THE FICTION TRACKER

Before beginning this story, I would like to share a brief note with my readers. I originally planned to write this story in several parts and posted the first part on NovelToon. However, I noticed that many readers did not seem interested in reading lengthy installments. Therefore, I removed the first version and decided to present the complete story as a single, continuous work. I hope this format makes the story more enjoyable and convenient to read.

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There is a dangerous thing about being a writer.

You can create a crime without committing one.

You can invent a criminal without ever meeting one.

You can describe a place you've never visited, a person you've never seen, and an event that has never happened.

And most importantly—

you can make everything feel real.

I used to think that was the magic of writing.

I didn't know it could become a crime scene.

---

I had been staring at a blank document for nearly an hour.

The cursor blinked.

Again.

Again.

Again.

It was almost insulting.

My coffee had gone cold. My notebook was filled with abandoned ideas. Every character I'd created that week felt boring, every plot predictable.

I needed something real.

So I looked outside my window.

My neighborhood was quiet.

The electronics shop at the end of the road was closed for the night. The narrow lane behind it disappeared between two rows of houses. A broken streetlight flickered near the entrance.

I knew that lane.

Everyone did.

And suddenly, I knew what I was going to write.

A robbery.

Nothing dramatic.

Just a believable crime.

I began typing.

At exactly 12:40 a.m., the electronics shop was broken into.

I continued.

The criminal took three expensive phones.

He escaped through the narrow lane behind the shop.

A dark-blue hatchback was waiting there.

I added tiny details because details made fiction believable.

The broken lock.

The abandoned lane.

The dark vehicle.

The exact time.

When I finished, I leaned back.

For the first time in weeks, I felt like a writer again.

I saved the document under an old name I had once used for collecting story ideas:

THE FICTION TRACKER

Then I went to sleep.

---

The next morning, my phone buzzed.

A message from my neighbor.

Did you hear about the electronics shop?

I frowned.

I opened the message.

It was robbed last night.

I smiled at first.

Coincidence.

Obviously.

Then I opened the news article.

The robbery had happened at 12:40 a.m.

Three phones were missing.

The thief had escaped through the narrow lane behind the shop.

A dark-blue hatchback had been seen nearby.

I stopped smiling.

I read the article again.

Then I opened my laptop.

My story was still there.

Every detail matched.

Not approximately.

Exactly.

That was the moment I learned something about coincidence.

A coincidence can be surprising.

Two coincidences can be uncomfortable.

But when reality begins copying your sentences—

you stop calling it coincidence.

---

That evening, I decided to test it.

I wrote another scene.

A smaller crime.

A wallet would be taken from a man waiting at a bus stop at 7:15 the next morning. The wallet would contain a photograph and a library card.

I saved the document.

The next day, it happened.

The details weren't reported publicly, but I knew because I had written them.

That should have been enough.

I should have deleted the file.

Instead, I opened it.

I wanted an explanation.

What I found was worse.

At the bottom of the page, beneath everything I had written, was a new sentence.

I hadn't typed it.

I hadn't even touched the keyboard.

It said:

The author is beginning to understand.

I stared at it.

Then another sentence appeared.

One letter at a time.

KEEP WRITING.

I didn't move.

The cursor blinked after the final word.

Waiting.

---

I closed the laptop.

The next morning, I deleted the document.

I emptied the recycle bin.

I shut down the computer.

I told myself it was over.

That night, I opened my laptop again.

A new file was sitting on the desktop.

CHAPTER 3

I hadn't created it.

My hands felt cold as I opened it.

There was only one sentence.

Tonight, someone will break into the house on the corner.

I stared at the screen.

Then I whispered,

"Who are you?"

Nothing happened.

I waited.

Nothing.

I almost laughed at myself.

Maybe I was exhausted.

Maybe I had somehow created the file and forgotten.

Then another sentence appeared.

The author will hear the glass break.

A second later—

CRASH.

I froze.

The sound had come from outside.

I rushed to the window.

The house on the corner was dark.

A few seconds passed.

Then the document changed.

He heard it.

My breathing stopped.

Another sentence appeared.

Now let's see what he writes next.

---

That was when I understood the real problem.

The story wasn't predicting reality anymore.

It was watching me.

And that distinction matters.

Because a prediction tells you what will happen.

A watcher waits to see what you will do.

---

I sat at the desk until sunrise.

I didn't write a single word.

But the document continued.

A sentence appeared.

Then another.

Not about crimes.

About me.

What time I had stopped writing.

Which window I had looked through.

How many times I had checked the lock on my bedroom door.

Small things.

Things nobody watching from the street could possibly know.

Finally, I typed:

WHO ARE YOU?

The answer appeared immediately.

You created me.

I typed:

I created a story.

The response came.

You wrote what I did.

I stared at the screen.

Then I typed the question I was afraid to ask.

Are you the criminal?

For almost a minute, nothing happened.

Then:

Does it matter what you call me?

I swallowed.

Outside, a motorcycle passed.

The sound disappeared into the distance.

I looked back at the screen.

Another sentence was appearing.

The antagonist watches the author from somewhere nearby.

I slowly turned toward the window.

The curtains were closed.

I didn't open them.

Instead, I typed:

Where?

The answer appeared.

Close enough.

---

I stopped writing after that.

At least, I tried to.

For two days, I didn't touch the laptop.

Nothing happened.

No new crimes.

No strange messages.

No mysterious files.

I almost convinced myself that the entire thing had ended.

Then, on the third night, I opened the laptop.

