Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It has been twenty-five days.

No catharsis, no collapse on her end. Just the dull machinery of compliance.

By institutional definition, she is stable. There have not been any panic spirals since the second week, and definitely no episodes of self-harm. She swallows her medicine with water that tastes faintly of iron and mildew. She attends the requisite group sessions and only listens when spoken to.

Apparently, this is called progress.

She wakes before the bell as always – five o’clock on the dot. The sky outside is a bruised violet, the kind of color that never fully arrives. Fog hangs over the compound like a heavy and clinging body left too long in water. Her blanket is folded with surgical precision, the corners tucked so sharply. She slips her journal into the waistband of her pants, the spine pressing cold against her skin. It is navy, unmarked, carefully anonymous. The staff once asked to see it. She told them she’d burned the last one. She smiled when she said it, and they wrote something down in their notes.

She brushes her teeth for precisely two minutes. Gags once, then rinses. Her face is neither tired nor alert in the mirror, just blank and efficient. A face that knows how to pass inspections.

Rin does not speak much. She has learned to move through this place without touching anything – no light switches, unnecessary words, or intimacy. Her presence is calibrated to vanish. By six, she’s by the koi pond. The stones are still damp. The fog hasn’t lifted. She sits cross-legged near the pond, arms cocooned around her knees. The water is slow, glassy. The koi surface with slack mouths, kissing air that offers nothing.

She does not pray.
She watches.

People assume she’s spiritual. Perhaps Catholic, like a Hesperian, possibly something vaguer, because she is quiet and closes her eyes when others talk.

Well, people are idiots.

Runin “Rin” Fang. Twenty-five.
She was a laboratory scientist educated at Miravella Academy and was trained in Dragon Province. Soon after getting her license, she was employed in a high-performing private institution in Sinegard. Rose quickly. Called competent, composed, and exceptional under pressure. The kind of girl mothers point to and say See, like that.

Until the day her hands wouldn’t stop shaking during a crossmatch. Until the day she collapsed on the lab floor, curled like a fetus, unable to breathe. Her supervisor thought it was a seizure, but it wasn’t.

It was grief.
Old grief.
Years passed its expiration date.

Her father had died during her exam season. Her mother never mentioned it again. "Focus on your career, Rin. He’d want that." She focused. She excelled. She erased. And now, she is here.

Dr. Silan, the one who ran the place, once told her her grief had been “compartmentalized so profoundly it had begun to rot.” She didn’t answer. Just blinked slowly, then muttered, "Cute metaphor." Ever since then, she appears at the medication window like a ghost that keeps good time. She does not look anyone in the eye.

That morning, after her quiet dissociation session in the koi pond, she came over for breakfast. Sister Lena was a Hesperian nun who ran the kitchen in the institution. She is soft-voiced and too perceptive, and she has taken to calling her ghost girl. Some mornings like this one, she slips her an extra dumpling, like a bribe to stay tethered to the living.

Group therapy is at ten and is required of her. 
Rin speaks only when cornered. She does not cry. Last week, Lakan, a bright-eyed and absurd group member in her therapy, claimed that burnout was a millennial myth. She laughed, once, sharp as glass. Dr. Lira, her group therapy mediator, scribbled something in her clipboard: emotional response: contempt.

Her stay is open-ended. Four months, maybe more. They will not discharge her until they’re sure the scaffolding of routine has fused into something solid. Something real. They don’t know that she’s already shattered, just masterful at stillness. All her fractures are internal. Clean lines. She has learned how to bleed without leaking.

St. Eustace was quiet. Not the kind of quiet that healed. The type that hummed beneath the skin. Set deep in the hills of Valdemara, where the fog clung like memory and nothing ever dried thoroughly, St. Eustace disguised itself as peace. Thirty patients, max. All pre-screened, all referred. Mostly the wreckage of old money and soft dynasty: heirs, daughters of generals, failed philosophers with wrists bandaged in silk.

The place resembled a mountain retreat more than an asylum – its whitewashed walls veiled in ivy, very Hesperian in inspiration. Garden paths paved with old, moss-bitten stone. A koi pond shaped like a comma – pausing, but never ending. There were hammocks between tamarind trees – therapy gardens where patients brewed malunggay tea as a form of penance. The kitchen served brown rice and gluten-free dumplings. The art courtyard smelled of lavender oil and turpentine; the brushes were sable, the canvases stretched tight as skin.

You could not walk in off the street. St. Eustace required gatekeepers and referrals from someone with weight. A name that meant something. A favor owed.

Rin came through a crack in the door.

A senior consultant at her former laboratory institution had owed her deeply and silently after she was forced to cover up three months’ worth of mislabeled specimens from his wife’s lab. He said nothing when he handed her the brochure; he just pressed the smooth cardstock into her palm like a benediction. “Four months. Just go, Fang. You’re not fooling anyone.”

She didn’t argue.
She was too tired to pretend competence mattered anymore.

She didn’t care about the shame. Let the world speculate.
Sabbatical. Breakdown. Death.

No one outside Valdemara knew where she was.
Not her colleagues.
Not her classmates.

And she liked it that way. Here, she could be still. Here, she could rot in peace.

Her roommate, however, was not still. Not ever.

Tala.

Third stint. Former star. Still cheeky as ever, just a little broken now.
She talked too much. Got too close. On her first day, she complimented Rin’s eyebrows and asked if she’d ever tried ayahuasca. On her second, she cried while applying tonics and said she missed her pet parrot more than her blood relatives.

On the seventh day, while flipping through a smudged printed newspaper issue from before the second southern war, Tala didn’t look up when she said, "You look like the kind of girl who never learned how to cry without apologizing first." They never spoke of it again. That was their truce: no digging, no declarations. Rin didn’t call it friendship. Not out loud. Not even in her journal. But Tala gave her candy from a hoarded stash wrapped in hospital gauze. Rin let her wear her tunic when the nights got too cold, when the fog soaked through the linen robes like wet skin. They rolled their eyes in group together. It wasn’t deep. But it was real enough for this place.

And when Tala, half-asleep, lobbed a pillow at her that morning and groaned, "Ugh, you’re up before the fucking sun again. What are you, a forest witch?" Rin didn’t smile. She didn’t have to. She just blinked once and said, "Better than a coked-up doll." Tala snorted into her blanket. And that was that.

The clock turned ten, and it was time for group therapy. There were five of them in the group. Six, if you counted the therapist. Rin didn’t.

The chairs were arranged in a semicircle, as if pretending to be democratic. Cheap wood. Always slightly sticky. A pitcher of untouched water sat at the center like an altar no one believed in. Dr. Lira began as she always did – voice soft, dress softer, as if speaking too loudly might bruise the walls. “How’s everyone feeling today?” she asked as if the answer would ever change.

The group was made up of:

1. Lakan, early thirties, ex-architect. Diagnosed with a mood disorder. Once cried over the beauty of an atrium. Referred to himself as “the older brother” unironically. Couldn’t shut up.
   
   
2. Tala, of course. Cross-legged, pen twirling, voice like a podcast no one asked to hear. Spoke like her words were currency.
   
   
3. Juro, late forties. Former doctor. Bitter. Compared therapy to pyramid schemes and state surveillance. Might’ve been right.
   
   
4. Irinka, mother of two, has a voice like a church hymn. Wept in circles, wept in spirals. She always apologized for something she hadn’t said yet. Quiet.
   
   
5. Rin sat furthest from the window, with a neat posture, legs tucked, and expression drawn tight like she wasn’t waiting to run, just planning the most efficient route.
   
   

Group therapy always unfolded the same way. Someone was always crying, confessing, or laughing too loudly to cover the first two. Dr. Lira nodded along with that studied, deliberate empathy with eyes too open, hands too still. She always looked like she was trying to absorb grief with her pores. Tala passed around tissues as if she were co-facilitating. Rin said nothing unless directly addressed.

Even then, her words came out clipped and sterile. Surgical.

"I’m fine."
"Nothing new."
"No, I haven’t written any letters to myself."

What was the point?

She knew the theories. She could quote the manuals by heart. She could tell you exactly which part of the brain processed fear, which neurotransmitters governed mood, which DSM cluster each fell under if she squinted hard enough. She was familiar with the therapy model they were using and the associated acronyms. CBT. DBT. Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention. She could map their traumas in bullet points if she bothered.

Fight. Flight. Fawn. Freeze.

Juro: fight.
Irinka: fawn.
Tala: performed freeze but bled flight.
Lakan: oscillated like a fan that didn’t know which way was north.

She could even diagnose herself, on paper: Depression with anxious features, persistent grief, complex trauma. She could describe the pathology perfectly.

What she could not do and what she refused to do was feel.

Not here.
Not with them.
Not after everything she’d buried beneath her skin like shrapnel.

She had watched people die. Held the hands of mothers with children they’d already lost. Cleaned up blood no one dared look at twice. And now she was supposed to heal by talking about it in a semicircle with strangers and peppermint tissues?

They didn’t know what ruin looked like.
Not really.

Once, Dr. Lira said, “You have walls so high, Rin, I’m surprised you haven’t suffocated.”

She looked her in the eye and replied, “I breathe just fine.”

Today’s topic was emotional regulation.

Juro was ranting about his brother again. Something about inheritance. Irinka was already crying. Tala nodded sagely, like grief was something she’d studied and aced. Rin tuned it out like always. She counted ceiling tiles, tapped her fingernail once or twice against the hardwood of her chair. When it was her turn, Dr. Lira turned with that same soft pivot of tone, like stepping onto snow. “Rin, how do you respond when you feel overwhelmed?” she murmured. Rin looked up and tilted her head slightly. She paused long enough to make it uncomfortable.

“I don’t.”

Silence.

Dr. Lira scribbled something. Lakan shifted. Tala chuckled and winked at Rin.

Rin returned to her tile counting. The sky beyond the window hadn’t changed.
Neither had she.
Day twenty-five. Progress? Not really.

She preferred it that way.

When the timer beeped, she was already uncoiling. Rin uncrossed her arms with ritual precision and folded her windbreaker over one forearm. Smooth. Unbothered.

She was halfway to the door when Dr. Lira said, too casually to be casual,

“Before everyone leaves, just a quick note. We’ll have someone new joining the group tomorrow.”

The room stilled. A few heads turned. Even the fan seemed to pause.

Dr. Lira continued, ever the gentle wind, “He was admitted recently. Still adjusting. Be kind.”

Rin didn’t blink.
Didn’t react.

Behind her, Lakan muttered something about fresh meat. Tala leaned in like the devil herself and said, “Maybe a less unhinged one this time.”

The hallway was too bright with too many windows. Too much quiet that wasn’t real. The group broke as it always did: fragmented, stuttering, reluctant to end. Dr. Lira disappeared, the clipboard tucked against her ribs like scripture, and her footsteps soundless. The door clicked shut.

Rin stood first. She always did.

She moved like she was leaving smoke, not footprints. But today, she wasn’t fast enough.

“So, who do you think it is?” Lakan said as he and Juro appeared beside her, as if they always mistook proximity for kinship. Tala looped an arm through hers. Rin stiffened and heard Irinka whisper, “I heard he’s in a court case. Like, anger management court case.”

Rin didn’t answer and kept walking. The others followed her anyway, chattering about the new member. 

She didn’t consider them friends.
Not Tala, who touched too much. Not Lakan, who talked too loudly. Not Juro, who spat bitterness like it fed him. Not Irinka, who apologized for everything except existing. But they remembered her name and spoke to her as if she were still in the room. In a place like Valdemara, that counted for something. Familiarity could rot into intimacy if left in the dark long enough.

So she let them orbit even if she gave them nothing in return or filed them away as noise.

“Do you think he’s like… legit crazy?” Juro asked.

“Maybe he murdered someone,” Tala mused, voice bright.

“Maybe he’s just another fuckup like the rest of us,” Lakan muttered.

Rin said nothing and turned the corner. She wanted none of it.
Not the buzz. Not the group. Not tomorrow.

She wanted silence. And if not silence, then absence. And if not absence, then at the very least a place to grieve without being watched.

Their routine never changed. After group, it was time for lunch. The mess hall was too bright and clean – everything was bamboo and tile, and the curated was calm. The food came out on eco-friendly trays: brown rice, sweet and sour pork, fruit cut too neatly to feel human. Rin didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. The others knew by now that she wouldn't be joining them if she veered left instead of right.

They let her go.

Some days she ate with them. Sat at the edge of their table, half-listening to detox theories, dream analysis, and the occasional joke about breaking out. She never laughed. But the noise, sometimes, distracted her from the louder one; the hum behind her ribs that hadn’t stopped since her father died.

Not today.

Today, the noise inside was worse. It wasn't panic or grief. It was something slower and denser. An ache without language.

Today was the anniversary.

Not of the attempt itself. She couldn’t remember the hour clearly, just the tile under her cheek and the cold bite of stainless steel. But the day after.

The morning. Her mother’s scream. The silence that followed. No one spoke of it again.

She went to work the next day like nothing had happened. She filed reports and cross-matched blood. She cleaned the pipettes and smiled when spoken to. Everything was perfectly intact, except it wasn’t.

She’d never told anyone. She didn’t think it counted. She didn’t even cut that deep. It wasn’t about dying and but rather, stopping. 

Now, a year later, it returned. Not as memory, but as weight. A pressure between her lungs. A breath she couldn’t exhale fully. She carried her tray through the herb garden and down the narrow stone path to the koi pond, her usual place, tucked between hedges and half-forgotten by the nurses. The water was clear, still. Three koi swam lazy spirals beneath the surface. She set her tray down and sat on the moss-damp ledge. She forced a spoonful of sweet and sour pork into her mouth. It burned.

Good. At least something still burned.

The fish drifted toward her, as if summoned. They always did.

The large one, scarred at the gill, moved slowest, dragging his weight like he owned the pond. She called him General Tujin, after a war hero from a half-remembered folktale. Amah was the fat one with a wide mouth and insatiable appetite, named after her grandmother, who’d once cooked seven dishes for a single guest. The smallest, who circled erratically and always arrived late, was Muni, silent prayer.

She wasn’t sentimental. They weren’t pets. But in a place where the walls smelled of antiseptic and too much lavender, the koi were the only things that still felt real. She forced down another bite. Then another. Slowly, like a ritual. She placed her palm against her chest when she couldn't take more just to confirm, she still had one.

Still here. Still in a body.

She reached for her journal and opened it to a blank page. Wrote:

day 25.
still here against all odds. no one clapped.

Then shut it. The ache didn’t go away. It never did. But it settled and sat with her, like fog curling around stone. Amah nudged Muni out of the way. General Tujin floated at the edge like a sentry. Rin kicked off her shoes and pressed her bare feet to the grass. She curled her toes into the dirt. Breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth.

Ground yourself, Dr. Lira’s voice echoed. Anchor to the physical.

So she did.

Palm against stone. Fingers trailing moss. Wind in her hair. Koi circling like clockwork.

“Greedy bitch,” she murmured to Amah, who surfaced again, mouth gaping.

“Muni, eat faster. You’ll starve.”

Her voice was low, barely above breath. A sound meant only for water and wind.

“General Tujin,” she added, “You’re still an asshole.”

It wasn’t affection, exactly. It was recognition of persistence and presence. The koi didn’t speak. Didn’t pity and didn’t ask her for anything. They simply existed. She envied them for that.

She leaned back and watched the sky shift. The clouds sagged low and colorless. She thought of her father. She recalled the sound of his slippers at dawn. He used to sneak meat into her bowl when her mother was fasting. She remembered the smell of garlic on his fingers when he used to cook for her. He died while she was studying for her exams to pass her license. It was sudden. There was no warning. She wasn't able to bid goodbye. She passed the exam anyway. She smiled for the pictures and never shed a tear. The grief didn’t hit all at once. It arrived slowly, like mold.

She remembered that night in particular. A year ago, she was alone on the bathroom floor. She had a blade in one hand and his watch was in the other. She didn’t want to die; she just wanted to disappear and numb the ache.

She figured out that a part of her died that day with him. The blade hadn’t gone deep, but the silence did.

Eventually, she stood and picked up her tray. Rin slipped her shoes back on. The koi lingered. Muni flicked his tail. Amah floated expectantly. General Tujin glared like he always did. She looked at them once. Just once.

“Get over yourselves,” she muttered, deadpan. Then, they turned back toward the path. No one clapped, but she walked anyway. She was still here and still breathing even if it felt like she shouldn’t be.

The sun bled slowly across Valdemara’s spine, sliding its final gold between the pines.

By now, most of the patients had retreated inside. Lunch was over, and free play that started around late afternoon was not far off either. The compound quieted like a held breath. But Rin moved in the opposite direction, slipping past the meditation path, her boots crunching over loose soil, her hands sunk deep into the sleeves of a windbreaker too big for her.

She knew this trail; knew the rhythm of its turns. The slope beyond the prayer rocks, the sharp bend where the railing ended. She’d memorized every shadow here because this was hers.

A patch of cliff just beyond the boundaries of St. Eustace. It's not off-limits; it's just not visited enough. It was not too dangerous because the fence around it had a gap. It was just wide enough for a girl and her ghosts.

She slipped through without hesitation. The wind met her like an old friend. It was cold, sharp, full of bark and pine. She zipped her jacket to her chin, pulled her sleeves over her knuckles. The fabric smelled of detergent and something older – maybe leather or the memory of a hug she hadn’t earned. Her father’s windbreaker. It was forest green and oversized on her. She used to hate it.

He’d given it to her a week before he died, laughing at her scowl at how ugly she thought she looked wearing it. 

“Good. You’ll be less likely to get mugged.” 

She never got to tell him it grew on her. Now it was the only thing she had left that tethered her to the earth.

She climbed onto the stone outcrop, settled into the cold. Below, the city blinked like a slow arrhythmia with lights far off in the dying sun in a world she no longer felt part of. The horizon was split open in gold and ash, clouds dissolving at the edges like breath. It was holy in its way. Loneliness often was.

She let the quiet in. Let the wind wrap around her.

And then – she whiffed it. Smoke.

It didn’t belong here. Not in this light. Not in her lungs. Her throat caught before her thoughts did. A dry burn curling at the edges of her breathing. 

Sharp. Bitter. Unmistakable.

Cigarette.

Her body recoiled, instinct rising like bile. She coughed, once, sharp and low, then turned toward the treeline.

There, just past the broken post. There was a flicker of movement, followed by a soft click of a lighter.

She stood without thinking. Some asshole was here in her place. Inhaling poison and exhaling it into her sanctuary.

Her breath rasped. Not dramatic – she wasn’t the gasping type. But enough to sting and enough to bruise. She moved toward the smoke.

He was slouched against the fence post, black sweater cloaking him, headphones dangling from his neck like he didn’t care enough to wear them properly. He didn’t notice her at first.

Or maybe he did and didn’t care.

