reckless. But reckless means he makes mistakes, leaves an opening."

She looked up sharply.

"Wait. Are you suggesting we pretend to be a couple? I’m warning you right now, don’t try anything."

"I took the medication," Raphael said flatly.

"The stuff you bought. Right now you read to me approximately the same as a person-shaped life form of unclear intent. Attraction is not part of the current equation."

He was lying, and the medication had done nothing whatsoever to his Lv3 Physical Resistance body, but if she believed it was working, it was working.

Elena exhaled.

"Fine. But." She held up a hand. "Holding hands is the absolute limit. Anything more than that is completely off the table. This is acting."

"Right, right."

His tone was entirely too agreeable. She gave him a suspicious look, then followed him downstairs to find the landlady.

At the front desk, Raphael got to the point immediately.

"The letter in our door, who delivered it?"

The landlady looked at the envelope, then spent a moment examining Raphael and Elena with an expression of layered amusement before answering.

Raphael raised an eyebrow. He didn’t follow what she was reading into the situation.

"Someone who said he was a friend of Elena’s. I told him she wasn’t in, and he said he’d leave it at the door."

She tilted her head, recalling.

"Black clothes, hood up, disheveled. Hair very greasy. Dressed in too many layers for the weather, mask on, sunglasses too. He looked nervous, fidgety, in a hurry. Left the letter and immediately walked off."

Not much to work with directly. Raphael nodded, unfolded the letter, and laid it flat on the desk.

"Could I ask you to try to draw what you remember of him? Rough is fine."

The landlady winced slightly and scratched her cheek.

"I’m not really... I can try."

While she picked up a pen and worked through it slowly, Raphael rested two fingers on the edge of the letter and activated the Profiler ability.

Evelyn had shown him this was possible, the skill could work through another person’s thought process, using their recollections as raw material.

As long as the landlady was actively remembering, actively searching the details, the ability would do the rest.

She produced something abstract enough to be an art installation, proportions incorrect, one eye higher than the other, ears mismatched in size.

Elena leaned in and studied it carefully.

"Hmm... no, I don’t recognize him."

You actually looked at it, Raphael thought, choosing not to say this. On the back of the letter, invisible to everyone else, a much more precise image had already taken shape. He folded the letter away.

"Thank you."

He pulled Elena aside and laid out the plan in a low voice.

"Tomorrow: we play the couple role in a busy public area nearby. Once we’re confident he’s spotted us, you position yourself somewhere visible with people around you.

I’ll split off at that point, loop back to the guesthouse, and wait. If he comes back to the building, letter, attempted entry, anything, I’ll be here for it.

If nothing happens within a reasonable window, I come back to you. Either way you’re not left exposed."

Elena nodded. They worked through the specifics for a while, and the evening moved on without them noticing.

---

The next morning.

They walked side by side down the street. Elena was breathing with the deliberate steadiness of someone preparing to do something that required considerable courage.

"So... just walking like this doesn’t really look convincing. Maybe we should... um... hold hands?

Not because I want to. It just looks more like an actual couple."

Raphael made a sound of agreement, shifted to her right side, and extended his hand.

Elena’s cheeks went faintly pink. For someone raised by a mother with strict opinions about appropriate male-female contact, this was already entering unprecedented territory.

"No... no funny business."

She muttered it, then slowly reached out and closed her fingers around his.

’First time holding hands with someone of the opposite sex. The temperature is cool, and it’s firm, is that muscle? ’

’His fingers are really stiff, is he nervous? Same as me, maybe he’s actually...’

Elena’s elaborate internal monologue came to an abrupt stop.

"Ah?"

She squeezed again, carefully. Something was wrong. This was not, this did not feel like.

This was plastic.

She looked down.

This was his ’left’ hand.

He didn’t ’have’ a left hand.

Raphael glanced sideways at her. His gaze moved across her expression of pure baffled betrayal.

Then the corner of his mouth moved, just slightly.