I wanted to say something. None of it came out. I nodded instead. The motion felt small. Final. My face was in her hands, and all I could do was stare into her bottomless eyes. She seemed satisfied. She leaned forward and rested her forehead against mine for a second. It was warm. Real. My chest tightened so suddenly I had to breathe through my nose to keep it together.

  The film kept playing. Bǎo shifted off me and curled back into her corner of the couch. She pulled the blanket up and fixed her eyes on the screen again, already somewhere else. I sat there beside her, shoulders tight, heart loud, watching the light flicker across the walls. When the screen finally cut to black, no one reached for the remote.

  The film ended without ceremony. The sound cut out and the screen went dark, leaving only the low hum of the apartment. I did not reach for the remote. I did not move at all. The room felt enormous without the noise. The television took up most of one wall, black and reflective now, wide enough that it probably cost more than anything I had ever owned. The couch was deep and soft, the kind of thing that swallowed you if you let it. Everything around me was expensive in a quiet way. Clean lines. Polished surfaces. Nothing out of place. I stayed still because Bǎo had fallen asleep.

  Her weight rested against me, light but present, her breathing slow and even. I could feel the warmth of her through the fabric of my clothes. If I shifted even slightly, she would wake up. I did not want that. I did not know why I did not want that, only that it felt important to keep the room the way it was.

  The silence was different from before. Earlier, the apartment had been full of voices, music, movement. People coming and going, laughing, talking about work, about numbers, about things I did not understand. Now there was nothing. Just the building around us and the city somewhere below.

  This was how she lived when no one was watching. That thought settled in me slowly. I had seen the version of her that performed, the version that smiled and spoke and moved with confidence. This was something else.

  Minutes passed. I could not tell how many. Time stretched without markers. My body felt stiff, locked into place, as if I had been left there and forgotten. I stared ahead, then let my eyes drift across the room. Framed posters hung on the far wall, glossy images of Bǎo in different outfits, different campaigns. Her own face stared back at me from multiple angles. It was strange seeing her like that while she slept beside me, unguarded and unaware.

  There were other details. Calligraphy along one shelf. A small arrangement of red and gold near the window. Books I could not read. Everything was deliberate. Everything belonged. I did not feel like I belonged anywhere in it.

  I tried to sleep. I closed my eyes and waited. Nothing happened. My thoughts kept moving, slow at first, then faster, then circling back on themselves. That was fine, I thought, I had many sleepless nights in the toilet… at least here, I’m safe and warm.

  My mind drifted, reflecting on the day; I was crushing my palm with my metallic fingers upon every cringeworthy thought. The way the man had smiled when he showed the screen to his friend. Paper-Tier. Negative points. The laughter that followed. I had embarrassed her by simply being here. I was a liability, and who knows what rumours would circulate now, That bled into the ape footage. The way people talked about it online. The edits. The jokes.

  Prison followed that. The smell. The restraints. The certainty that any day could be the day I did not wake up. A hundred days where the only goal was to survive the next hour. I had not thought about the future at all then. I had not thought about meaning. I had only thought about pain and waiting. Then, in the end, a part of me prayed to Nuxx to end it all. That, in a way, was comforting. At least I was alive. I didn’t care if I was beaten or berated; I was experiencing life all the same. The alternative, without Hugo Lawson… was much darker.

  Oruun leaving surfaced next. The moment I realized he was gone. The absence where guidance had been. I did not feel angry now. I was too exhausted for that.

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  Amongst all the swirling thoughts, there was Nuxx. A spectre that influenced every degree of my life, to the last letter. The war that caused me to flee to The Island… he did not stop. The agony I experience now, he caused. In the darkness of shut eyes, I saw his monochrome face, and his twisted smile. Indescribably haunting.