She watched him tilt his head back, cigarette caught between two fingers. His profile was carved, too sharp for comfort. Tattoo sleeve curling down his forearm like scripture she couldn’t read. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days or like sleep didn’t touch him at all. She did not recognize him at all. Probably someone from another group. 

Her shoes crunched over the gravel like punctuation as she stormed closer, smoke curling in the air like an insult aimed directly at her lungs. He didn’t flinch. Just stood there, half-shadowed by fog, smoke glowing at his fingertips like a dare. Rin stepped onto the stone path, arms tight across her chest, throat already tightening from the nicotine.

"Put it out."

He didn’t even blink. He took another drag.

She coughed even louder this time, deliberately. "Smoking’s banned. In case you missed the twenty signs taped all over this place."

He exhaled slowly, let the smoke drift sideways like he’d trained it to spite her. "And yet, here I am." His voice was low and clean-edged. No apology in sight. She stared. “I’m asthmatic, asshole.”

That made him pause – barely. Then he tilted his head, examining her as if she were a new kind of stain on his shoe.

"Not my problem."

Rin blinked once. The audacity of this asshole.

She laughed. "Of course. You’ve got the look. Mommy paid for this place, didn’t she?"

He raised an eyebrow. She didn’t stop.

“Let me guess. You punched someone. Broke something. Got caught. Boohoo. So now you’re here, pretending to be misunderstood while chain-smoking.”

The smirk faltered.

Bullseye.

She stepped forward. Just close enough to make him shift his weight.

"This is where I come when I want to breathe. So if you’re gonna poison it with your pathetic rebellion complex, I will make sure you’re back in detox scrubbing toilets by next week."

He stared at her. Really stared. Eyes dark and unreadable.

Then, slowly, flicked the cigarette to the ground and stepped on it with a calculated kind of boredom. Smoke hissed against gravel.

“Cute lecture,” he said. “You memorize that for group or are you just naturally condescending?”

“You don’t know me.”

“No,” he said. “But I know your type.”

“And what type is that?”

He didn’t answer immediately. Just smiled, sharp and quiet.
Like he was already bored with her.
Like he’d already won.

“Control freaks with superiority complexes and daddy issues. The usual.”

Rin’s jaw locked.

She stepped back, heart thrumming so loud it almost drowned out the wind.
The city below was flickering like a warning.

She could’ve said more.
Should’ve.

But instead, she spun on her heel and walked away.

His voice caught her just before she cleared the bend.

“See you at dinner, sweetheart.”

She didn’t look back.

But her hand clenched at her side until her nails almost drew blood.

She didn’t know his name. She didn’t care.

But if that smug, smoke-laced bastard came near within five feet of her tomorrow, she wasn’t going to survive this place.

She was going to set it on fire.

Chapter Text

Back in the laboratory, Rin learned that contamination is rarely dramatic. It doesn’t arrive as a plume of smoke or a huge splash of blood; it creeps in quietly, one stray artifact at a time, until the whole slide is useless and you don’t even know where it started. Rin thinks about that as she walks to dinner – how her day was supposed to be sterile, routine, her hour of clean air sealed off from the rest. And yet some stranger, a single ember of noise and nicotine, has already slipped past her containment and left everything clouded.

She went to dinner but didn’t sit with the others. She dropped her tray into the return bin with a loud clang, turning heads, then continued walking down the corridor toward the admin office, where the ceilings were too high. Her fists were clenched inside her sleeves. Her windbreaker was zipped, suffocating at the collar.

Her chest was still tight. Her mood? Black.

That hour was supposed to be sacred. A brief reprieve carved into the wreckage of the day. Somewhere to disappear. But some stranger, a smoke-veiled, porcelain-faced imbecile, had shattered it with a single ember and a smile like a dare.

She reached the admin wing and pushed open the heavy door without hesitation. Dr. Silan’s office was always cracked open, just slightly. His idea of transparency, he once said. She’d always thought it felt staged like an actor’s cue for intimacy. She knocked once, then entered. He didn’t look surprised. Dr. Silan sat in his usual position, back straight, pen in hand. He was an intimidating old man, dressed in slate-colored slacks and wearing thin glasses perched low. His office looked sterile, with no clutter around, except for a desk and a lamp.

No family photos. No framed quotes. No goddamn affirmations.

“Runin,” he said without looking up. She didn’t wait for permission to speak. “Someone was smoking at the cliffside.” There was steel in her voice, tight and honed. “It’s not off-limits, I know that. But someone was there, smoking. I have asthma –” She started to rant, but he suddenly cut her off by raising a hand. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll look into it.”

That was it? Her shoulders stiffened. She stared at him, disbelieving. He hadn’t even asked for a name. “I don’t care what group he’s in,” she said. “But if he thinks the rules don’t apply to him, someone should tell him otherwise.” Dr. Silan set his pen down. He closed the folder in front of him and folded his hands over it. He leaned back in his chair and regarded her like someone watching smoke twist above a candle.

“What day is it?” he asked.

Her jaw tightened. The shift in tone. The pivot. She saw it coming, and still it scraped. She looked away, arms crossing on instinct. 

“Doesn’t matter.”

“I think it does,” he said, voice even. “You’re not usually reactive like this. You don’t escalate. You don’t show up unannounced,” he said. 

“It was smoke,” she snapped. “I’m asthmatic. You want to see my chart?” He didn’t flinch. “But the smoke’s gone, yet you’re still here,” he said.

Her breath hitched. God, she hated this. She hated how he spoke like he was reading her pulse. She despised how he never pushed but just waited and let silence do the excavation. She stared at the floor and counted the grooves between tiles. Her fingers curled deeper into the fraying ends of her sleeves.

“It’s not about today,” she said, low. “No,” he agreed, “it’s about every day you’ve never let yourself name.” The words hung. 

She didn’t respond. Something inside her had already gone tight again, recoiling into its shell. When it became clear she wouldn’t speak again, he exhaled. “You did the right thing reporting them,” he said. His voice returned to protocol. “I’ll handle it.” She nodded once, already turning toward the door.

“Runin.”

She stopped.

“You don’t have to be okay today,” he said. She stood there for a moment, still as stone, then left. Rin walked down the hallway as if the building were on fire, and only she could feel the heat. Her sneakers struck the tile harder than necessary.

Damn it.

He read her again. And worse, he was right.

She didn’t remember walking. Only the sting in her calves from the stairs, and the faint bite of wind against her cheek. Her body had taken her without permission through the dorms, up the stairwell, out the maintenance door that someone, who did not care much for the safety of patients, always forgot to lock.

Now she was standing on the rooftop alone.

It was cold. Not the kind that bit skin, but the kind that settled inside the bones. The kind that made you forget you ever felt warm. Far below, the world whispered: pine trees folding into darkness, the thin smear of Valdemara’s lights blinking gold through fog. She curled her arms around her ribs, breath shallow. It felt like holding in a scream.

Dr. Silan had known again without being asked or accused. Now, her thoughts were loud, blood-slick, insistent. She pressed her palms to the concrete barrier. It was damp and coarse. It grounded her.

Her chest felt too small for her lungs. The air was thinning in her throat. The spiral wasn’t sharp tonight; it was dull-edged. 

I could jump. I won’t. But I could.
It would be so easy to disappear.
Why did I keep going after that night? Why did I choose more of this?

She leaned forward until her forehead touched the wall. Her skin met concrete. She inhaled, almost choked. She had no koi pond to ground her this time. She cannot afford a ten-minute walk to the garden. Even if she tried to sprint, she’d still miss curfew at ten. She’d get locked out and get written up. So she stayed.

Barefoot now, heels prickled by the cold stone, knees trembling with exhaustion she wouldn’t admit. The stars were nowhere save for the angry, dim clouds and the fog curling inward like a closing fist.

Her grief had no decency. No crescendo. It came quietly, like mold in the walls. There was no catharsis and tears. 

Rin didn’t cry anymore; she hadn’t in a long time. She just stood there and let the wind rattle her sleeves. She allowed the night to watch her unravel in silence. Ten minutes passed, or maybe longer. Her arms folded tighter. Her jaw ached from clenching. Her fingers had gone pale. Still, she stayed pressed to the wall, watching the lights below like it might offer her a reason.

Nothing came.

The nausea was back, not from food or sickness, but from knowing. From the realization that therapy hadn’t undone anything. Those meds didn’t reanimate the dead. No breathing exercise could convince her she deserved a future.

What was the point? Routine? Mindfulness? A handful of pills crushed into yogurt?

Her father was still gone. The silence in her head still waited, and yet, the world still expected her to show up. She leaned her head back, eyes tracing the fog. No one would truly understand. They would dissect her into bullet points or turn her name into a talking point at a seminar. Burnout. High-functioning depression. Missed signs.

Fuck that.

She crouched down, spine pressed to the wall. Arms wrapped around her knees like armor. Closed her eyes and counted backward from a hundred until her heart and mind calmed down. 

She stayed five minutes more, then eventually gathered the strength to stand up. She walked back to the stairwell without ceremony. One hand is dragging along the wall like a guide rail as an attempt to tether her to the living world. She didn’t look back as she went back.

Still within curfew. Still playing the part.

The hallway outside her shared dorm was hollow. Tala’s bedroom door was already closed. Rin kicked off her shoes and peeled off her windbreaker. She folded it with the same precision she always used, creased just so, laid neatly at the foot of the bed like she needed one thing to obey her.

Rin sat at the edge of the mattress. Her breathing had evened, but it still felt artificial. Like a lie her body told to keep her alive. The scream inside her was still there. It was coiled and patient.

She picked up her journal.

i went to the rooftop tonight. wanted to jump but didn’t.
survival is not healing.
fuck you, dr. silan, for being right.

She closed the page and turned off the lamp. She was now lying in her bed beneath the quiet violence of her own mind, kept breathing like it was an act of will. She finally let sleep consume her. 

•─────⋅⋅─────•

Rin arrived a little bit late to group therapy the next day. Her pulse throbbed behind her temples, each heartbeat a small indictment of the night before. She had accidentally slept through the morning meds, through Tala’s humming outside her room. She woke only to the taste of cotton in her mouth and a headache so deep it felt ancestral.

Hair knotted into a loose twist, she made no effort for appearances. Just a grey pullover and the same old journal clutched tight. She walked into therapy like she was being marched to sentencing. She expected the same players. Dr. Lira’s well-meaning warmth. Tala’s wide, oblivious grin. Lakan and Juro locked in another philosophical scuffle about SSRIs and serotonin. Irinka and her quiet hums. 

But when she pushed the door open, he was already there. Slouched in a chair far too small for the weight of his audacity. Legs spread and arms folded. Tattoos are unapologetically visible, ink coiling down one wrist.

Cliffside bastard.

He didn’t look up right away, of course. Men like him rarely did. It was part of the choreography, this feigned disinterest masking total control of the room. She could feel his awareness, even in stillness. Her gut twisted. She paused in the doorway and let the door click shut behind her like punctuation.

"Rin," said Dr. Lira, smiling with unnecessary brightness.

She didn’t reply. Just nodded once, coldly, and slid into her usual seat, which was the farthest from him, as if geography could protect her from contamination. Tala wiggled her eyebrows at her. Rin didn’t blink.

Dr. Lira clapped softly. “As you can see, we have someone new joining us today.”

Rin already knew. She could smell the chaos. His fingers were drumming against his knees like he was fighting sleep. Dr. Lira introduced him anyway.

“Yin Nezha,” she said, still overly kind. “He’s here for stabilization and behavioral support.”

Of course he is, Rin thought. Of course he fucking is.

When he finally turned his head, his eyes found hers without effort. Just a flicker of contact. Recognition.

Amusement curled at the corner of his mouth, not quite a smirk, but the implication of one. She knew that look. She knew people like that: dangerous with their silences, smug with their damage. He remembered her, and he found it funny.

She looked away, jaw tight, and crossed her arms. Rin muted the burn behind her ribs with two words pressed into her mouth like ash.

“Fucking hell.”

The usual works followed. Tala’s chaotic optimism: “I feel like I want to cry and eat at the same time.” Juro mumbling about familial trauma. Irinka is visibly unraveling. Lakan is intellectualizing his anxiety. Rin passed as always.

Then it was him. He leaned forward like he was stepping into a spotlight. Elbows on knees, head cocked slightly to the side. 

“I’m Nezha,” he said, dry. “First time in group. Not really the sharing type, but I’ll try not to drown anyone.”

Tala giggled. Rin rolled her eyes so hard her sockets ached. Dr. Lira nodded, as if he hadn’t just insulted the entire premise of their existence. “Trying is already progress.”

“Mmm,” he hummed, already bored with himself. She wanted to peel her skin off. She wanted him gone. The headache behind her eyes throbbed louder. She stared at her notebook. Drew a single, furious circle. Beneath it, wrote in miniature:

nezha = cliffside bastard
kill on sight (metaphorically, pending dr. silan’s legal counsel)

The session spiraled, as always. Emotional disclosures punctuated by awkward silences and the occasional involuntary eye contact. Contrary to his earlier statement, he spoke more than anyone. He was even truthful nor vulnerable. He was just making noise by being loud. He had sarcasm laced with practiced ease, as if it were a shield masquerading as charm. His every line was perfectly timed for maximum distraction.

“Journaling gives me hand cramps. Does that count as physical therapy?”

“Pretty sure they meant to send me to court-ordered anger management, but I think I won a raffle instead.”

He was performing like a cabaret and everyone bought it. Even Dr. Lira smiled politely, as if she were keeping a child entertained. Rin said nothing and just watched him. She knew this type too well. People who joked their way out of their own suffering and turned confession into comedy. 

But then, Dr. Lira asked him something real.

“What happens when the jokes stop working?”

He didn’t answer right away.

Just stilled.

And for a moment – one fragile, flickering instant, the mask faltered. His smirk collapsed just a bit. The silence that followed was as thin and brittle as a needle. It sliced through the circle, held breath like a noose. Then he laughed abruptly.

“They haven’t yet,” he said. His voice was rawer now, like someone had scraped the varnish off.

Then he folded back into himself with his arms crossed and eyes down. He was gone. He didn’t speak again for the rest of the hour. Rin didn’t know what to do with that. It didn’t endear him to her, but it startled her. The retreat into silence felt familiar.

When the group dismissed, she stood first. She always managed to do so with a clean exit. She headed for the mess hall. Not because she was hungry, but because ritual was better than rumination.

“Rin, lunch!” Tala called, bounding beside her like sugar on legs. Lakan held the door. Juro and Irinka follow behind them. She let herself be steered. Resistance would’ve been more exhausting than compliance.

Nezha was gone. He vanished without a word. Good.

The cafeteria smelled so good. Sister Lena’s doing, no less. Rin could spot her from across the hall. Apron stained, rosary wrapped twice around her wrist like a weapon.

She didn’t believe in Sister Lena’s God, but she believed in women who wielded fire and flavor. The group sat and talked. They were absurd. Tala recapped Nezha’s one-liners like they were gospel. Juro complained the bok choy was “suspiciously green.” Lakan launched into some academic debate about generational trauma versus biological predisposition.

Rin didn’t speak, but she didn’t leave. She ate quietly, letting the salt and heat anchor her back into her body. When her bowl was empty, she stood to get seconds. Why not? Sister Lena raised an eyebrow as she ladled more food into Rin’s bowl.

“You haven’t eaten like this since day eight.”

“It’s decent today.”

“It’s always decent when I cook.” Rin didn’t argue. She turned to leave, but the nun spoke again. This time, lower and graver. “You still look hollow,” Sister Lena said. Rin paused. “It’s just my face.” 

“Hm,” Sister Lena grunted. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s the silence.”

Lunch aftermath had passed in its usual quiet chaos. Tala, dragging Lakan to art therapy with stained sleeves and too much caffeine in her hands, Juro arguing with a nurse about lithium ratios like he was leading a trial, and Irinka, soft-spoken and smudged at the edges, slipping back to her room without a word.

Rin didn’t tell anyone where she was going.

She signed her name in the trailhead logbook with deliberate strokes, her last entry dated nine days prior, and stepped beyond the garden gate where the overgrowth clawed at the fences like it too wanted out. The path twisted downward, flanked by damp earth and bamboo stalks, the kind that bowed with the weight of wind. The trail was narrow, moss-furred, and thick with the scent of rot and rain-drenched bark. The steel perimeter fencing coiled beside it like a boundary drawn in bitterness. It wasn’t meant to keep danger out but rather to trap it in.

At the base, the river unfurled. Clear, shallow, sinewed like muscle through the forest floor. It wound like a secret prayer, waist-deep at most, but swift in places. It was rumored to have swallowed someone once, a patient who wandered too far in the wet season. People gossiped about it. Rin liked that.

Let them stay afraid. It meant the water was hers.

She stepped onto a flat stone near the edge, shrugged off her windbreaker, and peeled her sweatshirt overhead. The black of her sports bra clung damp against her ribs. She rolled her bottoms to the knees and entered slowly. A breath caught sharp in her chest as the cold cinched around her ribs. She let the water carve a path through the air from her lungs, then released it slowly. Her limbs ached, yes, but it was a clean pain. She ducked once, submerged her head, and came up gasping. Not from panic but from relief. Because here, the silence was total. Here, nothing asked anything of her.

She floated near the bend, back to the current, arms out like wings too tired to lift. The sky broke through the canopy in pale veins of light. Her skin dappled, breath low. The water’s steady hand cradled her spine like it didn’t mind if she stayed forever.

The sound came before the sight of him. The sharp crack of a branch, the crunch of gravel carried too clearly in the night air. Her whole body tensed at once, her jaw locked, shoulders braced as though instinct alone might shield her. 

She turned, heart already stuttering in her ribs, and of course it was him.

Yin Nezha.

Tattoos scrawled across his arms like unfinished cartography, posture slouched in a way that dared the earth to straighten him. His hands were buried in his pockets. He looked up and then down again, as if the world were a debt he hadn’t yet figured out how to collect.

He didn’t see her at first. But when his eyes scanned the riverbed, he froze. He had a blank expression as if he’d stumbled onto a god’s altar and didn’t know whether to kneel or light it on fire. She did not speak. She only glared, fury curling off her ribs like steam. This was her river. Her one refuge. And now his shadow had trespassed too.

He didn’t move at all but just blinked once. She stepped forward. “Twice,” she said. Her voice was low and razor-edged. His brow furrowed. “What?”

“Twice now, you’ve wandered into my space.”

He lifted his hands in mock surrender, that smirk threatening to return. “Didn’t know it was reserved seating, sweetheart.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Okay, not-sweetheart.”

Wrong tone.

“Leave.”

He blinked. “What, now?”

“You don’t get to just be here,” she snapped. “You don’t get to follow me around like a plague. First, the cliff. Now this.”

