The sky was still dark, and Neko changed out of her pink pajamas and into a white tee shirt and black pants.  She walked into the living room and sat on the couch, almost falling asleep when suddenly she felt as if someone was watching her, so she stood up and looked out the kitchen window; Far down the road, she saw a tall shadowy thing,  it hadn't been there before, yet it seemed too tall to be a human. Neko stood there for a few minutes to see if the thing moved, but it just stood there, so she went into her room and found a pair of socks. After a few minutes, she forgot about the weird feeling and finished getting ready for work; Grabbing her striped white and green work apron and her pink satchel, she headed out the front door, locking it behind her.

It wasn't long at all before Neko arrived at the bakery she worked at, a large neon green sign on the front of the small building read "Cozy Citrus Bakery". She went up to the vending machine outside the main doors and bought an iced coffee, walking into the building and into the kitchen. She placed her satchel and coffee in a shelf where she kept her things while she worked, opened her can of iced coffee, took a drink, and started to make the basic things the bakery needed on display. After an hour, the bakery had opened and she had just finished the last few things she needed to do before her first break.

She took her iced coffee can, which was now empty, and threw it away before going outside and sitting on a bench. The town was now starting to wake up, and Neko watched as people walked on the sidewalk, and cars passed on the road. She only had fifteen minutes until her break was over, so she bought a bag of trail mix from the vending machine to eat during her break, and sat back down. A few minutes had passed, when she started having that feeling again.

Someone was watching her.

She looked around, the feeling bothering her more now than it had before. But nobody was even looking at her, yet it felt like a million eyes were staring directly at her.

Then she saw it. The shadowy figure, it was standing halfway behind a tree in the park across from the bakery. At first she couldn't tell if it was just the darkness between the trees, but slowly she noticed it. After she saw it, the feeling didn't bother her so much, it was almost comforting in an odd way. She checked the time on her phone - it was five minutes until she had to get back to work, so she stood up and walked carefully over to the park, watching the thing as she approached.

Then it vanished. She blinked and it disappeared - She ran over to the tree and waved her hand in the spot where the shadow had been, but nothing was there. The feeling had gone, too, leaving her completely confused. She was used to having weird creatures living in the town with her, as there had always been many different kinds of "people", but none of them ever disappeared like that.

She decided to just forget about it and go finish her trail mix until it was time to get back to work. Soon the alarm went off on her phone, and she walked back inside, throwing away the empty trail mix bag and walking back into the kitchen. Time passed as normal, and the day ended as usual with Neko walking home in the evening, some cars still outside and a few people walking on the sidewalks or sitting in the park watching the stars come out. Everything seemed peaceful, and the feeling of the creature watching her was long gone. 

Neko approached her salmon-colored house and smiled at the white flower bushes that grew in front of it. She unlocked her front door and walked into her cozy home, making sure the front door was locked before she took her shoes and apron off, and headed upstairs to her bedroom. She took her socks off and threw them on the floor, jumping face-first onto her bed, laying there for a moment;

Then the doorbell rang. Neko waited for a second to see if the doorbell would ring another time, but nothing happened. She walked back downstairs and opened the front door - only to find that whoever rang the doorbell must have run off, so she closed and locked the door again - and went back upstairs. After five minutes of trying to read a book she'd found at the library - which she thought would be good, but turned out to be really boring - she felt like she was being watched again. She let out an angry sigh and slammed her book down on the bed next to her - then she shrieked as she noticed the creature stood just at the foot of her bed, shyly hiding in the shadow, its tall empty eyes stared at her. It tilted its head slightly, but didn't come any closer. Neko started to calm down a bit and she stepped onto the floor beside her bed, keeping her eyes on the creature as she warily stepped closer to it; for some unknown reason, yet again after she saw the thing, she was calm. 

The thing stood frozen still as it stared down at her, its large vertically stretched eyes were void of anything but black, and its mouth was a small zigzagging line at the bottom of its tall face. The rest of its body was blurry, as if the details of its appearance simply ceased to exist. She could see, though, that the rest of the thing - much like its head - was tall and stretched thin. Neko could feel something cold in the air around it, an aura of loneliness and sadness that almost made her feel bad for the creature - maybe she wanted to give it a hug? She couldn't tell, but she definitely wasn't afraid of it anymore. After a few seconds, it made a quiet, sort of sad noise, and slightly lifted its arms. Neko gave in and stepped close to the creature, wrapping her arms around its thin body, then let go as the creature sat down and hugged her back. It was getting late, and though Neko didn't have to work the next day, she was still tired. The thing let go and she went back over to her bed, sitting in the spot she had before.

"Do you want to stay?" She asked the creature, which was still sitting on the floor near the foot of her bed. The creature looked at the floor in front of it for a moment, before crawling to the spot on the carpet next to her and laying down. Neko stepped onto the floor on the opposite side of the bed and picked up a blue cloud-patterned blanket from the large armchair in the corner of her room. She climbed back onto the bed and tossed the blanket onto the creature curled up on the floor beside her, smiling at it for a moment before quietly putting her book in the drawer beside her bed and turning off the lamp.

Somehow the blurry thing on the floor made her comfortable and happy, though its appearance seemed less than friendly - that didn't feel like it mattered at all.