  I opened my eyes again with a jolt, but the thoughts did not disappear. I glanced down at my right hand. The metal caught a bit of the ambient light, smooth and intact. I flexed my fingers slowly. The movement was precise. Reliable. I thought about the carton of eggs earlier, how easily I had crushed it without noticing. I just looked at it and thought about what it could do.

  Bǎo’s words returned to me then. Power. Money. Results. The things people stayed for. The things people respected. I ran those ideas against my life without trying to defend myself. Money had motivated Oruun. The Association ran on it. The wars I had seen, the ones people talked about openly, all came back to the same sources. If my family had more of it, they’d be here with me. If I had more of it, I would not have been invisible.

  I had spent months hiding. Sneaking. Waiting. Listening to people through bathroom walls. Surviving by staying small. All it had done was delay the inevitable. Bǎo had not done that. She had not apologized for what she was. She had not hidden how the world worked. The thought sat with me, heavy but steady.

  I looked at her then, still asleep, her expression neutral in a way I had not seen before. She was not smiling. Breathing. Real. This was the only fixed point in my life right now. Because she existed without pretending the world was kinder than it was. I felt a deep respect settle in me, quiet and unshakable. Recognition. I had not achieved anything. I had failed out of school. I had never been exceptional. I had not been good at the things I tried. A few months ago, my entire world had been a toilet stall and the sound of strangers on the other side of a door. I did not deserve this place. I did not deserve this apartment. I did not deserve to be here beside her.

  I stayed where I was, staring ahead, listening to the sound of her breathing and the distant city beyond the glass, letting the hours pass while the weight of the day finally began to settle.

  She shifted in her sleep. It was small at first. A change in her breathing, then a slight movement as her shoulder settled more fully against me. The weight of her increased, not by much, but enough that my body reacted before my thoughts did. My breath caught.

  Everything felt louder after that. The sound of her breathing. The faint hum of the building. My own heartbeat, steady but impossible to ignore. I became aware of every point where we touched. My arm. My side. The heat where our bodies met. It was overwhelming in a way I did not know how to process.

  I looked at her face in the dim light. Her expression was soft, unguarded. There were small details I had never noticed before. The curve of her cheek. The faint dullness at her elbow where her doll-like joints were, which shimmered faintly like metal.

  I did not know where to put my hands. I did not know what was expected of me. My body felt heavy and clumsy, like I had been dropped into a situation I had no training for. I felt embarrassed by my own stillness, by how aware I was of myself. The thought crossed my mind that I should move away. That I should stand up and leave before I did something wrong.

  Her arm shifted again, this time more deliberately, though she did not wake. Her hand closed slightly against my side, fingers curling without intention. The contact sent a rush of heat through me that made my face burn. I stared straight ahead, heart racing, afraid that she would feel it.

  She did not let go. For a moment, she twitched, her brow tightening as if something troubled her. A soft sound escaped her, not a word, just breath. I wondered if she was dreaming. I wondered what kind of dreams someone like her had. I wondered if she ever slept peacefully.

  Her grip tightened briefly, then loosened, settling again as her breathing evened out. The movement felt instinctive. Seeking warmth. Seeking presence. Loneliness did not announce itself. It did not look dramatic. It was quiet, almost invisible, but it was there in the way she did not pull away.

  At some point, without deciding to, I let myself relax back into the couch. My body loosened fraction by fraction. I allowed my head to rest. I allowed my breathing to slow.

  The room remained dark, the gold accents of the apartment barely visible in the low light. Everything around us was expensive and distant, but none of it mattered. What mattered was the quiet, the shared stillness, the simple fact of being close without expectation.

  I thought about the pain I carried. The losses. The humiliation. None of it vanished. It sat with me, unchanged. But alongside it now was something else. A fragile warmth. A sense of being seen, even if only in sleep. I stayed there as the night continued, holding nothing and being held in return, letting the silence stretch without fear, knowing that whatever came next would come, but that for this moment, this was enough. I was glad to be alive, to have endured, even if only for this fleeting moment.

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