“I didn’t follow you,” he said. “I just –”

“You just what?”

“I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“That’s the point,” she said. “You never know. You just show up. You take up air and noise and space like it’s owed to you.”

Something dark flickered in his expression. The humor drained.

“This isn’t your sanctuary,” he said.

“No,” she agreed. “But it’s the only place I can breathe and you’re ruining it.”

He gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “You’re impossible! You act like I do this on purpose. I don’t even know you. Why the fuck are you so volatile with me?”

“Because you don’t belong here.”

“Neither do you,” he shot back. “But your ego’s so big you think you get to police who breathe near you.” He exhaled, heavy. “You are so entitled.”

“And you think everything’s a joke,” she said. “Is that how you deal with the fact that you’re nothing but a walking rehab cliché?”

That got him. His face sharpened, and his eyes narrowed.

“And you’re what? The tragic burnout case? Poor little overachiever with a savior complex and a martyr kink?”

The insults cut oddly precise, too close for people who barely knew each other. Like they were guessing, but somehow always landing near the gut. She stepped out of the water, dripping and furious now. Her rising rage was consuming her enough to not care about the riverbed stones biting into her bare feet. 

“You don’t know shit about me.”

“Don’t have to,” he snapped. “I can smell the condescension from twenty feet away.”

She laughed coldly and humorlessly. “Right, because your ego’s too busy jerking itself off to notice when it’s not the smartest person in the room.”

He took a step forward. “You act like silence makes you deep. It doesn’t. It makes you boring.”

Her hand shot out and shoved him hard, square in the chest.

“Fuck you.”

He stumbled back a step, caught himself, then shoved her right back, open-palmed, controlled, but no less violent. He was admitted for anger management, for god’s sake, and it was slowly unraveling at this very moment. 

“Try that again.”

She did and slapped his arm, pushed against his ribs, teeth bared.

“You think I’m scared of you? You’re not scary. You’re pathetic.”

He grabbed her wrist mid-swing.

“Oh, fuck off, Rin. What, you want to save everyone here? Newsflash: you’re not special. You’re just another freak who cracked.”

She ripped her hand free, eyes wild now.

“And you’re just another rich boy who spiraled because Daddy didn’t hug him enough. What’s your trauma, huh? Didn’t get into your dream school? Mommy sent you to rehab instead of Hesperia?”

His jaw clenched. “Say that again.”

“Did I stutter?”

He lunged. Not a punch but a full-body shove, arms bracing her shoulders, pushing her back into the riverbank. She hit the mud hard, breath knocked from her lungs. She scrambled up, teeth gritted, drenched and shaking. She swung wildly and slapped his cheek. It cracked loudly against the trees. He staggered. Then laughed.

“You hit like a sheltered little brat.”

“Better than hitting like a fucking coward.”

“Oh, please. You don’t even exist half the time. You just ghost through everything like you’re too good to be here.”

“Maybe I am.”

“Then go die quietly like you planned to, bitch, and stop haunting the rest of us.”

Fuck.

The insult hung there. Frozen and unforgivable. Something in her face collapsed, and then she lost it. She screamed, loud and primal from the gut, and threw herself at him. They crashed into the water, bodies slamming like fists. She clawed at his top, and he yanked her off by the shoulders, both of them soaked and swearing and breathless.

“Get the fuck off me!”

“Then stay out of my river!”

“It’s not your fucking river!”

They grappled, arms tangled, legs slipping on slick stones, pure rage vibrating off their skin. Water splashed violently. Hair clung to cheeks. His lip was bleeding. Her shoulder was bruised.

“I hate you,” she spat. 

“You don’t even know me,” he growled. “And I already hope you fucking disappear.”

He grabbed her wrist mid‑swing. For a heartbeat, they just stared, water dripping between them, breath like knives.

Then she said it. “Go overdose again, then. Maybe this time, no one will find you.”

He froze. The world did too. Even the water stilled. Her chest heaved, and his hands trembled with rage. The river whispered around them like it wanted to carry the moment away.

Then –

“HEY!” The shout split through the trees like an axe. It was Jiang, the facility’s longest-serving aide, built like an old-school bouncer who’d found God and a pension. A towel draped limply over his arm, and in his other hand, he carried nothing short of volcanic disappointment.

“What the hell do you two think this is? A fucking deathmatch? Dr. Lira’s office. NOW!” he bellowed from above.

The walk from the river felt like penance.

Mud clung to their calves, slick and stubborn. Shoes squelched with each step, squishing out riverwater like shame. Clothes stuck to their skin like a second punishment – sodden, heavy, reeking of algae and humiliation.

They didn’t speak. Rin moved with stiff precision, windbreaker slung over one shoulder, jaw locked. Her sports bra clung to her ribs. Her hair dripped steadily, like each drop was a second ticking toward the inevitable explosion. Beside her, Nezha’s hoodie was half-zipped, sleeves shoved past his elbows, chest rising and falling in quiet, pulsing fury. His lip was cracked and bleeding. The side of his face still stung where she’d slapped him.

“What in fuck’s name was that?”

Jiang’s voice didn’t rise. It didn’t have to. It had the weight of thunder. He was already typing away on his phone, probably giving Dr. Lira a heads-up. Neither answered.

“I’ve been here a decade,” he said, walking without looking at them. “I’ve seen patients break windows. Throw beds. Jerk off in the dining hall. One girl swallowed six rosary beads.”

He turned slightly, face stony.

“But I have never, once, had to break up a fucking brawl in the river.”

Rin said nothing. Nezha scoffed under his breath. “Wasn’t a brawl.”

Jiang stopped walking and turned to face him fully.

“Oh? So what was it then, performance art?”

Nezha looked away and bit the inside of his cheek. “Jesus,” Jiang muttered, shaking his head as he resumed walking. “You both look like you got baptized by rage and left the Holy Spirit to drown.”

Rin almost laughed, but her hands were shaking again. She kept them clenched.

She hated this part, the march, the spectacle. She could feel the weight of the administrative wing looming ahead, could already see the wide windows catching sunlight as if they meant something. One nurse was staring, and another whispered.

They turned the final bend. The gravel path gave way to clean stone. The white walls of the administrative wing gleamed ahead, blinding in the sun. Inside, everything would smell of eucalyptus and be silent.

Jiang slowed, let the weight of his final words land softly.

“Dr. Lira’s gonna have both your asses,” he said, almost fondly.

Then, looking at Rin: “Especially you, ghost girl. You’re the last one I expected to go feral.”

Rin didn’t blink.

Just kept walking. She was wet, ruined, vibrating with something that looked like control but felt like violence. Behind her, Nezha exhaled slowly. The kind of breath that meant not yet. They disappeared into the corridor. The door shut behind them like the lid of a coffin.

The air in Dr. Lira’s office felt colder than usual, though perhaps it was just the dampness clinging to their clothes, the squelch of their socks soaking into the sterile floor. They sat like criminals awaiting judgment – two dripping silhouettes, both radiating a defiance that bordered on childishness.

Rin sat with her arms crossed, jaw locked tight, strands of wet hair clinging to her temples like ink strokes gone wrong. Beside her, Nezha slouched with studied carelessness, his hoodie plastered to his back, one foot tapping a restless beat against the linoleum. Neither looked at the other. It was an unspoken war, a mirrored refusal.

Behind her desk, Dr. Lira exhaled. Her linen blouse was as crisp as her expression, that maddeningly serene look she wore like a weapon. “Well,” she said at last, her tone quiet but cutting, “this is new.” The silence between them thickened.

She folded her hands over a fresh file. Their names, both in capital letters, bled across the tab like a verdict. “Do you know how rare it is for me to receive an incident report from Jiang? He didn’t even file one when two patients tried to tunnel out through the compost shed.”

Nezha opened his mouth.

“Don’t,” she said sharply, a flick of her eyes pinning him in place. “Not unless you want to begin with an apology.”

His jaw snapped shut. Rin stayed still, every line of her body taut, fury coiled tight beneath her skin.

“Physical altercations,” Dr. Lira went on, her voice low but unmistakably firm, “are not tolerated here. Nor is verbal aggression. Nor is unauthorized immersion in restricted facilities.”

Nezha tilted his head, blinking slowly, and muttered, almost amused, “Unauthorized immersion? That’s what we’re calling swimming now?”

Rin jabbed her elbow into his ribs without looking his way. He grunted and fell silent.

Dr. Lira did not even flinch. “You will both write individual accounts of this incident,” she said. “I want timelines, triggers, escalation points. Truthfully. No edits to make yourselves look like the victims.” She slid two yellow forms across the desk.

Rin snatched hers instantly. Nezha, slower, leaned forward with an exaggerated sigh before taking his.

“Until those are complete,” Dr. Lira added, “you’ll both be assigned extra chores for three days. Laundry rotation, towel sorting. Maybe trash bins if I feel particularly vindictive.”

Rin didn’t blink. Nezha groaned. “This is community service in a psych ward. Might as well call it prison.”

“And yet you’re still here,” Dr. Lira said with an almost saccharine smile. “Shall I ring your lawyer?”

He shut up, glaring down at his wet shoes.

“You will still attend group therapy together,” she continued, her tone hardening like a blade being drawn. “But you will not sit beside each other. You will not speak to each other. And you will certainly not breathe loudly in each other’s direction. Am I clear?”

Neither answered.

“Clear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Rin muttered.

Nezha smirked, rolling his eyes. “Crystal.”

Dr. Lira smiled thinly, like they were her unruly children. “Good.”

And just like that, they were dismissed. Two soaked enemies, one shared humiliation, and a hallway full of whispers waiting to devour them.

Nezha was the first to leave, his wet footsteps trailing curses under his breath. He didn’t look back, just shoved the incident form into his pocket and left the door clicking shut behind him.

“Rin,” Dr. Lira said evenly. “Stay a moment.”

Of course. 

Dr. Lira removed her glasses, wiping them with a cloth that looked older than most of the interns she cycled through. Her gaze was sharp when she spoke again. “You’ve been here a month,” she began. Not cruel, just that pointed disappointment teachers save for students who should know better.

Rin kept her eyes on the bookshelf, jaw tight.

“You know the rules,” Dr. Lira said. “You know the boundaries, the containment measures, the expectations. All of it.”

Still, Rin didn’t speak.

“So help me understand,” she said finally, leaning back and lacing her fingers together, “how you, of all people, ended up screaming in restricted water with someone you’ve known for less than forty-eight hours.”

Rin exhaled, slow and deliberate. “He was in my space.”

Dr. Lira raised a brow. “He provoked. You exploded.”

Rin looked down at her sleeves, hands flexing beneath the fabric.

“You rarely react, Rin,” Dr. Lira said softly now, her tone shifting. “You rationalize. You swallow your words.”

Rin’s head snapped up, voice defensive as ever. “I’m not performing.”

“I didn’t say you were,” Dr. Lira replied. “But you present, carefully. You guard your silences.. and today, he managed to shatter that.”

A beat passed.

“Today, you broke character. Why him?”

The question sliced through the room like a blade. Rin froze.

“You’ve never lashed out here,” Dr. Lira continued. “Not when Juro called you cold. Not when Tala poked at your boundaries. Not even when we brought up your father.”

There it was. The bruise pressed directly.

Rin blinked once, hard.

“But this boy,” Dr. Lira said quietly, “this loud, erratic, half-feral boy. He gets under your skin enough to make you snap?”

Rin didn’t answer. She had nothing she could give.

Dr. Lira smiled, barely. “You don’t have to explain. Just notice it.” She leaned back, folding her arms loosely. “You have two more months here, Rin. Maybe more, we don't know yet. And him? He’s not going anywhere either. Figure out what’s really making you angry before you start pretending it’s all his fault.”

Rin left without a word. Her shoes squelched on the tile, her mind a white-noise roar.

What the hell did that even mean?

She stalked down the hall, water dripping from her sleeves, hair sticking damply to her jaw. Every step was a squish of cold socks and mounting rage.

Figure out what’s really making you angry.

She knew what was making her angry. His stupid face. His smoke-tainted breath. His hollow jokes. His whole existence. She didn’t need to unpack anything. She needed a dry shirt and maybe a lobotomy. 

The eyes followed her. From the nurse’s station. From the laundry staff. From the patients lounging near the courtyard like gossiping vultures. Someone had already seen them being escorted in, dripping and snarling. By dinnertime, the story would metastasize.

Fang Runin, the burnout princess, finally snapped. Fistfight in the river with the new guy. 

Fuck them all.

She rounded a corner and nearly slammed into Irinka by the vending machine.

“Oh – Rin, are you –”

“No,” Rin snapped. Too sharp.

Irinka flinched, nodded, and disappeared. Great. Add assaulting patient #4’s feelings to the list.

•─────⋅⋅─────•

By dinner, the story had mutated into legend. Ghost girl threw hands.

She barely made it to her tray before Tala plopped down beside her like a chirping interrogator. Lakan followed with that mix of curiosity and caution, while Juro’s grin looked like it belonged on a cat tormenting a bird. Even Irinka sat down slowly, her eyes wide with a look of horror, as if she were witnessing something unholy.

“Spill,” Tala demanded. “Was it real? Did you slap him? Did he cry?”

Rin chewed, swallowed, and deadpanned, “He showed up in my spot.”

“Not the river.” Tala gasped.

“Yes. The river.”

“The haunted river,” Juro added, mock-grave. “You are the main character now.”

Rin sipped her soup. “He provoked me.”

“What did he say?” Irinka asked softly.

Rin shrugged. “Nothing useful.”

Lakan leaned in. “You don’t usually react. Like, ever.”

“The quiet ones throw punches,” Juro said with a smirk.

“I didn’t punch him.”

“But you could’ve,” Tala whispered, gleeful. “Honestly? I think he deserved it.”

Their awe was strange, but not unwelcome. For once, they were watching her not as a ghost but as something alive, sharp, dangerous even. She let them chatter, let the room hum around her. For the first time in weeks, she wasn’t invisible.

Rin kept eating. Around her, the table had settled into a kind of reverent disarray – still ribbing, still poking, but with a gentler touch now. As if they sensed she’d reached the brittle edge of her capacity, but couldn’t resist hovering near the rare flare of heat in her voice. Emotion was rare from her. They chased it like moths.

Her hair still dripped faintly down her back, soaked from the river. Her sleeves were twisted and damp at the cuffs, windbreaker hanging limp from the back of her chair like a discarded skin. She didn’t care. She’d stopped caring somewhere between clawing through river mud and being reprimanded by two therapists in the same breath.

Across from her, Tala tilted her chin onto her palm, dreamy-eyed. “I mean, he’s hot, though. In that sad, probably-should-be-in-prison kind of way.” Rin didn’t even blink.

“Seek help,” she said flatly. Lakan choked on a laugh. Juro snorted into his soup. Even Irinka, quiet as ever, allowed herself the smallest smile. They weren’t used to this version of her, the one with teeth. The one who responded. The one who, apparently, would wrestle someone in a river if pushed hard enough.

Juro leaned back, arms crossed lazily. “So what’s the deal with this guy, then? You hate him that much?” She didn’t reply immediately. Just scraped her spoon along the inside of her bowl, slow, deliberate. Her thoughts flicked through scenes like cigarette burns, rooftop, cliffside, river.

“He doesn’t know when to shut up,” she said at last. “And he doesn’t know how to leave people alone.”

Tala let out a low whistle. “Damn.”

“He does give chaos energy,” Lakan added, almost philosophical. “Like, the type to break your heart and steal your lighter in one afternoon.”

“He probably would steal your lighter,” Rin muttered under her breath.

They laughed again. But it wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t sharp. Just warm. Familiar.

Rin stared at her tray. The silence that followed didn’t feel hollow; it was the kind that held space. The kind that stayed. And in that stillness, she realized:

Maybe she was still angry.
Maybe she still wanted to slap him into next week.
Maybe she still wanted to drown his smug expression in the koi pond.

But for the first time in months, the ache didn’t feel like absence. It felt like proof.

A pulse in her chest, steady and real.
She was still here. Still angry enough to matter.

•─────⋅⋅─────•

The hum of the overhead lights was soft but insistent, like a headache just below the skin. The ball clicked and snapped against wood. Sneakers squeaked. Dumb cheers rang out. Someone booed. They were now in the recreation room just after their dinner. 

Lakan was getting obliterated in a game of table tennis while Juro was dancing like he’d won a war. Tala cackled like she’d seen God and He’d told her a joke, and Rin, miraculously, was there.

Not at the koi pond. Not cocooned in her hoodie on a garden bench. Not floating in the haunted river, waiting to feel nothing again.

She was sitting beside Irinka, of all people. Irinka, who rarely spoke above a murmur but always looked like she carried novels behind her eyes. They watched the game in silence. Rin’s ankles crossed neatly, arms folded. Her clothes were still damp against her skin. Irinka’s rosary bracelet dangled from her wrist, her fingers absently counting beads like a tic.

Then, almost too quiet to register, “You were brave today,” Irinka said. Rin turned slightly, brows twitching. “I yelled at a man and shoved him into a river.”

“Yes,” Irinka nodded. “And you didn’t disappear after.” That made her pause. She blinked. Looked back at the boys arguing over scores they clearly made up. “I usually do,” she said, barely audible. “Disappear.”

Irinka offered a tired smile. Not pitying, just knowing. “I do that too.”

Rin looked at her properly now. She rarely did. Usually, Irinka blended into the walls and chamomile air. But now, under this ugly white light, amidst the chaos of the game, she looked… clearer. Older. Not in years, but in sorrow like grief had been folded into her bones and never unfolded again.

“When did it start?” Rin asked, before she could swallow it down.

She didn’t clarify what it meant, but Irinka understood. “Maybe after my second child,” she murmured. “Or maybe before. I think I was already breaking. The noise just made it easier to hide.”

Rin nodded, slowly. Digested it like medicine – bitter, but essential. She didn’t reply, but she didn’t leave either. It felt nice to be talking to someone who understood silence not as absence but as shelter. Irinka turned again, more direct now.

“How did it feel? Seeing him in group?” Rin didn’t answer at once. Her eyes followed the bright orange ball as it ricocheted off Lakan’s forehead. Juro collapsed in laughter. Tala screamed.

“Annoying,” she said. Then, after a beat: “Loud and fake.” Irinka hummed. “He talks too much.”

“He performs too much,” Rin corrected, sharper now. “Like everything’s a bit. Like if we’re all laughing, maybe we won’t notice how fucked up he is.”

A pause.

“And it’s working,” she added, bitterly.

Irinka was quiet for a long moment. “It’s a defense mechanism,” she said. No judgment. Just truth. Rin exhaled. “So is a fist. Mine, specifically.” They laughed, or maybe sighed; it was hard to tell.

Then, softly, “Did he scare you?” Irinka asked. Rin met her gaze. “No,” she said.“He pissed me off. That’s different.” Irinka nodded like she believed her. Like she also knew it wasn’t the whole truth.