The document was already open.

A single line waited for me.

Tomorrow, the antagonist discovers the author's home address.

I immediately highlighted the sentence.

Delete.

It disappeared.

I closed the document.

Opened it again.

The sentence was back.

I deleted it again.

Back.

Again.

Back.

Then the cursor moved.

I watched helplessly as letters appeared.

My house number.

My street.

My neighborhood.

My complete address.

I didn't type a single character.

When the final line appeared, I couldn't look away.

Now you know where I live.

I stared at the screen.

Then another sentence appeared.

But you still don't know where I am.

For the first time, I understood why the person behind the story had never needed to threaten me.

They didn't need to.

They had something much more powerful.

They had made me afraid of my own imagination.

---

I spent the entire night thinking about the first robbery.

The electronics shop.

The three phones.

The blue car.

The abandoned lane.

I went back through every detail I'd written.

And then I noticed something I had completely missed.

There was one detail in the original story that had never appeared in the news.

Something I had invented.

A tiny detail about the thief's escape.

I reread the sentence.

Then I checked the police report.

My heart began beating faster.

That detail had appeared in the investigation too.

Which meant the person reading my story wasn't simply making crimes happen.

They had access to information I didn't have.

Information about the investigation.

Information about the victims.

Information about the police.

And somehow—

information about me.

I opened the document again.

A final sentence appeared.

You're finally looking in the right place.

I whispered,

"Where?"

The cursor moved.

One word appeared.

Library.

---

The next morning, I went to the old public library.

Not because I understood.

Because I had run out of other possibilities.

The library was almost empty.

I walked between the shelves until I reached the back section, where old newspapers and archived records were kept.

And there it was.

A newspaper from years earlier.

An unsolved crime.

Same neighborhood.

Same electronics shop.

Same narrow lane.

I read the article.

Then I noticed the date.

It was exactly ten years before I had written my first story.

My hands went cold.

Because beneath the article was a photograph.

And standing in the background—

was the same dark-blue hatchback.

The same car I'd described without ever seeing it.

I stared at the photograph.

Then I noticed something else.

A handwritten note had been attached to the newspaper.

Four words.

You were never the first.

---

I don't know how long I stood there.

Maybe a minute.

Maybe ten.

All I could think was:

Who else had written it?

I turned the newspaper over.

On the back was another note.

THE FICTION TRACKER

Below it was a date.

And beneath that date—

another name.

A writer.

Someone who had disappeared from the literary world years ago.

Someone whose books had mysteriously stopped being published.

I searched the library database.

One book appeared.

Its title was simple.

The First Draft.

I opened the book.

The first page contained a sentence that made the room feel suddenly colder.

I had read those exact words before.

Not in the book.

In my own document.

I turned the page.

Then another.

The story was almost identical to mine.

The same crimes.

The same details.

The same blue car.

The same lane.

The same question.

Who is reading?

I reached the final page.

There was no ending.

Only one sentence.

The next author will finish it.

---

That night, I returned home with the book in my bag.

I didn't open my laptop.

I didn't write.

I didn't even turn on the lights.

I sat in the darkness and thought about what I'd discovered.

Maybe the writer before me had experienced the same thing.

Maybe someone had been using writers for years.

Maybe the crimes weren't being created by the stories.

Maybe the stories were being used to predict crimes that someone had already planned.

And maybe the reason the person needed writers—

was because nobody suspects fiction.

A story can contain a confession.

A story can contain a plan.

A story can contain the truth.

And people will still call it fiction.

I finally opened my laptop.

The document was waiting.

There was one final message.

Write the ending.

I stared at those three words.

Then I smiled.

Not because I wasn't afraid.

Because for the first time, I understood the game.

If whoever was reading my story wanted me to write the ending—

I'd give them one.

But not the ending they expected.

I began typing.

The author discovers the identity of the person controlling the Fiction Tracker.

I paused.

Then continued.

The author discovers that the person has been hiding in plain sight.

Another pause.

I looked toward the window.

Then typed:

The author discovers that the person reading the manuscript is not the criminal.

The cursor blinked.

Nothing happened.

For several seconds, I waited.

Then—

a new sentence appeared beneath mine.

Good.

I froze.

Another appeared.

Now you're finally writing something true.

I stared at the screen.

Then the final sentence appeared.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

The criminal was never the person reading the story.

I leaned closer.

The cursor moved again.

One final line appeared.

It was the person writing it.

I stopped breathing.

My fingers were still resting on the keyboard.

I looked at the name of the document.

THE FICTION TRACKER

And suddenly, I remembered something.

I hadn't created that file months ago.

I had only thought I had.

Because when I checked the file's creation date—

it was dated ten years ago.

The same year as the missing writer.

The same year as the first crime.

The same year the first story had been written.

And beneath the file name was one final line.

Not written by me.

Not written by the person I had spent the entire night trying to find.

It simply said:

THE NEXT AUTHOR HAS BEEN SELECTED.

I looked at the blinking cursor.

And for the first time, I understood the most frightening thing about being a writer.

Sometimes you think you're creating the story.

Sometimes—

the story is creating you.

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Thank you sincerely for taking the time to read my story and for supporting my work. Your encouragement means a great deal to me and motivates me to continue writing.

I would be grateful if you could share your thoughts in the comments. How did you find the story? What do you think are its strongest points? Are there any mistakes I should work on, whether in the writing, pacing, characters, or plot? Your honest and respectful feedback will help me improve as a writer.

Thank you once again for your valuable support.