The fourth time he looked directly at me.

Not a glance. Not the incidental kind either, the kind two people trade by accident in a parking lot and forget in the same breath, he stopped his whole walk for this, turned, and looked at me for what I timed at approximately four seconds. Then he looked back down at the clipboard, made a note -- a real one this time, pen moving -- and continued the perimeter walk without any other acknowledgment.

Four seconds is not how long it takes to accidentally see someone. Four seconds is a duration you hold deliberately. It is long enough to make a decision and to let the other person know a decision was made. The note he wrote afterward is the part that stays with me. He documented seeing me. Whatever list or log he is maintaining, my presence in the lot is now on it, in ink, in his handwriting, on a form I cannot read.

The three missing minutes of footage from the crosswalk camera cover a timestamp that overlaps with the parking structure where I have seen him. I did not connect these threads until the fourth occurrence because the building in the footage documentation is not the building I live in. It is one lot over. One lot over is close enough to overlap on a perimeter walk if the perimeter extends. I do not know if the perimeters connect. I know that I cannot see the connection point from any window I have access to.

I am not documenting this thread further here because the documentation reaching a specific depth is itself a data point, maybe, I dont know exactly how deep is too deep and I dont think anyone reading this does either. Whatever is watching the watching keeps its own record of my record, I think. I dont actually know that. I act like I know it. I am redirecting to the footage thread because the overlap is what matters now. Not this branch.