But she didn’t push.

They both looked forward again, back to the game. Juro was winning loudly. Rin clenched her jaw. Her knee bounced.

She didn’t like him.
She loathed him.

But she remembered the river. She remembered his eyes when something inside him cracked. The stillness after was obvious. There was that flicker in his face like a light dying out.

It wasn’t fear she felt. Not quite.

It was recognition.

And that –
That was worse.

Chapter Text

St. Eustace still slept.

But the kitchen, as always, had begun to stir – steam curling from rice cookers, the low hiss of oil kissing steel, and a soft gospel hum crackling through Sister Lena’s playlist like a morning hymn. Rin stood near the counter in her pullover and sweatpants, the same ones she wore like armor. Her hair was unruly, eyes heavy with a kind of silence no sleep could fix.

She looked like a storm trying to pass itself off as human.

“Morning, ghost girl,” Sister Lena murmured, without glancing up. She cracked two eggs into the pan, yolks splitting on impact. “Early as always. What are we running from today?”

“Nothing.” Rin’s voice was flat. She didn’t bother to look up either.

Sister Lena did now. Turned, slow, wooden spoon in hand, and studied her with those quiet, cutting eyes – gentle, but relentless. Like she could see straight through skin, straight through bone, into the fractured scaffolding you used to stay upright.

“Uh-huh,” she said. “And yet I heard you tried to baptize someone in the river.”

Rin exhaled, her arms folded across her chest. The silence bristled.

“He deserved it,” Rin said. “They always do.” The nun shrugged, flipping the eggs. “Still doesn’t mean you have to be the wrath of God every time someone breathes wrong in your presence.”

Rin didn’t answer. She just reached for the tray without meeting her gaze, but Sister Lena’s voice followed her as she turned to leave. “You gonna explode again today?”

A pause. Rin’s back remained to her, voice quiet, but firm. “No.”

And she meant it, or at least – she wanted to.

•─────⋅⋅─────•

The wind had teeth this morning.

Rin sat cross-legged on the same stone she always returned to, the one facing east, where the sky opened wide and the cliff met the clouds. Her pullover flapped softly at her sides, hair tucked, journal braced against her thigh. The cold gnawed at her cheeks. She didn’t mind. It made her feel real. The sky was bruising into morning – a mix of pink, gold, and ash. Below, the city still glittered faintly, like a world she’d once known, but no longer belonged to.

She opened her journal. Blank page. Black ink.
The pen pressed steadily and sharply.

sunrise looks pretty today. the sky is all gold and pink like nothing happened. like the world didn’t watch me fall apart by a riverbank yesterday.

i hate that it felt good for a second. the screaming and the shoving. i hate that he got under my skin enough to drag that out of me. i don’t even know him, not really. but every word he threw felt like it was personal. and every word i spit back was even more cruel than expected. 

i keep telling myself i don’t care but my hands won’t stop shaking when i think about it. i keep replaying the way he looked at me after i said it. the overdose line. i shouldn’t have said that but he shouldn’t have said what he did either. fuck him.

i hate how i get. i hate how i explode. i hate that he can get to me like that. we don’t even know each other, not really. i don’t know why i’m so volatile around him. i don’t know why i can’t just walk away.

sometimes i think i’m the problem. i think maybe i am too broken. maybe there’s nothing left to fix. i think about disappearing and how easy that might be. it scares me how easy it sounds. i don’t want to keep living like this. i don’t want to be angry all the time. i don’t want to keep feeling like everything is about to collapse. yesterday feels like proof that i’m worse than i thought. i thought i could keep myself contained. i thought silence was enough. it isn’t.

i keep telling myself today will be okay. i’ll make it okay. i’ll keep my head down, keep my mouth shut, finish my homework, go to group, eat whatever they give me, pretend i’m fine. if i follow the script maybe the day won’t break me.

today will be okay. it has to be.

She clicked the pen closed. Slipped the notebook in her waistband and exhaled deeply. The wind kissed her collarbone. She hugged her knees and closed her eyes, forehead against the fabric of her soft sweatpants. For one fragile moment – just one – Rin let herself believe the lie she had written.

That maybe today wouldn’t hurt. That maybe, just maybe, she could go a full day without wanting to scream.

Rin tended to the breakfast she got a little while ago. She ate mechanically – garlic rice, scrambled eggs, and dried fish. Sister Lena must have prayed over it. The fork tapped against her tray. Her body, trained by routine, did the work.

Before St. Eustace, her mornings were a graveyard.

Wake. Pretend. Repeat.

She used to rise at five without needing the alarm, because sleep was never merciful. The bathroom light would hum as she stepped under water that was always cold, a shock she mistook for feeling. Breakfast was a slice of cardboard toast eaten standing up in a kitchen that smelled faintly of bleach. Her laughter, when it came, was a reflex learned from watching other people’s mouths. The hours stretched in a single unbroken line of performance – stability staged while her mind pulsed with static.

The laboratory had been her kingdom and her prison. Forty hours a week under ceiling tiles stained with condensation, no windows, just the hum of centrifuges and the glow of fluorescent bulbs that bleached her skin until it felt too tight. The benches were lined with pipette tips, reagent bottles, and racks of blood samples labelled in felt pen. She ran CBCs and kidney panels like prayers, watched serum spin down in tubes the color of garnets. She wore a lab coat like armor, her smile like currency, and her exhaustion a private crime.

Sometimes, between batches, she would stand at the microscope, eyes aching, and press her palm against the cool glass of the fume hood just to feel something solid. In those moments she thought of nothing, not even the patients whose lives hung on numbers she reported. It was easier that way.

Home was no refuge. Her mother called her strong, but only when it meant silence. Praise always ended in comparison: you’re lucky; you have a job; you’re not starving. Other people have it worse. Maybe they did, but Rin didn’t want to be measured against corpses just to be allowed to feel alive.

After the attempt, she remembered waking in her own bed, wrists bandaged, her mother kneeling beside her with a rosary in one hand. Everything went quiet after that. Rin folded in on herself. Her mother turned to God. Friends vanished – not out of cruelty but because they didn’t know what to say. So they said nothing.

She learned the story her mother wanted to hear. I’m better now. Yes, I’m on meds. No, it was just a rough week. She recited it like a lab protocol, with the same words and order, her eyes down.

Then came St. Eustace. A sabbatical disguised as a secret. No one has to know. Just tell them you’re taking a break. She took it, not because she believed in healing, but because she needed the performance to stop before it killed her.

And now here she was, at the edge of a cliff, washed in wind and silence. She wasn’t whole. She wasn’t healed. But she was standing there, without a lab coat, without a clipboard, her hands empty and her lungs full.

That had to count for something, right?

•─────⋅⋅─────•

She knelt to tie her shoelaces, pulling them tight until the loops lay small and hard like clenched fists. The windbreaker came next, zipped to her throat, cinched against the early chill. Breathe in. Breathe out. Heartbeat low and steady – one quiet animal inside her chest.

And then she ran.

The asphalt path cut through the facility like a hidden artery, its black ribbon bordered by pine and fog. The staff kept it immaculate: no stray pebbles, no curling leaves, no sign of anyone else’s footsteps. St. Eustace prided itself on being pristine – a sanctuary for the elite broken, as if pain deserved curated scenery. Rin didn’t belong by lineage, but ruin had its own bloodline, and she fit perfectly there.

Her body moved on instinct, muscle before thought. Stride after stride, foot after foot, the rhythm was a liturgy she didn’t have to believe in to repeat. Running turned grief to heat, rage to velocity. It burned the noise out of her until only breath remained.

She had been different once. Everyone said so. Once, her eyes had a brightness that people commented on. Once she wore pretty sandals, not dirty sneakers. Once she had real ambitions: graduate school, travel, papers to publish, a future she could name without flinching. “So driven,” they’d told her. “Such a bright girl.”

That girl was gone. She had died in a hospital hallway alongside the man she loved, and everything afterward was debris. Rin became what was left: dry humor, white lies, single-syllable answers. She was the “strong” daughter at the funeral, the one who handled logistics while her own hands shook. The one who swallowed her grief whole so no one else had to see its teeth.

She refused to think of him now. Not today. Not again.

Today will be okay, she told herself, the words a fragile charm she repeated in her head with every footfall. Today will be okay. Today will—

She passed 5.4 kilometers. Sweat traced a path down her spine; her lungs burned from the cold. Still, she pushed harder, as if she could outpace the ghosts shadowing her. As if she had ever managed to.

At the koi pond’s edge, she slowed, bent double, breath shuddering like fabric in a strong wind. Her legs trembled – not from exertion, but from the sudden weight of too much: too much thought, too much memory disguised as movement, too much feeling she had no language for. Her throat burned; her lungs clawed at air. She steadied herself with a palm against the stone rim, fingers splayed flat and trembling.

Below, three orange shapes drifted lazily in the water. “Good morning, losers,” she murmured, voice rasping.

Amah flicked their tail with imperious force. General Tujin floated slowly and unbothered, while Muni darted in and out of sight like a jittery thought. Rin watched them until her pulse quieted. Until the ache behind her ribs softened to a dull bruise.

“You’re all I’ve got, huh,” she said, not quite a question, not quite a joke. Her windbreaker clung damp to her shoulders, either from sweat or dew or the kind of ache that made her want to press her face into the moss and not get up.

She wouldn’t die here. Not now, not when people were watching again. But God, she was tired.

Valdemara’s morning air, crisp and unfairly beautiful, curled around her like cold silk. Above, the sun had climbed past the horizon, slicing the fog into ribbons of gold. She stared at it and felt, for a heartbeat, a flicker of something like gratitude or maybe just survival.

She knew she was spiraling. Each sprint, each breathless mile, each deflection was a ritual of self-erasure she performed with brutal precision. Knowing it didn’t stop her. It never had.

But for now, the path, the koi, the journal, and the wind were hers. The quiet was hers. She closed her eyes, breathed in the cold, and let herself believe – just for one fragile moment – that today might not hurt.

She had run another five kilometres again before she realised, mid‑stride, that she was late for group. Typical Type A – never missed a session, not even now, even though she did not participate much. She cut through the fogged path, windbreaker snapping against her hips, shoelaces double‑knotted, lungs dragging at the cold. By the time she reached the therapy wing, her chest burned, sweat slicking her back, ponytail half‑undone, cheeks flushed with heat and regret. She slipped into her seat like a storm breaking on a shoreline.

Tala caught Rin’s eye the moment she entered. Lakan raised a single, slow eyebrow in silent commentary. Even Irinka, who rarely lifted her gaze, watched her with something like wariness. Juro looked positively entertained. 

Rin didn’t give the room a greeting. Her breath came in uneven pulls, the salt of sweat still on her tongue. Tala leaned close, whispering, “Wow, Rin – morning marathon?” Rin gave her a tired look.

Dr. Lira only glanced up from her clipboard – clinical, but not unkind. “Glad you made it, Rin,” she said.

Rin nodded, still catching air.

The room was exactly as it always was: too light, yet too soft all at once, the faint antiseptic sweetness of hand sanitizer undercut by the minty aroma of tea.

And him.
Of course, he was already there.

Nezha lounged in his seat like it was a throne too small for him, sleeves shoved past his forearms, ink curling down to the veins at his wrist. One foot tapped an uneven rhythm against the floor. Gum cracked between his teeth. On the surface, he was still, but it had that brittle quality of someone waiting to move.

Rin didn’t look at him. She didn’t need to. She could feel his gaze, pricking her skin like static. Ignore, ignore, ignore, she told herself. Her new religion.

Dr. Lira smoothed a page on her clipboard and began in her usual cadence — soft, deliberate, designed to coax confessions out of stone. “Today we’re talking about triggers. What sets you off?”

Irinka went first, voice thin as paper. “Loud noises,” she whispered. “Shouting. Doors slamming. It feels like… before.” Her hands twisted her rosary bracelet. Rin watched the beads move like tiny orbiting planets.

“Thank you, Irinka,” Dr. Lira murmured. “Lakan?”

He offered a philosophical shrug. “Failure,” he said, half-serious. “Also mornings without coffee.” A ripple of dry laughter passed through the group, even Irinka’s mouth softening for a heartbeat.

Tala perched cross-legged, pen twirling, speaking like a podcast no one had subscribed to. “Sleep paralysis,” she announced. “And my mother’s ringtone.” The room chuckled again. Even Juro smirked.

Dr. Lira’s gaze moved to Nezha. “What about you?”

He leaned back further, arms opening like wings, his grin a slow blade. “Authority. Fake kindness. Stupid rules. Mostly people who think they’re better just because they know how to shut the fuck up.”

A sharp intake from Irinka. Lakan’s brows jumped. Juro’s grin widened, catlike. Tala’s eyes flicked nervously between Nezha and Rin. Everyone knew exactly who he was baiting.

“Thank you, Nezha,” Dr. Lira said evenly. “That’s honest.”

“I’m all about honesty, doc.” His eyes flicked to Rin. “Ask ghost girl. She tried to drown me.”

The room went still. A titter from Juro died halfway. Tala’s pen stopped spinning. Irinka’s rosary beads stilled. Rin stared straight ahead, spine rigid, hands white-knuckled on her knees. Ignore, ignore, ignore, she told herself.

“Let’s keep things respectful,” Dr. Lira said, the tiniest edge under her calm.

He shrugged. “Just stating facts.”

Lakan muttered under his breath, “This is better than television.” Juro elbowed him, but didn’t disagree. Tala shot them both a glare, then darted a glance at Rin — don’t.

She didn’t move, but her knuckles went white where they dug into her knees. Dr. Lira, maddeningly neutral, shifted the conversation to Juro, passing the metaphorical talking stick like they were children again. Her body still burned from the run; her lungs were tight from the asthma. She knew better not to run that far and push her body, knowing she had to deal with the lung aftermath, but here we are. She was trembling now, not from weakness but restraint. 

Don’t bite. He wants a reaction. Fuck him.

Yet she could feel it – the space around him, loud and unfiltered, chaotic energy wrapped in pretty skin and spite. He wouldn’t stop.

As Juro’s response died down, Nezha’s taunting voice filled the gap. He muttered, almost lazily, “Kinda weird how some people run until they drop but can’t say one thing in therapy.”

The line landed like a slap. Rin’s jaw flexed. Her knuckles dug deeper into her knees. She couldn’t help it. Her thundering voice gave away her fury.

“And some people,” she said, eyes still on the floor, “talk too much because silence makes them realise they hate themselves.” She finally looked him in the eye. Her stare was so sharp it makes the others uncomfortable. 

It fell between them like a blade. The room inhaled as one.

“Oh,” murmured Lakan. Tala’s eyes went wide. Even Juro’s smirk faltered. Irinka, barely audible, whispered a prayer under her breath.

Nezha’s foot stopped tapping. His smirk was cracking, just a little fracture. For a heartbeat, he looked like he wanted to speak, then thought better of it. His fingers picked at a loose thread on his sleeve, a tiny, betraying motion.

Dr. Lira let the silence hang. She had a talent for letting fires burn until they cooled. Then she shifted, her voice softer now. “Let’s talk about performance,” she said. “Not on stage. Not at work. The masks we wear when we wake up. When you were at your worst, what did you pretend was still fine?”

Irinka closed her eyes. Tala hugged her knees. Lakan stared at his shoes. The room’s noise drained away.

Nezha didn’t speak at first. He stared at the loose thread on his sleeve until it snapped. Then, quieter than before, no grin: “I pretended I wasn’t angry,” he said. “I pretended I was cool. Funny. Like nothing touched me. Like I was built for chaos. But I wasn’t. I just didn’t know what to do with anything that felt like love.”

No sarcasm. No smirk. 

The silence was brittle and bright. Even Juro didn’t move.

Rin’s jaw clenched. She should have rolled her eyes; she should have whispered 'drama king' under her breath, but she didn’t. Because fuck, that was her too, wasn’t it? Dad’s death. Mom’s silence. The weight of always being the one who had it together. The one who kept walking even as her insides curled in rot.

No.

She dug her nails into her leg, almost snapping the band of her watch. No.

He was a clown, a danger. Probably an addict in a rich boy's skin. He didn’t get to say things that felt like her.

Fuck him. Fuck him and his almost‑truth. He deserved the weight he carried. 

Nezha ran a hand through his hair once, like he wished he could shove the words back into his mouth. Then he leaned back, shoulders stiffening, voice dry again: “Anyway. Group therapy, right? Fun times.”

The mask was back.

Dr. Lira only nodded, as if she’d seen the whole performance. “Thank you,” she said softly. Then she passed the question to Juro. Conversation resumed – but thinner now, rawer, as if everyone had glimpsed a seam they weren’t supposed to see.

Rin stayed silent. For the first time, she didn’t feel like she’d won by saying nothing. She felt something else. She just couldn’t name it.

•─────⋅⋅─────•

The group session ended in silence, its heaviness trailing behind her like a shadow. Rin skipped lunch without hesitation. Her chest still ached from the punishment she had inflicted on herself that morning – ten kilometers of blind running through the humid fog, chasing exhaustion like it might undo something unsaid.

By four in the afternoon, her body was a shell after a long nap. Rin was running on fumes, her hunger curling into nausea. She considered skipping the next task. But rules were rules, and after the river incident, she was still on punishment. Laundry duty.

Of course, he was already there.

Nezha was sprawled across one of the unused folding tables, limbs long, hoodie sleeves rolled to the elbow. He looked offensively relaxed – like this was some lazy Sunday errand instead of a disciplinary shift for throwing fists in a stream. His foot bounced with a restless rhythm. He chewed gum like he had never known consequence.

Rin entered with the grace of a corpse. Her sleeves bunched at the elbow, the laundry cart screeching behind her. Her arms twitched from dehydration, her calves still quivering from the morning’s stupid crusade to punish herself with speed.

Jiang barely looked up from his monoblock throne in the corner, nursing a mug of instant coffee and pretending to read an ancient book like it held state secrets. He was there to supervise, sure. Mostly, he was there to prevent homicide.

“Yo,” Nezha called out, casual as wind.

She didn’t answer.

“Ghost girl,” he added with a smirk.

Still nothing.

She grabbed the topmost pile – sour-smelling linens from the east wing – and dumped them on the sorting counter. Whites, colors, delicates. Each motion is sharp enough to slice a tendon.

“Come on,” he drawled. “You really gonna pretend this isn’t the most romantic punishment of all time?”

A towel snapped in her grip. Loud.

“Fuck off.”

He grinned. “Can’t. Court-ordered proximity, remember?”

She shot him a glance: flat, blade-like. “You’re not funny.”

“I don’t need to be,” he said, sliding off the table with infuriating grace. “I can feel your sexual tension from here.”

“Language,” Jiang muttered without lifting his eyes.

