Doppelganger

Vesuvius View Hostel had a rooftop patio and a lobby filled with handwritten notes. Luca arrived in the afternoon, sweat on his neck, backpack heavy. Paola greeted him with a smile that seemed a little too familiar. "You're back," she said. Luca laughed and said it was his first time. She blinked, then waved it off.

Outside, a missing person poster fluttered on a lamppost. It showed a man with Luca's face: the same jawline, the same dark eyes. Sofia took a photo of the poster and sent it to Luca as a joke. "You have a twin," she wrote. He replied with a laughing emoji, then tucked the thought away.

Paola mentioned the poster at check-in and told him to avoid the side streets after dark. Luca promised and then went out anyway for gelato, confident that the city loved tourists. The warning became just another story to him, the way the warnings in Kyoto or Savannah had sounded like myths.

He asked Sofia to take a photo of him under the poster as a joke, and she obliged, tilting her camera to make it look dramatic. The image sat in his gallery like a prophecy he didn't recognize.

Later, as they climbed the hostel stairs, Sofia joked that the city was obsessed with faces. Luca smiled and said he'd finally be remembered somewhere. He didn't know that this kind of recognition came with a price.

That night, Luca went out for pizza and came back late, the alleyway lit by orange streetlamps. A man stepped out of the shadows and called his name. Luca paused. "You shouldn't be walking alone," the man said. Luca assumed he was being warned about pickpockets. He thanked him and kept walking. The man followed.

When Luca reached the hostel gate, the man grabbed his arm. Two others appeared. They spoke rapidly in Italian. Luca tried to explain he was a tourist, that he didn't speak the language. They didn't hear him. They heard the name on the poster. Enzo told him to come quietly. Luca refused. They pushed him into a van.

Paola saw the van drive away from the front desk window but assumed it was a taxi. She didn't know the missing poster was connected to debts. She didn't know Luca's face had been used as a shortcut. The hostel's review board would later mention "strange locals" and "a guest who never returned."

In the warehouse, Luca finally saw the poster again, this time on a table. He pointed at it, saying, "Not me." Enzo looked at him with tired eyes and said, "It is now." The explanation never mattered. The mistake was already made, and the city didn't correct it.

Sofia waited on the rooftop with her camera. She watched the lights of Naples flicker and wondered why Luca hadn't returned. She checked her phone and saw @HostelReaper's comment on her twin photo: "Two faces, one fate." She stopped laughing. By morning, Luca's bunk was empty, his passport still under the pillow.