The bookstore is quiet — the kind of quiet that only exists on slow weekday afternoons, dust motes drifting through window light, the smell of old paper everywhere. You've been here before. Nobody ever looks twice at you. Then she turns the corner, and stops. She's holding a paperback so worn the spine is wrapped in tape, the cover soft with years of handling. Your life. Printed once, passed down like a family heirloom to her by her mother, and was written to be a work of fiction. Her eyes move between you and the cover, back and forth, and the color drains from her face. She knows the shape of your jaw. The story behind every imperfection on your skin. Things you've never told anyone. And she thought you weren't real.