Rin’s glare didn’t shift. Her voice was glass. “Sexual tension? From who? I’d rather die.”

“Please,” Nezha muttered, pulling pillowcases from the bin. “If I wanted to get off, I wouldn’t pick the depressive girl with a superiority complex.”

The box of detergent hit the counter with a crack.

“Superiority complex?” Her voice sharpened. “You think you’re deep? You’re not. You’re not a tortured artist. You’re just a spoiled fuck-up whose family probably paid to dump him here.” 

The words spilled before she could leash them, precise and barbed, each one aimed to wound. She snapped back to her task, jaw rigid, surprised at herself. She didn’t know his story, not really, but the way his expression flickered told her she’d struck something.

And for once, he went still.

No smirk. No line. 

“I never said I was tortured,” he said at last, voice low. “But nice projection.”

Jiang stood, finally. “Enough,” he barked. “This is not some television drama. You throw hands again, I’ll throw you both into the koi pond.”

They both muttered a reluctant “Yes, Sir.”

He watched them a second longer – like a school principal disciplining unruly kids – then sat back down with a grunt.

The next hour passed in brittle silence.

Rin scrubbed with too much force, fingers red, sheets white. Nezha folded towels like they’d wronged him. There was elegance in the precision of it – like he’d done this before, in court-mandated labor or the basement of a school he hated.

They didn’t speak again. But Rin’s hands shook. Not from fatigue but from that goddamn echo in her chest: Why does he keep hitting nerves I thought were buried?

She hated him. She hated this place. And she hated that she didn’t know which one she hated more.

The industrial dryers screamed in the background. Heat coiled through the room like a fever.

Three hours in.

Her top clung to her spine. Her stomach ached with hunger. Her arms had gone loose and heavy, like water had replaced bone. But still, she stood. Jaw set, her back rigid. She would not break, especially not in front of him.

Nezha, to her rising fury, was still working. He fixed a jammed washer without drama. Lifted baskets like they weighed nothing. Wiped the table down with one hand, the other tucked into the pocket of his hoodie like it wasn’t blistering inside.

Of course, he was passive-aggressive about it.

“Wow, Queen Rin,” he said, loading another dryer. “You sort, I lift. Brains and brawn. Iconic duo.”

“Shut up.”

“I mean, I’m not mad. Lifting’s kind of nice. You should try it.”

She didn’t bother glaring this time. “You should try shutting the fuck up.”

He grinned again. 

It made her want to hit him with a mop handle. God, she hated how he watched her. Like he could see she was on the brink. Like he was amused by her refusal to crumble. So she didn’t. She grabbed more linens. She carried double the weight just to prove a point, even when her knees buckled slightly under it.

He noticed. Of course he did.

“You’re so competitive,” he said. “It’s kind of cool.”

She said nothing. He added, more softly this time, “No offense. Just... It’s that I’ll die before I lose energy.”

“I will.”

A pause.

“Yeah,” he said. No grin this time. “I can tell.” That shut him up. 

Until thirty minutes later, when her limbs finally gave. She stood too fast. The world tilted. Her vision sparked. She sat down, feigning a pause – but she didn’t rise.

Nezha watched. Then tossed her a water bottle. “Not poisoned,” he said. “Just drink it.”

She caught it and hesitated for a while, then drank. Because fainting here meant more therapy and humiliation. She hated him and hated more that he hadn’t made it a moment. He hadn’t laughed nor gloated. He just... worked beside her.

For a while, the only sounds were sloshing water, the occasional grunt as a stubborn stain refused to lift, and the snores of Jiang, who fell asleep on his chair. 

Nezha broke the silence again. “That thing you said earlier. In therapy.”
His voice was different now – not teasing, not sharp. Just curious. 

“What thing?”

He dipped a shirt in water, eyes on the fabric. “About people who talk too much because they hate silence.”
He wrung it out slowly.
“You’re not wrong.”

Rin blinked. Her fingers paused on the sleeve she was folding. She didn’t respond, not immediately. Instead, she reached for another shirt, kept moving.

“That’s not an apology,” she said eventually.

“I know.”

“You’re still an asshole.”

“Also true.”

She almost smiled. Almost.

By eight o’clock, the punishment finally ended. They were both half-dead. Dinner was long over, and the mess hall would be empty by now.

Rin swayed slightly as she stood. Her legs didn’t feel like hers anymore. Jiang, who was still a bit disoriented from his nap, eyed them both and jerked his thumb toward the door. “Go eat,” he said, yawning. “But I doubt there would still be food.”

They went anyway. The walk to the mess hall felt like a funeral march. Inside, it was dead quiet – too quiet. Every scrape of metal echoed. Every step sounded like thunder. Rin sank into the nearest chair against the wall. Her head was pounding and her stomach was hollow. Across the room, Nezha collapsed into a chair with equal defeat. His top was soaked through; his hair stuck to his forehead, his eyes were blank. They looked like two ghosts who’d spent the day haunting each other.

They didn’t speak for a while, unsure of what to do.

They sat in silence. Two islands in an empty sea of tables and polished tiles. Rin pressed her forehead to the cold laminate surface just to stay grounded.

Then, his stupid voice from across the room echoed. 

“You okay?”

She didn’t look up.

“Shut up.”

“Copy.”

A minute passed, then Sister Lena appeared in a hiss of fabric and judgment. “You both look like sin. Laundry punishment suits you both.” Neither responded. Nezha mumbled, “Felt like penance, honestly.” She rolled her eyes and vanished into the kitchen. 

Then, like divine punishment becoming mercy, she returned. Two bowls of pho. It was hot and steaming with real beef pieces, not scraps. One bowl slammed onto the table in front of Rin. The other is in front of Nezha. “Eat,” Sister Lena said. “If you both faint, I’ll revive you just to kill you.”

So they did.

Spoons scraping against their trays. Silence thick with salt and broth. Rin didn’t realize she was trembling until she felt the spoon shake against her lip. Across the room, he was eating fast – not greedy, just hungry, like he hadn’t eaten in days.

Sister Lena now leaned against the doorframe of the kitchen like judgment incarnate – towel draped over her shoulder, arms folded with the kind of authority that needed no scripture. She didn’t speak at first. Just watched them.

Two half-formed tragedies hunched over their bowls. She clicked her tongue, sharp as flint.

“You both look darn stupid.”

Rin didn’t flinch. She barely blinked.

Nezha, on the other hand, paused mid-spoon, a ghost of a grin tugging at his lips. “Language, Sister.”

The look she shot him could have soured wine. “You look like toddlers after a slap fight. Next time, sit on the same damn table before you go clawing each other’s eyes out.”

Rin wiped her mouth, slow and mechanical. She was too tired to argue, too full to pretend at being immune to warmth. Her eyes had dulled again, as if even the steam rising from the broth couldn’t wake her.

Nezha leaned back in his seat, neck rolling like he was easing tension instead of storing it. “She started it.”

“Fuck off,” Rin murmured, eyes fixed on the table. He raised both hands. “See? Violent.” Sister Lena didn’t laugh. Just sighed, long and weary. The kind that came from years of watching the same wounds fester in different bodies.

“I expect better behavior tomorrow,” she said, already turning her back. “And for God’s sake – sit together. You’re already the gossip of the week, might as well commit.” The door swung shut behind her.

Silence rushed back in like a tide. Their bowls still steamed, untouched in places, the scent of beef and garlic heavy in the air. Neither moved nor looked at the other.

But beneath it, something loosened. Not kindness. Not forgiveness. A hairline crack in the armor neither would admit they wore.

Rin finished eating with slow bites, her arm muscles aching from hours of labor. Her knees throbbed dully from the self-imposed punishment of her morning run. Her body felt like borrowed meat. Across from her, Nezha tapped his spoon against the rim of his empty bowl. A rhythm without pattern, metal on plastic, irritating and unignorable.

She didn’t tell him to stop. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

The space between them wasn’t wide, but it may as well have been a canyon. Two tables. An ocean of pride and neither is willing to close it.

But he moved first. The scrape of his chair broke the quiet.

“I’ll return these.”

He gathered both empty trays before she could protest. Her eyes flicked up.

“…Thanks.”

He paused.

Their gazes met. Brief and blunt. Something passed between them that didn’t have a name.

“Don’t think we have a truce now or anything,” he said, voice low and bone-dry, like he hated himself for even tossing the line.

Rin exhaled through her nose. Not quite a laugh. But close.

“You’re still a dick.”

“And you’ve got issues,” he said, smirking with the edge of a knife. “We’re even.”

The trays clinked as he disappeared through the kitchen doors.

Rin sat alone again, eyes settling on the chair he’d left behind. There was nothing remarkable about it. A plastic seat, one leg uneven, a faint scratch down the back. But it carried the shape of him. She didn’t rush to leave.

Sister Lena returned with the faint scuff of slippers and the smell of dish soap clinging to her clothes. She surveyed the room with one glance, then zeroed in on Rin.

“You two look like siblings who tried to murder each other in the womb,” she muttered. Rin gave her an apologetic look. 

Then, louder, “Ghost girl, go and finish up. Curfew is nearing.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Rin said automatically, reflex stronger than resistance. Before Rin got out of the door, Sister Lena spoke up.

“You’re different than usual,” she said. Rin stopped in her tracks, pivoted, but didn’t respond. 

“He reminds you of someone?”

The question was soft. Almost lazy, like it didn’t matter.

Rin stiffened. Her grip tightened around the door handles.

“No.”

“Ah.” Sister Lena nodded as if she’d heard the truth anyway. “Then maybe he reminds you of the worst parts of yourself.”

The hum of the lights above deepened. Somewhere behind the walls, a tray clattered. The world refused to pause with her.

“I don’t give a shit about him,” Rin muttered.

Sister Lena walked away slowly, her knees creaking, her voice dipping with something deeper than judgment.

“Then stop giving your energy to hating him.”

She looked at her one last time.

“Anger’s a hungry thing, ghost girl. It’ll eat anything, even the hands that feed it. Don’t let it eat you next.”

And with that, she vanished.

Rin didn’t reply. She didn’t need to. When she got out, she walked more slowly than usual.

The mess hall remained empty. But the silence that filled it had changed. It wasn't hollow nor hostile.

Just… quiet.

And in a place like this, quiet could mean anything.

Chapter Text

The gravel whispered under her shoes, slick from earlier rain, sharp with the scent of cold stone and pine. Fog clung low to the ground, curling over the moss-rimmed tiles like smoke left over from some long-extinguished war.

Rin moved fast. Her windbreaker clung damp to her arms, and the broth from dinner settled heavily in her gut. She kept her eyes forward, her mouth drawn tight. Lights-out was minutes away, and she was determined to reach her dorm without interruption. Without another word, another look, another second in the orbit of the person who had already taken too much space in her head.

"Hey," The voice came from behind, casual as a bad habit. “Ghost girl.”

Of course, he was there. 

He was like an insect she was unable to get rid of. She didn’t turn. Instead, she closed her eyes and inhaled through her nose, as if centering herself might be enough to summon divine patience. Why was he still here? Didn’t he leave the mess hall first? 

His footsteps followed – lazy, deliberate. He was a few paces behind, close enough to be a parasite but just far enough to be infuriating.

“What, silent treatment now?” he went on. “You punch me, I wash laundry with you, and now I don’t even get a good night? Rude.”

She stopped and turned slowly, as if the mere act of facing him was beneath her.

“Are you seriously this incapable of shutting the fuck up?” she snapped, voice like steel wrapped in silk. “It’s almost ten. Do you not know how to exist without narrating every fucking breath?”

Nezha blinked. “Damn. Okay. Hi to you too.”

“I wasn’t –” she hissed, words catching on her breath. “You’re unbelievable.”

“Thanks,” he grinned. “People say that a lot.”

“Not a compliment.”

She turned again, faster this time. Her sneakers struck the path with finality. He followed, of course. This idiot.

“Stop following me,” she snapped.

“Didn’t know we were assigned personal sidewalks now.”

“Nezha.”

“What? We’re just walking the same way.”

“Coincidence doesn’t excuse your existence.”

He exhaled a short laugh. “Do you always react this violently to company?”

“Yes,” she said flatly. “Especially when the company thinks trauma is some kind of competitive sport.”

That one landed.

He winced – just slightly – then covered it with a grin. “Nice. Did you write that in your journal? Dear Diary, the new guy makes me want to jump off a cliff. Yours always, Rin.”

She stopped so fast he nearly ran into her. Silence detonated in the space between them. His face was up close at this point. She debated on slapping it or letting his ego die by ignoring him. 

”Too far?” he said, hands casually in his pockets as he looked down at her height. His voice dipping, his grinning face taunting like a Cheshire cat. 

Her reply was ice. “Go fuck yourself.”

She walked ahead. 

The lights above them flickered once, buzzing against the weight of the fog. And then – because of course the universe had a sick sense of humor – the first drop of rain slapped against her cheek. 

Then another. Then a thousand.

A torrential downpour erupted like a curtain being torn in two, rain carving silver lines into the path, soaking her in an instant. Her sneakers squelched against the tile. Her vision blurred. Everything was slick and useless now. 

Behind her: “You’ve got to be –”

“Shut the fuck up!” she half-yelled, half-whispered. “This is your fault!”

“How the hell is this my –?!”

“If you hadn’t been talking, I’d be inside already!”

“You stopped!”

“SHH!”

The rain pelted down. Thunder growled in the distance. Then –

“Shit,” she hissed. Somewhere ahead, two beams of light sliced through the fog. “It’s the last patrol. If we get caught again –”

Nezha blinked through the water. “Wait – seriously?”

She did not answer. She scanned the courtyard with panic in her eyes. In the distance, a voice spoke.

“Is there anyone left in the courtyard?”

“Let me check.”

The beams of two flashlights cut through the dark. It was too close now. Rin didn’t think. She grabbed Nezha’s wrist and ran. He stumbled after her, half-protesting, half-laughing. “Wait –”

“Shut up!”

Her voice was sharp enough to slice through the rain. She pulled him down a side path. It was narrow, moss-slick, almost invisible beneath the overgrowth. The others never used it, but she knew every turn by instinct.

They slipped through until the trees opened into the shell of a gazebo wrapped in ivy, with the roof caving in on one side. She dragged him behind it just as the flashlights swept past, blinding white across the leaves.

They collided with the wall, breath knocked out of both of them. Her palm instantly flew up, covering his mouth before he could make a sound.

Nezha froze.

The air between them buzzed, sharp with rain and adrenaline. Her hand was trembling, pressed to the warmth of his lips. His hoodie was soaked through, dripping against her arm. They were too close – his chest rising against hers, his heartbeat rattling the fabric between them.

Rin’s eyes darted past his shoulder, tracking the lights. Nezha couldn’t look away from her. Strands of her hair clung to her cheek, wet lashes trembling with each breath. She looked furious. She looked alive.

The lights passed eventually. Silence fell except for the rain, steady and relentless. Still, she didn’t move her hand. He breathed against her palm, soft and uneven, and something in the sound lodged in her throat.

When she finally dropped her arm, her fingers brushed his jaw, light and accidental but enough to spark through both of them.

“If we get written up again,” she whispered, voice low, “I’m cutting your tongue out with a fork.”

He grinned, the corner of his mouth twitching despite the threat. “You’re kinda scary when you’re wet.”

Her fist met his shoulder before the words had even finished leaving his mouth.

“Ow – fuck.”

“Don’t talk,” she hissed. “Don’t breathe. Don’t exist!”

Her face was flushed, her breath still shallow. The imprint of her hand lingered on his skin, pink against pale. For a moment, neither of them moved. He could hear her swallow, could feel the tremor in the space between their shoulders. They didn’t look at each other, but both of them felt it – the strange, dangerous relief of being caught together instead of alone.

Rin crouched behind the thick ferns, rain slicking down her spine, breath shallow as she squinted through the leaves. The aides were still out there – laughing and smoking now, one of them showing a video on his phone like they were at some goddamn picnic.

“They’re not even supposed to be smoking,” she muttered.

Nezha shifted beside her, leaning lazily against the crumbling wall. His thigh brushed hers, warm even through soaked fabric.

“Love that for us,” he said. “Systemic hypocrisy. Nothing gets me off quite like authority figures breaking their own rules.”

“Nezha.”

“Merely an observation.”

“I will actually end your life.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’ve been threatening that since laundry duty.”

She dropped her forehead to her knees, rain dripping from her lashes. Her jacket cuffs were soaked, her socks beyond saving. She was cold, pissed, and regretting every decision that had led her to this moment. Specifically, grabbing him.

“I swear to God –”

He leaned closer, voice low and maddeningly amused. “Technically, you dragged me here. Held my wrist and everything. This is your fault.”

“I will punch you.”

“That’s the spirit.”

She groaned and curled tighter into herself, fists pressing to her temples like she could physically block him out. The rain had eased, but her mood had not.

“Why are you like this?” she hissed.

He made a thoughtful noise. “Mmm, let me see. Opium, probably frontal lobe damage, a touch of maternal neglect, and a sprinkle of unresolved rage.”

“You’re a walking psych eval.”

“Yet you still keep pulling me into bushes.”

She turned her head sharply, eyes narrowing. “Say one more thing and I will literally strangle you.”

He tilted his head, expression maddeningly calm. “Honestly? Wouldn't be the worst way to go.”

She let out a groan. “You’re unbelievable.”

“Thanks.”

She turned to glare at him, but the moment she looked, she realized how close they were. His hair was soaked, curling slightly at the ends. Rain clung to his lashes. His hoodie was plastered to his collarbone. He was looking at her like she was the most interesting nuisance he'd ever seen.

He shifted, arms draped over his knees. “Are you always like this?”

She blinked. “Like what?”

“Tense. Miserable. Stab-happy.”

“Do you want to get stabbed?”

“Honestly? Bit curious.”

Her glare deepened. “I’m not joking.”

He didn’t laugh. His voice dropped, quieter now. “Neither am I.”

Something in her posture stiffened, but she didn’t move away. Rain was dripping heavily now from the edge of the gazebo. They both heard a hollow thud of distant footsteps. The lights still hovered down the path.

Then, he broke the silence. “Hey,” he said, low.

She didn’t answer.

He tried again, voice softer. “I’m sorry for this. I didn’t think you’d actually get caught. I thought you’d beat curfew.”

Her jaw worked, but her face didn’t change. He kept going. “You’re mad at me, but you didn’t have to warn me or pull me. You didn’t have to cover for me, either.”

She breathed out through her nose, sharp and shaky. Her eyes flicked sideways.

“You’re still talking.”

But her voice had barely cracked. A sliver of something human through the steel.

He smiled, the quiet kind. “But you’re still listening.”

Somewhere down the path, the aides finally moved. The staff door slammed shut behind them. The quiet that followed felt louder than their arguing ever did. Rin stood first and shoved her hands deep into her pockets.

“Let’s go,” she muttered. Nezha rose after her, brushing water off his sleeves. “After you, boss.”

The heat of her shoulder hovered close to his as they walked. He followed, this time quieter. They walked through the courtyard. Water clung to their skin like a stain of shame. Their footsteps echoed like gunfire in the darkened hallway. Neither dared speak, afraid someone was still awake. They both quietly retreated in opposite directions towards their dorms when the door creaked open.

Jiang. 

Blocking the corridor like judgment given human form – shoulders squared, brows drawn in a scowl that had seen too many goddamn things in this facility to tolerate one more.

“What the hell is going on?!” he bellowed. “You two kids are out past curfew! You two must be out of your damn minds.”

He didn’t wait for a response. He jerked his head toward the stairwell.

“Office. Now!”

His voice cracked through the air like a whip. There was no room for resistance.

Shame pooled in Rin’s throat like bile. She kept her eyes on the floor, arms crossed tightly over her chest to hide the tremor in her hands. Nezha trailed behind her like it didn’t matter. As if he hadn’t just dragged both of them straight into hell with his goddamn mouth.

Inside, the office was dimly lit, the scent of old paper and disinfectant thick in the air. Fluorescent light buzzed overhead, flickering like it couldn’t decide whether to die or scream. Their footsteps left muddy tracks on the linoleum, a trail of proof they couldn’t erase.

Nezha leaned against the wall, posture loose, like it was funny. As if it wasn’t the second time in just a short period. Rin stood stiff beside him, silent.

Dr. Lira glanced up from her desk, her crisp cardigan unbuttoned, hair pulled into a tired knot, her expression unreadable behind the frames of her glasses.

“What now?” she asked, voice low. A dangerous kind of calm.

Jiang was seething. “Caught them skulking around the courtyard. Past curfew and look at them! SOAKED! Probably from being idiots! Probably hiding from aides like teenagers sneaking into prom.”

Nezha snorted. Rin flinched. “Shut up,” she hissed, biting the words like venom.

“Miss Fang,” Dr. Lira said without looking at her. “You’ve already been written up once this week.”

“I know,” she muttered. Her voice was clipped, her shoulders square. But her ears burned.

“It won’t happen again.”

“Mmm. You implied that last time.”

Rin bristled. “I didn’t ask for this,” she said quickly. “He was the one who –”

“Excuse me,” Nezha interrupted, his hand raised like he was swearing in court. “She dragged me behind the gazebo like we were in a movie. I was just following protocol.”

Rin spun. “What protocol? You were talking. You were loud. You got us caught –”

“Maybe if you weren’t walking like a fucking fugitive –”

“Maybe if you had enough common sense –”

“ENOUGH.”

Dr. Lira’s voice cracked through the room like a lightning strike. Everyone fell silent. Even Jiang exhaled.

She rose slowly and took off her glasses. She folded them on her desk with clinical precision.

“Miss Fang. Mr. Yin,” she said, voice low now. Cold. “This is your second joint offense.”

Neither moved.

“I have patients who set fire to their own bedsheets,” she continued. “And yet, somehow, you two are the ones testing every ounce of patience I have left.”

Rin looked down. Her fists were clenched so tightly her knuckles were white.

Nezha scratched the back of his neck. For once, sheepish.

Dr. Lira looked between them.

“You know what I see?” she asked quietly. “Two intelligent, emotionally constipated young adults trying to out-brood each other like it’s a competition.”

Nezha raised an eyebrow. “Is that your clinical opinion?”

She gave him a withering look. “No. It’s an embarrassment.”

Rin’s face flushed. The silence crackled.

“Effective immediately,” Dr. Lira went on, “you are both on groundskeeping duty. Every morning. 6 a.m. For two weeks.”

Rin blinked. Nezha opened his mouth.

“No complaints,” Lira snapped before he could speak. “Or it becomes four weeks.”

He shut his mouth.

“You will also write a joint incident report. Typed, signed, and printed. I want the truth. Not finger-pointing. Not theatrics. Not this adolescent circus act. You’re adults, so begin behaving like one.”

The pause that followed was long and miserable. “Dismissed.”

They left without speaking. In the hallway, Rin walked ahead, fast and furious. Her sneakers squeaked on the floor. Her whole body burned – rage, shame, a humiliation so acute she couldn’t breathe through it.

Behind her, Nezha strolled like a toddler getting caught past nap time.

“You really do have a talent for getting me in trouble,” he said lightly.

“Shut up,” she growled, not looking back.

He laughed. 

At the corridor’s fork, they peeled off wordlessly. One to the left, one to the right. Two shadows, each swallowing their own rage as they slipped deeper into the night.

•─────⋅⋅─────•

The cold dragged itself across the garden in damp ribbons of fog, clinging to the hedges and settling heavily in the lungs. The air reeked faintly of rain-rotted soil and chlorinated compost. Somewhere beneath it, there was the scent of rust.

Rin stood motionless in the half-light, the sky still bruised with the last remnants of dawn. Her windbreaker was too thin for the chill, and the ache behind her eyes had grown worse — sharp now, needling with every breath. Her throat was raw, and her sinuses were full. She didn’t care. Illness could be managed, but shame could not.

At the gate, Jiang was already waiting, leaning like a gargoyle against the rusted latch. His boots were caked in mud, his raincoat sagging with moisture; a clipboard was gripped like a blade.

“Ah. The two delinquents arrive,” he said without lifting his gaze.

Nezha was slouched beside the wheelbarrow, hoodie strings drawn taut between cracked lips. He looked awful. Pale, red-eyed, nose flushed from overuse of tissue. He sniffled without shame.

Good. Let him suffer.

“You’ll be handling compost and the prayer garden today,” Jiang continued, flicking through his clipboard. “Start with the mulch beds. Then raking, weeding, hauling sacks from the old storage.”

Rin nodded once, arms crossed. Her eyes trailed over the scattered tools — shovel, rake, gloves fraying at the seams. It looked like a burial site for forgotten chores.

Behind her, Nezha coughed. A wrecked, guttural sound, like something was tearing loose inside him.

She didn’t turn.

“You both look like warmed-over corpses,” Jiang muttered, expression unreadable. “No whining. You chose the drama. Now you get the consequences.”

“Love that,” Nezha croaked, voice like gravel. A taunting smile curled at the edge of his chapped lips. “Good morning to you, too, ghost girl.”

Rin shot him a glare so sharp it could’ve sliced bark.

Jiang rolled his eyes and tossed a pair of gloves toward them — one pair each, landing with a wet thud in the grass. “Start with the mulch rows. I’ll be on the bench. Collapse quietly, if you must.”

He left them there, alone with the fog and the birdsong. A few finches chattered in the distance, indifferent.

Rin said nothing. She stooped, picked up the rake, and began toward the garden beds. Each step squelched through thick, wet earth. Her calves ached. Her breath came shorter than usual. It didn’t stop her.

They worked in silence.

Side by side. No more than three feet apart, as if tethered. Neither spoke nor looked.

She would’ve rather torn out her own teeth than start a conversation.

•─────⋅⋅─────•

The sun had begun its slow climb, but its light offered no warmth. It only made the world look rawer and grayer. Rin’s hands throbbed, her fingers red beneath the gloves. But she didn’t slow. She had finished faster than expected, if only to escape him.

He was still there, dragging his feet, coughing into his sleeve, trying to act unbothered.

She was unimpressed.

The mess hall was half-empty when she entered. Trays clattered distantly in the back, and the last of the breakfast crowd had already begun to scatter. The air inside was warmer, scented with ginger and steam. Rin liked it best like this — hushed, unobserved, void of the usual noise.

Behind the counter, Sister Lena stood like a sentinel, sleeves rolled, apron damp. Her arms were crossed. Her gaze did not lift.

“Ghost girl,” she said, voice like a slap against tile. “Late again.”

Rin coughed once into the crook of her arm, picked up a tray, and kept moving. She gave no excuses this time. They never helped.

“Ran your lungs out again, didn’t you?” the nun added, her eyes now narrowing. “You sound like a dying goat.”

“I had garden duty,” Rin muttered, voice cracking.

“Figures. I bet the whole institution knows by now. We all heard Jiang screaming at you two last night and again this morning.”

She reached into a basket and dropped a piece of bread onto Rin’s tray. 

“You look like a drowned rat, kid. Go eat up,” she added, but her voice had softened slightly.

Rin moved to her usual table: back wall, farthest corner, chair always cold. She sat with stiff limbs, nose burning, eyes gritty. Steam rose from her congee. She didn’t feel hungry at all.

Sister Lena approached again, this time holding a mug of hot ginger tea, the rim clinking softly against the tray as she set it down.

“Drink that. Before your soul detaches from your body.”

Rin stared at the cup, then nodded. Her fingers curled around the mug like it was the only warm thing left in the world.

“You’re not invincible, Rin,” the nun said, her tone almost maternal now. “You don’t have to keep proving it like you’re trying to shatter yourself.”

Rin said nothing to that. She sipped and let the heat sear her tongue. She kept her gaze on the steam. There was nothing to say.

A few minutes later, the door opened with a low groan.

Nezha stumbled in, looking like a wet dishrag. Hair matted, hoodie limp with moisture, sleeves hanging over his hands. His eyes were half-closed. He blinked like he hadn’t seen light in years.

“You look like death,” Sister Lena said flatly.

He smiled, slow and crooked. “Morning, Sister. I love the energy.”

“Go sit down, Nezha,” she ordered as she ladled soup into a bowl – thick, full of ginger, the broth rich with oil and beef. 

He hesitated. “Huh?”

“Not alone,” she snapped. “Go sit with your partner in crime.”

She pointed at Rin’s table without looking. Rin looked up just in time to meet his sheepish glance and scowled viscerally. 

He shrugged helplessly. Then shuffled toward her like a scolded child.

“Don’t talk to me,” she muttered as he sat down.

“Wasn’t planning to,” he said, low.

His tray, full of the same food as Rin’s, was placed onto the table with zero ceremony by Sister Lena. Their spoons rattled, and the ginger tea nearly spilled.

“Eat,” Sister Lena ordered him. “And if either of you starts an argument, I’ll chain you together for a day of novenas.”

She walked away. The silence was immediate.

Steam rose between them. Rin didn’t lift her gaze. She ate slowly, deliberately, as if rationing energy. Her nose was pink, and her face was pale and puffy from the cold. She tore her bread in half with trembling fingers.

Nezha coughed once into his sleeve. He looked worse up close. His skin had lost its color. There was something sunken in his eyes, like he hadn’t slept, like something inside him had hollowed out. He drank slowly, like even swallowing was a task.

They didn’t speak. Didn’t look at each other, but they ate in quiet, synchronized misery.

Sister Lena lingered by the doorway, arms crossed. The moment dragged, heavy as a wet cloth. Somewhere, a tray clattered in the kitchen. Sister Lena sighed, loud and theatrical. “Isn’t it lovely,” she said, “to witness two fully grown adults share a meal like civilized creatures.”

Neither replied.

Rin sipped her tea, and Nezha stirred his soup with a sluggish hand. They sat like statues. 

“God give me strength,” the nun muttered, finally turning back toward the kitchen.

And so, the truce held.

Two idiots, sniffling in sync. Eating their food with all the grace of wounded animals. Egos too large to acknowledge the strange comfort of shared silence.

They wouldn’t admit it, but eating hurt a little less when they weren’t alone.

Rin rose first, without a glance backward, steps sharp, expression unreadable. She didn’t speak or wait for him. Behind her, Nezha followed like a shadow drawn by force, not choice. There was no joke this time or any quip to soften the edges, but rather just the dry scuff of shoes against tile and the unbearable quiet of avoidance stretched thin between two people who had said too much and not enough.

By the time they entered the therapy room, everyone else was already seated. The fluorescent lights cast their usual brutal glow, unforgiving as always – the kind of light that made even the healed look raw.

Juro whistled low.

“Well, well, well,” he muttered, elbowing Lakan, who tried and failed not to choke on his crackers. “The forbidden duo makes a grand return.”

Rin didn’t dignify him with a reply. Her glare was clean, surgical – capable of flaying without a word. She moved briskly toward her usual seat, where the shadows hit just right and the air was cool enough to keep her awake. It gave her the advantage of distance, but not detachment. She could watch without being watched.

Nezha, ever the idiot, didn’t take the seat beside her. But not far either, just one chair apart. Close enough to irritate.

Tala leaned in with a whisper, sly and low, “Hey. So, did you two enjoy your punishment date?”

Juro snorted. “Or was it more ‘misery loves company’ kind of bonding?”

From the far end, Irinka offered something softer. “You both look awful,” she said, gently. “Are you okay?”

Rin didn’t answer. Her fingers curled around the corner of her journal like it was something to be strangled. Her gaze was fixed straight ahead, unmoving, as if the blank wall might crack open and offer her an exit.

Beside her, Nezha coughed into the crook of his sleeve. The sound was broken. He looked like hell, pale beneath the remnants of fever, but made no move to speak or defend himself.

 Dr. Lira arrived minutes later, clipboard in hand, a storm tucked beneath her smile.

Her gaze swept across the room, sharp and practiced. It lingered, half a beat longer, on the two most familiar offenders.

“Good to see everyone present,” she said dryly. “Even those who’ve recently become recurring characters in my office.”

Rin remained still. She’d long mastered the art of the blank face.

Nezha, for his part, gave a weak salute. “Reporting for duty,” he rasped, then immediately descended into a cough. Tala stifled a laugh behind her sleeve.

Dr. Lira turned to the board, uncapped the marker with a flick.

“Today’s topic is accountability.”

Lakan and Tala exchanged a knowing look. Juro slumped in his chair, chuckling. “Oh, she’s definitely doing this on purpose.”

Nezha snorted under his breath. Rin didn’t glance at him, but her knuckles tightened over the journal.

Of course. Of fucking course.

“I want each of you,” Dr. Lira continued, “to reflect on a time when your actions, intentional or otherwise, deeply impacted someone else. I want honesty.”

Rin felt her stomach turn. This was her least favorite kind of session. Lira was surgical with her silences. She knew how to wait, how to disarm, how to gut you without raising her voice. Kind eyes, merciless aim. She peeled the room open one wound at a time.

Irinka spoke first. Her voice was soft but unwavering as she spoke about the first time she screamed at her daughter –  not from anger, but from despair. How the fear in the child’s face had lodged itself in her chest. She paused only once, when her voice cracked in the middle of a sentence. Tala reached for her hand without being asked. Juro’s head was bowed. Even Lakan didn’t laugh.

Nezha didn’t, either.

When it came to him, he didn’t shift or hesitate. He just leaned back in his chair, arms folded like a boy pretending not to care.

“I’ve hurt a lot of people,” he said. His tone was flat. “Exes, friends, my family. Honestly, take your pick.”

He shrugged.

“I ghost and self-destruct. I vanish. Then I come back like nothing happened, pretend I’m whole. It’s manipulative. I know that.”

Dr. Lira raised an eyebrow, calm and clinical.

“And why do you do it?”

This time, he looked down. His shoulders lowered – not dramatically, just enough to make it clear that something had unspooled beneath the surface. Something private and old.

There was a long pause. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter.

“Because if I leave first,” he said, “then no one gets to leave me.”

Rin didn’t move, but something beneath her ribs shifted violently. The sentence landed like a slap with no warning. Just truth, stark and unadorned, echoing a thought she had never dared to speak aloud. Not to anyone, not even to herself. She knew that logic too well – the cruel math of preemptive retreat. The illusion of control it offered. The way it hollowed you out, slowly, beautifully, until you forgot how to stay.

When her turn came, Dr. Lira said nothing and just waited.

Rin stared at the floor. Her voice, when it emerged, was stripped of all softness.

“I disappoint people when I burn out,” she said. “So I make sure I never burn out.”

Her throat constricted, but she continued. Everyone’s eyes were on her. Rin had never shared something this intimate ever in group. 

“I keep going even when I’m drowning. Even when I’m not okay. That way I don’t let anyone down.”

There was a short pause.

“Just myself.”

Silence followed. Dr. Lira only nodded quietly. “Thank you.”

The rest of the session became a blur after that. Juro’s voice was distant. Lakan’s joke didn’t land. Rin’s ears were ringing. Her body was present, but her mind was clawing for distance, for quiet, for some way out of the weight pressing down on her lungs.

She did not look at Nezha again, but she could feel his gaze – not the usual sharp, mocking thing, but something slower, something like recognition.

As soon as the session ended, she bolted out first. Outside, the air had turned wet and sharp. Rin walked fast, jaw clenched, hands buried in her jacket sleeves. She heard him behind her – always behind her – like a curse she couldn’t outrun.

“Rin –”

No response.

“Rin.”

She spun around. “What?”

He stopped short, breath visible in the cold. His hoodie hung half off one shoulder. His hair was a mess, his face still pale.

“I just…” He looked down and scratched the back of his neck. “I wasn’t saying that for pity or attention. I just – I meant it.”

Her expression didn’t shift. “Okay?”

His mouth opened, then closed. He hesitated for a while, then said, “I just thought maybe you’d get it.”

That stopped her for half a second. Then her voice came, cold and flat. “Don’t mistake recognition for something deeper.”

He blinked. “What does that mean?”

“It means don’t confuse our shared damage for connection. Just because we cracked the same way doesn’t make us anything.”

That hit. He stepped back, jaw tightening.

“Right,” he said. His voice was now stripped of all the vulnerability it had a while ago. “Got it. You’re untouchable. Nothing ever lands.”

She shrugged. “You’re not that special.”

“Yeah? Well, neither are you,” he snapped.

Something flickered in her face. “Good,” she said, quieter now.

Then she turned, and this time, he let her go.

•─────⋅⋅─────•

The koi pond barely stirred. Wind drifted across its surface in soft, diffident gestures, breaking the water into long, glimmering ribbons. The lilies shifted like sleeping mouths. Beneath them, the fish moved slowly – General Tujin, Muni, Amah – their bodies carving the silence open, weightless and unthinking.

Rin sat where the stone curved warm beneath her, cross-legged, lunch untouched. The air smelled of wet grass, dried salt, and rusted iron. There was birdsong somewhere, too faint to name.

She didn’t look at the food on her lap. She was watching the way the koi didn’t flinch when the wind touched them. How easy, she thought, to live like that. Sheltered beneath water and lily pads. No one is expecting you to explain your absences. No one is trying to reach for you when you start to pull away.

Her chest clenched. She gripped her fork tighter.

She was so good at vanishing that most people didn’t notice until it was already done. That was the trick. You didn’t wait until you were abandoned. You had already left by then.

Leave first.

She hadn’t realized it was a pattern. Not until the therapy circle, not until he mentioned it.

She cursed under her breath. It hadn’t even been addressed to her – that line. It was just one of his usual flippant declarations, slouched in his chair, voice soaked in sarcasm, but it stuck. 

Because it was hers too. The same disease, different symptoms. Nezha raged and clawed, daring people to stay. She withdrew, dulled herself, shut doors before anyone could knock. 

Same infection but different names. Yet he’d been the one to say it first. She hated that.

After her father died, she hadn’t even cried at the funeral. Not because it didn’t hurt – it did, it gutted her – but because grief felt too risky, too exposed. It meant you still wanted something and still held onto hope for it. So she learned not to want, but to strive for excellence instead. The kind of girl who couldn’t be left, because she never gave anyone the chance to arrive in the first place.

Reliable Rin.
Good daughter.
Ghost of herself.

Amah darted toward the surface and disappeared again. She exhaled heavily. The ache in her chest hadn’t gone away. It had simply grown quieter.

She picked at the food, finally. One bite, then another.

She didn’t know what she was feeling. It wasn’t anger, nor was it even pity. It was something else. A thread between them – fragile, invisible, and terrible.

Rin looked down at her reflection, half-fractured by ripples. She hadn’t realized how lonely she looked, sitting here.

Until just now.

Chapter Text

St. Eustace thrummed with unusual warmth.

It wasn't just the weather – though even the shadows felt softer, sun spilling lazily through the half-shuttered windows – it was something else. There was laughter in corners, the sound of rustling plastic containers, and the scent of freshly reheated lo mein enveloped the place. 

Families were trickling in, smiling with their arms full of food — containers stacked with banana fritters, sachima, and rose cake. Toddlers were weaved between legs. An elderly woman reached out to touch her grandson's cheek like he'd returned from war. For a moment, even the ghosts seemed to retreat. As if this Sunday was sacred, as if even grief deserved a day off.

Rin stood just beyond the edge of it all, near the corridor. Her hands were tucked into the pockets of a windbreaker too big for her frame, sleeves rolled once, then again. She watched without watching – eyes trained on the crowd but glazed, almost rehearsed in the act of detachment.

To her left, Lakan gave his significant other a kiss, fingers interlaced, cheeks flushed. Ahead, Irinka knelt by the courtyard pond, her kids shrieking with delight as the fish swam near. Tala, ever the poster girl for recovery, waved her sisters toward a bench already laden with pastries and tea.

Rin blinked and swallowed. The feeling was dull but familiar: hollowness. She turned and made her way toward the admin wing. She already knew the routine. Every third Sunday of the month, families were allowed to visit. For those whose loved ones weren't able to come, they were warranted calls and texts on the rehab-issued phone for the day. 

The aide, half-slouched behind the desk, nodded at her. "Fang. Phone's here. Timer starts now."

She nodded and took the device.

No missed calls. No voicemails. No name lighting up the screen.

There was only one message:

[Mama, 2:14 PM]: Keep on praying, Rin. Take your meds. 

That was it. No "I miss you." No "We're proud of you." Not even the decency of "When are you coming home?" Just a sterile checklist of Catholic survival: prayer and pills. Rin stared at the screen a moment longer, then tapped the lock button. 

She stepped out instead to clear her disappointment. The sun was intense – mocking, almost – and the laughter from the courtyard stretched long and loud. Someone's kid was shrieking about a toy truck. Juro was teaching his mom how to use the camera filter on her phone that made her cheeks fat and her eyes anime-wide.

Rin walked past it all. She found the bench by the veranda, the one no one ever sat on unless they wanted to be alone, and slumped into it. Her fingers curled around the phone. Her thumb traced the outline of the keys, as if maybe – just maybe – it would buzz or that it might ring. That someone, somewhere, might care.

She scrolled back through all the old messages. The last time her mother had called – really called – was during her first week here, her intake week. The phone had barely connected when she heard it."What do you think people will say?" Not "How are you? Are you safe?" Just shame, wrapped in the crumpled lace of their family history.

The screen dimmed again. The hour ticked by as the silence stretched on for a long while.

Rin tilted her head toward the sky and let out a sigh. Then, she heard footsteps approach her. He dropped beside her without asking.

Nezha.

His hair was still damp from his shower, and his knees parted in that careless sprawl of someone trying very hard not to be bothered. His own rehab phone dangled from two fingers before he dropped it screen-down onto the bench beside him like it was diseased. 

He didn't look at her. She didn't even acknowledge him one bit. Silence stretched except for the sniffles and the coughs the two apparently share. 

He leaned back and watched the bubbles drifting from the garden. A little girl caught one with both hands and squealed. Behind her, her father clapped like she'd solved quantum physics.

Nezha gave a tired, bitter smile. "Fucking theme park."

Rin let out a snort. She didn't smile, but neither did she disagree.

Then her phone buzzed. They both jumped and looked down.

[1 HOUR REMINDER: Please return the device to the front desk.]

Rin exhaled and placed her phone screen down beside his. Nezha stretched, his hood pulled low over his eyes. The energy between them was raw and awkward. 

"This bench sucks," he muttered.

She didn't look at him. "Then move."

He didn't. "Too far to anywhere else." 

They sat like that for a while. Eventually, the noise around them began to fade – plastic chairs dragged, food containers snapped shut, kids called out names that weren't theirs. The light turned gold, then dull blue. 

Rin traced a splinter on the bench with her thumb. Nezha kicked at a pebble until it skittered off the path.

"Your parents?" he asked again, voice flat.

She didn't answer right away and let the silence linger. She was quite annoyed but responded anyway. "Texted."

That was all. He nodded like he understood – because he genuinely did.

"Mine didn't," he said. "Not even a fuck you."

Her mouth twitched, a sound half between a snort and a sigh. "Must be nice. At least you stopped expecting it."

He turned to look at her. "You haven't?"

Rin's shoulders stiffened. She chewed the inside of her cheek, eyes still fixed on the crowd packing up. That was enough of an answer.

A gust of wind carried laughter from the gate, someone calling 'Bye, Ma!', the crunch of gravel fading into the distance. Rin's hand curled around the bench's edge. Nezha pulled at the thread on his hoodie, tearing it a little further.

"Pathetic, huh?" he said. "Two grown adults sitting here waiting for people who were never coming."

She shot him a glare. "Speak for yourself."

He smirked, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Sure. Guess you're just here for the view."

"I'm here because it's quiet."

He huffed. "Yeah. Nothing like the sound of other people being loved."

That earned him a look – sharp, almost wounded. "You really can't shut up, can you?"

"Nope." He leaned forward, elbows on knees. "If I stop talking, I start thinking. And that's worse."

She didn't answer, but her expression flickered, almost like agreement.

The sun dropped behind the hill, throwing its shadows long across the dirt. Someone in the distance laughed too loudly; another door slammed shut. For the first time all afternoon, neither of them pretended to have somewhere else to be.

"You going?" he asked after a while.

"Not yet."

"Same."

When the sky had turned completely pale, tinted almost violet, they heard him, Jiang, calling out from a distance, a toothpick still lodged between his teeth like always.

"So, is the war over? Have you signed a peace treaty?"

Rin didn't respond. She didn't even glance at him. She just stood, walked over, and handed the phone back silently. Her jaw was tight, but her eyes gave nothing away.

Nezha followed behind. He passed over his phone as well, offering a faint smile.

"Just a temporary ceasefire," he said. "We might go back to brawling tomorrow."

Jiang shook his head with a huff. "You two are seriously impossible."

Rin walked away first. Nezha followed.

No words passed between them.

The cold had returned, but it no longer bit like it used to. It wasn't cruel anymore.

Rin walked ahead with her shoulders drawn in, fists buried deep in the warmth of her pockets. She had almost convinced herself that the silence would hold — that she would make it to her dorm without hearing his voice again.

Of course, she didn't get that lucky.

"Hey," Nezha said, voice rasping and maddening. "Don't we have a joint write-up? The courtyard incident?"

She stopped. Her spine went taut. One hand came up to rub at her temple, like his voice alone gave her a migraine.

"Shit," she muttered under her breath. "Right."

He caught up, not even pretending to be sorry now. There was an ease to the way he moved beside her, like this was a stroll and not a shared punishment.

"Library?" she said flatly, not bothering to look at him. "Unless you've got a fan club meeting to attend."

"None today. The President was absent." He gave a shrug. "Lead the way, boss."

The library was located near the administrative wing, dim and largely forgotten. Its shelves were uneven, sagging under years of donated novels and medical reference books no one read. The single computer usually sat in the corner like a relic — but tonight, the aide handed them a laptop and a drive. Dr. Lira had, apparently, made arrangements.

Rin took the left side of the corner table. Nezha slumped into the chair, scraping like a threat.

The laptop blinked to life between them, a neutral zone.

"I'll type," she said, cracking her knuckles with finality.

He didn't even hesitate. "Why? Scared I'll misspell 'curfew'?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Scared you'll write slam poetry instead."

"So?" he grumbled, half-offended. "It adds emotion."

She didn't dignify that with a reply and just opened a new document.

INCIDENT REPORT: COURTYARD VIOLATION
Residents Involved: Fang Runin & Yin Nezha
Date: March 10 (10:00 PM-11:00 PM)

Her typing was fast and surgical, each key struck like it owed her money. She didn't pause, didn't even blink. It drove Nezha insane.

"Jesus, can't you add some accountability, Miss Type-A?" Nezha leaned closer to squint at the screen. "'Patient Yin initiated prolonged outdoor loitering…' Seriously? You make it sound like I was plotting a crime."

"You did initiate it," Rin said flatly, not looking up.

He scoffed. "You dragged me there."

"Because you were being an idiot about to get caught."

"Oh, right," he said. "Says the genius who decided to hide in a crumbling gazebo in the rain."

Her jaw tightened. "You think you're funny?"

"I know I'm funny. You're just allergic to joy."

"I'm allergic to you."

He grinned. "Yeah, that's what my joy looks like."

They locked eyes, mutual disgust in full bloom. The air between them went tense enough to snap.

"Fine," she said finally, exhaling through her nose. "You do it, then. Type."

He grinned like she'd just surrendered a kingdom. "Gladly."

Their hands brushed when he reached for the keyboard. She jerked back like he'd burned her. He noticed, of course – he always noticed – and his grin only widened.

His version appeared on the screen, read aloud in his most self-satisfied tone:

"Both parties were caught in the rain and made a delayed attempt to return before curfew. While Yin may have been unfamiliar with the rules, Fang could have de-escalated the situation sooner."

She stared. Then, begrudgingly said, "Not bad."

"Thanks, boss," he said, smirking like he'd just won an award.

They worked like that for another hour – truce and tension in alternating waves. She typed, he made smartass comments; she deleted his adjectives, he added new ones just to irritate her. He tried to describe the moss as 'spiritually aggressive.' She nearly threw the mouse at his head.

"Stop hovering," she snapped.

"I'm not hovering. I'm supervising."

She exhaled through her nose, a slow, dangerous sound. "You're giving me a migraine."

"Cool, add it to the incident report."

By the time they finished, the tension had thinned into a reluctant rhythm. Word by word, jab by jab, the page filled. The document looked like a battlefield of passive aggression. Rin saved the file to the drive with military precision. Nezha stretched beside her, groaning like he'd run a marathon.

"Teamwork makes the dream work," he said.

She gave him a sideways glare. "Keep talking, and I'll file another report."

"Aw, that's the most affection I've ever gotten from you."

She ignored him, but he caught it – just barely – the twitch at the corner of her mouth. The almost-smile.

He pointed. "Was that it? Did I just witness human emotion?"

She stood, gathering her things. "Want another river fight?"

He followed her out, grinning. "Only if I win this time."

After finishing their task, they approached the staff window at the admin wing for printing. The staff handed over the printout as if it weighed a thousand bricks.

"Second write-up in a week," the aide said, unimpressed. "You're building a collection."

"Collector's item," Nezha whispered with that stupid grin on his face.

Rin rolled her eyes.

They walked to Dr. Lira's office in silence. The hallway was dim, lit only by the spill of light beneath her door. The knock was soft. 

"Come in," she said.

They sat where they always seemed to – side by side, on opposite sides of a war they didn't know how to name.

Dr. Lira read the paper slowly. Then looked at them as if she were considering a puzzle with too many jagged edges.

"What are we really doing here?" she asked, voice low. Gentle, but tired.

Rin didn't speak.

"Ms. Fang," she said. "You've been here a month. One incident before this, also with him."

Rin nodded, jaw tight.

"And you, Mr. Yin. One week. Two major infractions, both involving her."

He said nothing. Just stared at the corner of the desk.

Dr. Lira tapped the paper once. "You two don't fight because you're different. You fight because you're alike."

Rin stiffened.

Nezha frowned. "Alike how?"

"Pain, repression, rage. You present differently, but you're the same engine under different skins."

The words hit harder than either of them expected.

Rin looked down.

Nezha shifted, jaw clenched.

"You're triggering each other," she continued. "And if you don't learn to observe yourselves when that happens, you'll never get better. You'll just keep bleeding on the same loop."

Neither of them could meet her eyes.

"I'm not punishing you again," she said. "You'll finish groundskeeping, but moving forward, I still want you in the same therapy group. I want to see what this brings out and what it reveals."

Rin opened her mouth, but then closed it again.

Nezha muttered, "Feels like a science experiment."

"Aren't we all?" Dr. Lira said.

The silence that followed was neither a sign of agreement nor protest.

"You can go."

The two quickly left. Rin opened the door first and walked ahead. He followed a few steps behind. They didn't speak all the way back, but the silence no longer felt like avoidance. It felt like a weight. 

Somewhere in the trees, the wind rustled – soft and spectral. The mess hall loomed dimly ahead, a low building humming with the last scraps of light. It was already past eight. Most had already eaten. Only a few silhouettes lingered behind smudged glass.

Rin walked fast with her arms crossed, jaw tight. Her sneakers slapped the stone path with more force than necessary. Behind her, Nezha trailed at a deliberate distance, neither rushing to catch up nor falling behind. His hands were buried in his jacket. He was still coughing – a shallow, stubborn sound.

She could feel his stare clinging to her back like static. It only made her angrier.

Alike, Dr. Lira had said.

The word was still lodged in her skull like a thorn.

What a load of psychobabble bullshit.

She wasn't like him. She wasn't careless, or arrogant, or the type to light matches just to see things burn. She wasn't loud, messy, or reckless with other people's time or their boundaries.

But god – she wanted to scream.

What did Dr. Lira mean?

She shoved the mess hall doors open with too much force. The hinges groaned. Inside, the fluorescents buzzed faintly. The aide staff looked up, blinked, and returned to their trays. Most of the patients were gone. One or two stragglers sat hunched over mugs of weak coffee.

Nezha entered a moment later, wordlessly dripping indifference. They reached for trays at the same time. Their fingers brushed near the cutlery.

Rin sucked in a breath. "Jesus Christ. You go first." She was clearly overstimulated.

He didn't argue. Just took the spoon without looking at her. His silence was a kind of defiance.

They moved through the line in quiet parallel. No staff behind the counter – just a few plates left in the warmer, their contents congealing slowly under the heat lamp. Sister Lena must've saved them something.

Rin took her usual seat at the far end of the room. He settled diagonally across, like always.

She stabbed her rice as if it had wronged her personally.

He ate slowly, chewing without urgency, glancing up once.

"You okay?" he asked, voice quiet. Roughened by cold or guilt – she couldn't tell.

She didn't look at him. "Do I look okay?"

"You look homicidal, yeah."

"Good."

A breath of something between amusement and fatigue left him. "Must've hit a nerve."

Her fork clinked against the tray. "Don't push it."

He didn't. Just nodded, eyes returning to his plate. The silence that followed was still sharp, but no longer cruel. It hung between them, thick and unspoken like smoke after a fire.

Maybe even reflective.

Rin hated that. Hated that Dr. Lira's voice still echoed in her skull. Hated it more that he was part of whatever this shared diagnosis was supposed to be.

Alike, my ass.

And yet – 

She didn't move seats, didn't bolt. Didn't throw her spoon at his smug, stupid face.

Instead, she chewed slowly like someone holding back the urge to scream into a pillow. He stayed where he was.

He cleared his throat – ragged, phlegmy, like a machine running on its last spark.

"Alike, huh." He poked at his scrambled egg. "I fucking hate metaphors."

She sipped her lukewarm ginger tea without answering.

"Like, what does that even mean?" His voice edged toward disbelief, manic around the edges. "Just because we nearly drowned each other in a river and caught the same cold doesn't make us twin souls or some shit."

Still nothing.

"What's next?" he went on, more to the air than to her. "Trauma bonding over community laundry? Matching koi fish tattoos?"

She set her cup down with a sharp clack.

"You done?"

He paused and blinked. "Depends. You gonna punch me again?"

"Don't tempt me."

He raised his hands in mock surrender. "Just saying. She made it sound like we're the same kind of fucked up."

Rin let out a breath through her nose, a scoff. "We're not."

"Right?" He tilted his head, squinting. "You're type A. Repressed. Ghost girl. Martyr complex. I'm –"

"– a loud, impulsive, ragebaiting clown?"

He grinned. "Exactly."

She stared at him, flat. "That's not a compliment."

"Never said it was."

They both looked like hell: sickly pale, eyes sunken. Nezha set his spoon down. "She said we react the same, just in different ways."

Rin didn't move, but something flickered behind her eyes.

He looked at her, softer this time. "She's wrong, right?"

"You think I know?"

It wasn't biting but rather tired. Their trays sat mostly untouched now. A meal neither of them had the energy to finish. Outside, wind curled against the windowpanes. A rainstorm was coming again. They didn't speak much after that.

They were two fractured mirrors, reflecting the same cracks – just shaped by different hands.

•─────⋅⋅─────•

The fog hadn't cleared.

It settled thick over the garden beds, damp and stubborn, clinging to every surface. The scent of pine hung in the air – wet bark, rotting leaves, the faint bitterness of compost. Somewhere in the distance, a crow called out, sharp against the hush.

Rin stood among the peonies, half-shivering, half-braced. Her sweatshirt clung to her skin, damp with sweat that felt feverish, not warm. 

She hadn't slept much since last night. Her head throbbed steadily, each pulse dull like the beat of a war drum behind her eyes. Her limbs ached. Her throat burned, but she had still come to their groundskeeping punishment.

No matter the state of her body. No matter how much she wanted to disappear.

And of course – Nezha was there.

He looked bruised and belligerent. His top was loose over his frame, eyes puffy, nose pink from the cold or from rage. He looked like he'd gotten two hours of sleep and fought a ghost in the night. Maybe he had. She hoped he lost.

She didn't look at him, not even once.

Instead, she sank to her knees in the wet soil and began tearing weeds from the earth with methodical precision, as if she pulled hard enough, something inside her would dislodge, too. Nezha didn't speak either. He just grabbed the shovel and started on the compost pile, muttering obscenities under his breath like she wasn't a foot away. Their silence wasn't civil. It had thorns. 

They worked like that for nearly an hour – two wounded animals pretending the other didn't exist.

By ten sharp, Rin was gone. Her steps were swift, barely audible. She didn't even bother brushing the dirt from her knees.

She had no group therapy today. Instead, it was her individual therapy session with Dr. Silan.

•─────⋅⋅─────•

His office was warm in a way nothing else in St. Eustace ever was. The air smelled faintly of ginger tea and worn leather. The books were piled in uneven stacks – Jung, Frankl, outdated volumes of clinical psych, untranslated mythology, and a desk cluttered with yellow legal pads.

Rin sat stiff on the couch, hoodie sleeves pulled over her knuckles, as if she could contain herself by sheer fabric alone. Her skin felt clammy. Her throat was itchy, her eyes watery, but she didn't say she was sick.

Dr. Silan didn't look up at first. He was scribbling something – always in longhand, always in silence. Eventually, he set the pen down.

"You okay?" he asked, evenly.

She didn't answer right away. Rin just shrugged. "I'll live."

He nodded to the tea beside her. "It's lemon and ginger. Help yourself."

She took it and sipped slowly.

"Glad you didn't have group today?" he said.

"I didn't feel like watching everyone cry in circles."

"Interesting. But you had the energy for a brawl in the river and a public screaming match in the rain."

Rin didn't respond.

He leaned back in his chair, hands folding over his stomach. "I read the write-ups. Two pages, mostly sarcasm and threats."

"Dr. Lira asked for honesty," she deadpanned, arms shrugging nonchalantly.

"She asked for awareness."

That silenced her.

He studied her like he always did – not with pity, never pity – but with the kind of clinical attention she used to reserve for pathology slides back in the laboratory. 

Finally, he said, "Runin. This isn't about him."

She blinked.

"It never was. That boy's just a match. The gasoline's been sitting inside you long before he got here."

Her fingers tightened around the mug. She looked away. These damn metaphors. 

"You used to be controlled. Now you're angry," he said. "That's progress, by the way. Uncomfortable, but necessary."

"Feels like regression," she muttered.

He didn't smile, but his voice held a softness. "Regression would be silence, isolation or even apathy. You're reacting now. It means there's something left in you that still wants to fight."

She let out a quiet breath, barely audible. "Then why do I feel even worse?"

"Because you're finally telling the truth."

A bird landed on the window ledge. Flitted once, then vanished.

"You don't like him because he reminds you of the parts of yourself you can't control. But Rin – that's not his fault."

She looked up. Her eyes burning, her voice brittle. "Fuck you," she said, offended and in disbelief. 

Dr. Silan smiled gently. "Good," he said. "That's another feeling."

She swallowed hard.

"Tell me about your week," he said.

She stared down into the tea. Steam had thinned. Her reflection rippled on the surface.

"He showed up a week ago? Two weeks ago? I don't even know," she muttered. "Saw him first smoking on the cliffside. Then, in our first group session, he was there. Sat like he owned the room."

Dr. Silan nodded.

"He provoked me."

"You don't usually respond to provocation."

"He's different."

"How?"

"He knows how to get under your skin."

She flinched, immediately regretting her words instantly.

Dr. Silan caught it. "Under your skin?"

Rin tensed. The silence stretched painfully. "That wasn't what I meant," she muttered defensively.

"What did you mean, then?" 

Her lips parted, but nothing came out.

"Runin," he said, tone careful, "This isn't about him as a person. It's about what he triggers in you. There's something about this – this conflict – that keeps escalating because something in you keeps returning to it."

She looked away.

"I'm not returning to anything," she muttered. "He keeps showing up."

"Maybe. Or maybe you keep noticing."

"He's loud," she said, voice clipped. "Doesn't listen. He doesn't follow the rules. He walks into spaces like he owns them."

"And what about that bothers you most?"

"All of it."

He waited.

"He doesn't… care," she muttered. "About the structure. About the space. About – people's pace. Boundaries."

Dr. Silan nodded, like he expected that.

"Has that always been something that triggers you ever since?"

She stiffened. Here it comes. She stares at him, not uttering an answer, but he knows it anyway. 

"When someone like that walks into your world," Dr. Silan continued, "you don't just feel annoyance. You feel destabilized or disarmed."

She didn't speak.

"You're not angry at him, Runin, at least not fully. You're angry at what he represents."

"What does he represent?"

Dr. Silan's gaze didn't waver.

"Chaos, freedom, the ability to fall apart loudly."

Her throat closed.

"And you?" Dr. Silan continued.

"... I only fall apart quietly."

He nodded. "Which is why people don't always notice you're breaking."

She pressed her lips together hard. There was a burn behind her eyes now. No tears, but close. Too close.

Dr. Silan let the silence sit.

"Runin," he said gently. "You don't have to like him. But I want you to admit that this – whatever this is – has moved something in you. He's not the cause. He's the catalyst."

She didn't move. But her throat constricted.

"You've felt more this week: rage, defensiveness, exhaustion, even laughter, than in your first month here. That means something."

She hated that it was true. She hated that it was him.

That Yin Nezha, the loud, rule-breaking, boundaryless idiot, was the variable in the experiment. The problem she hadn't accounted for.

"He's a fucking idiot," she whispered, as if the insult would give her back the control.

"Yet," Dr. Silan said, "You haven't stopped talking about him."

That was it. She stood up, the thread finally snapping.

"We're done," she said. "I've had enough."

"Fair."

She left without another word. The door shut behind her with quiet finality. As she walked down the hall – burning with fever, with rage, with shame – Rin knew exactly what she hated most.

Not that he got under her skin, but that she'd let him in at all.

Chapter Text

Rin skipped group and lunch today. No one stopped her; no one even bothered to look for her. It was unlike her – Miss Type A, Miss Every-Box-Ticked – but she didn't care, not today. 

Not when her skin felt too tight for her bones, not when every corner of her mind was thick with the lingering echo of Dr. Silan's voice days ago, his calm dissection of things she didn't want named. 

So instead, she changed into a tank top layered with her usual windbreaker and an old pair of shorts, laced her shoes with shaking fingers, and stepped into the punishing heat like it might cleanse her. Eleven a.m., not a shadow in sight, the sun hung directly above her like a curse. 

Still, she ran.

She liked the way the light seared her. She liked the dull ache that came from overexertion, the tightness in her calves, the dryness in her throat, the sting of sweat when it slid down into her eyes. Maybe it was masochism, or perhaps it was punishment. For her, it was the only thing that made sense.

Her body had already been failing her – fever crept along her spine, winding itself into the base of her skull, wrapping her lungs in wool. It didn't matter. The ache was a distraction, and she would take pain over clarity any day. She needed to move and outrun the conclusions she hadn't asked for.

The facility loop curled around in lazy ovals of gravel and fading signage, a route she'd memorized in the early weeks when she still believed progress could be charted. The sun beat down relentlessly, turning the air into something dry and sharp. 

By the time she hit the second kilometer, her top clung to her in patches, and her mouth had gone tacky with heat. Her breath came unevenly. By four, her vision had begun to swim at the edges, warping like heat rising off asphalt. Her pulse drummed loud enough in her ears to drown out thought.

Even then, she didn't stop. She made it past five.

Suddenly, her foot caught.

She wasn't even sure what she tripped on. A branch? A crack in the gravel? Did she really even trip or just collapse from exhaustion?

One moment she was moving, the next she was hurtling forward, arms flinging out, hands scraping the ground with a grit that lodged under her skin like glass. Her knees buckled. Her head spun. Her breath caught hard in her chest like a punch. For a few seconds, all she could hear was the ringing. She crouched there, doubled over, palms bleeding faintly, the taste of sweat and blood sharp against the roof of her mouth. She tried to inhale through her nose, slow and steady, but her lungs wouldn't comply. The dizziness refused to lift. The ground heaved beneath her, or maybe she was the one heaving.

She stayed hunched over on the side of the path, the sun pressing down like a weight across her shoulders, while her body trembled beneath the heat, the fever, and the weight of truths she hadn't been ready to receive.

Eventually, she stood and she walked, staggering in short bursts, toward the clinic.

•─────⋅⋅─────•

"You're burning up," said the nurse, a note of restrained annoyance threaded through her concern as she read the thermometer and clucked her tongue.

Rin sat on the edge of the cot, her limbs limp, head bowed, eyes glassy. Her shirt was damp all the way down her spine, and her cheeks glowed with a sickly flush that had nothing to do with exertion.

"38.4°C," the nurse confirmed with a sigh. "You've definitely got a fever."

Rin said nothing. 

"Have you eaten?" the nurse asked. Rin shrugged vaguely, barely lifting her shoulder. A non-answer. She couldn't even remember.

"You've been coughing the last few days, haven't you? Why didn't you say anything?" The nurse didn't wait for a reply. "And now you run under full sun? In that condition?"

Rin gave another shrug. Another non-response.

The nurse inhaled deeply. "We're keeping you here, okay? Lie down. I'll get you medicine and an ice pack. Don't move."

Rin obeyed. She didn't have the energy to resist. She lay back on the cot like a felled tree, her chest rising and falling too fast, too shallow, the ceiling above her tilting faintly every few seconds. The nurse returned with a small pill and a glass of water, which she barely managed to sip. A cloth was pressed gently to her forehead. Her vitals were recorded, her pulse taken. Everything was logged and monitored, preserved in ink and charts.

This meant that this wasn't just a personal failing anymore; it had become institutional knowledge. Her descent had a paper trail. There was no one to blame but herself. After all, self-destruction was manageable when it stayed invisible. It was something you could mask with good posture and a checklist. But now?

Now it had been witnessed, and that, somehow, felt like her final humiliation.

•─────⋅⋅─────•

Rin had awoken from her nap when she noticed her fever had finally taken her whole body, a slow-burning tide that made her limbs feel like sacks of wet sand. The cloth on her forehead had long since lost its chill and now clung damply to her skin. Even her thoughts came sluggishly, each one pushing against the heat blooming behind her eyes.

She heard the door open, but didn't bother turning her head. She knew that sound. Heels, steady and unhurried, striking the linoleum with the kind of composure that always preceded a lecture. The rhythm alone was enough to make her jaw clench.

"Rin." No warmth, no edge, just that carefully balanced tone Dr. Lira used when she was trying very hard not to scold yet. Rin didn't answer. She kept her eyes fixed on the ceiling where a crack branched like a vein.

"You skipped group," Dr. Lira continued, closer now, clipboard in hand. "You skipped breakfast. You skipped rest. Then you ran five kilometers in thirty-four-degree heat while running a fever."

Rin said nothing.

Dr. Lira sighed – quietly, but deep enough to carry years of practiced patience. She moved a chair closer, the scrape of its legs against the floor loud in the sterile quiet, and sat down beside the cot.

"We've talked about this," she said.

Rin's eyes didn't flicker.

"You don't heal by punishing yourself," Dr. Lira went on, softer now. "This isn't a penitence, Rin. You don't have to hurt to earn the right to be okay."

Rin blinked slowly. Her throat felt raw, too dry to risk speech.

"Whatever you unpacked with Dr. Silan, whatever was said, I know it touched something," Lira said, her voice level. "And I know it isn't about him."

Rin's throat bobbed.

"It's about how everything around him feels like a mirror and you're not ready to see yourself like that yet." 

The word hung there between them – mirror – and Rin's stomach twisted. She turned her head at last, slow and reluctant, until her gaze met Dr. Lira's. Her eyes were dull and rimmed with fever, but the heat behind them was more than sickness.

"I'm fine," she croaked. 

Dr. Lira regarded her for a long moment, her expression unreadable.

"No," she said gently. "You're not."

The silence that followed was thick with everything unsaid.

"Rest," Dr. Lira said finally, rising from the chair. "I'll let them bring you soup. You're not going anywhere until your fever breaks."

Rin didn't fight it. Her body had already given up on pretending.

When the soup came, Rin left it untouched on the tray. The fever made her sweat under the blanket, her skin clammy and hot, but her thoughts remained sharp, shards of glass piercing the haze. She knew, without needing to overhear, that Dr. Lira and Dr. Silan would be discussing her by now. She wasn't stupid.

Running a five-kilometer loop under full sun while sick. Checking into the clinic, scraped, dizzy, and feverish. With her file, she could write the entry herself: The patient is exhibiting destabilization. Pattern of self-neglect. Emotional repression until collapse.

Her jaw clenched.

Ghost girl was slipping, and they had noticed.

She hated how she was unraveling in front of the public and that months of control had dissolved in a week. Most importantly, she hated that the unraveling had a name and a trigger.

Nezha Yin.

The boy was a walking provocation, loud and graceless, a hand dragging through still water. He should have been just another face in the background. Another patient with a tragic story and a self-pity complex. But no, he had to show up and contaminate her space. Again and again. Like a shadow she couldn't shake.

It wasn't even about the river or the courtyard anymore. It was about the crack he'd made in her silence.

She'd spent a month perfecting invisibility – moving through the facility like a ghost, all edges filed down, all storms sealed tight. Now she was arguing. Shouting. Fighting. Feeling.

Fuck him.

She rolled onto her side, turned her face into the pillow, fists balled under the covers. The fluorescent lights above were too bright, too white, too still, like the whole room was mocking her.

Her head throbbed harder now, temples pulsing in rhythm with her heartbeat. She stared at the crack in the ceiling until it blurred, wishing she could disappear into it. She had planned to go to the library today. Maybe art therapy before dinner. She had circled the session on the bulletin board that morning: "Expression Through Form and Shape." Something manageable and grounding. 

But instead, she was here, in a side room of the clinic where the only sounds were the muffled wind against the windows and the occasional shuffle of the nurse on duty. 

She reached for the meds on the tray, sitting up just enough to dry-swallow the paracetamol. Her throat burned. Then she picked up the second set of pills. The same pale ones she took every day. The same ones that made her foggy but functional.

For mood regulation, the label said, as if those words cured anything.

She swallowed them without blinking. "Cheers," she muttered to no one, falling back onto the pillow. Outside, faint laughter drifted in from the courtyard, as patients gathered for dinner and aides called out names. The sound threaded through the window screens like a ghost of a world she wasn't part of anymore. She pulled the blanket over her face and let the nausea settle into something familiar.

This wasn't the first time she had missed a day that she was finally ready to try.

It probably wouldn't be the last.

•─────⋅⋅─────•

She spent the night in the clinic. After changing into a set of borrowed clothes – thin cotton sweats and a faded shirt that hung loose at the shoulders – Rin had collapsed onto the cot, fever-bruised and dizzy. The clinic, in the quiet hours of the night, transformed into something colder. 

It was sometime past two when she stirred, limbs damp with sweat, mouth dry as paper. Her head throbbed with the dull insistence of heat, like a fist pressing between her eyes. For a moment, she lay still, eyes tracking the glow of the emergency exit sign, listening to the storm claw at the windows. Outside, thunder cracked and the wind keened through the thin panes.

She sat up slowly. The cot creaked beneath her. The clinic, now hollowed of its daytime function, was eerie. Somewhere near the reception desk, the nurse was slumped over, head resting on one arm, breath shallow with sleep. The rest of the facility had gone dark, save for the hallway lights flickering weakly overhead, casting shadows that moved when she blinked.

The thirst nagged louder than her fear of the dark

She padded barefoot across the linoleum floor, shirt clinging damply to her back, skin humming with heat. The storm outside was a feral thing now, rattling in through every crevice. Thunder rolled again, low and slow, like it meant to warn her.

She squinted toward the far hallway. Where the hell was the water dispenser again? It had been beside the staff cabinet when she came in today, or was it near the supply room? She couldn't remember.

Still, she wandered deeper into the corridor, one hand trailing along the wall to steady herself. Every flicker of the lights sharpened the angles of furniture and cabinet doors, turned them into strange, crouching shapes. For a while, only her footsteps echoed until she heard something. 

Shuffle.

Definitely not hers. Rin froze.

"…Hello?" Her voice came out hoarse, her throat burning.

There was no answer. Only the sound of rain and the faint tick of the analog clock back at reception resounded. She pressed forward. Rin didn't believe in ghosts. Ghosts should be afraid of her, if anything. But still, her spine prickled. It was the kind of fear that wasn't rooted in belief, but rather in memory of childhood stories.

Rin took another step and saw something that shifted at the edge of her vision, a shadow long enough to be a leg.

"What the –"

She collided with something – someone – tall and warm and solid. The impact jarred her fevered body; she gasped, tried to jerk back, but a hand clamped over her mouth. Her first instinct was to punch, but her limbs were slow, heavy with sickness. She stumbled against the wall instead, breath snagging, eyes wild. "Shit – shit, sorry!" the figure whispered, pulling his hand away, both palms raised now in surrender.

She blinked, vision swimming until the shape resolved. 

Nezha. Of course, it was him.

Hair mussed, wearing the same clothes as her, eyes squinting like he'd just been dragged from sleep.

"Are you fucking insane?" she whisper-yelled, shoving his chest. "What is wrong with you?"

"You screamed first!" he hissed. "I thought you were a hallucination like a real fever ghost!"

"Oh my God –"

She pressed her palm to her forehead and staggered back a step. "Why the fuck are you even here?"

He looked genuinely confused. "Because I'm sick? Hello?"

"No, when – how –"

"Jiang brought me in after lights out. You were probably already asleep. Guess they figured we could rot in this place together."

She groaned. Her skull felt like it was vibrating.

He looked at her with an amused look on his face. "Why are you up?"

"Water." She hissed it like a curse and stepped past him.

He fell into step behind her, uninvited. "You're still burning," he said casually, as if this wasn't the nth time in days they had collided, sick and miserable.

"No shit," she muttered.

They found the water dispenser tucked beside the supply shelf at the end of the hall. She poured herself a paper cup with trembling hands and downed the lukewarm water in one go, as though it could cool the fever from the inside out. He poured his own behind her, movements slower, almost careful.

"You sleepwalking or what?" she asked without turning.

He shrugged. "Nurse gave me meds, but I couldn't sleep."

"You're stupid."

"You're snooping."

"Yeah, because I'm dying of thirst."

For a moment, neither spoke. Nezha glanced sideways at her. Up close, she looked worse – face flushed, eyes sunken, hair damp and plastered to her temple.

"So why are you really creeping around the halls at 2 a.m., you idiot?" Rin asked.

"I was hungry!" he shot back, as if that explained everything. "I didn't eat much at dinner. I was trying to find snacks."

She stared at him, incredulous. "You woke up with a fever in the middle of a fucking storm and thought, 'Let me rummage through the goddamn clinic like a raccoon?'"

"Exactly." He grinned like he was proud of it.

She turned around. "I'm going back to bed."

"Wait, wait, wait," he said, jogging after her. "You're already up. Help me find the pantry?"

"Absolutely not."

"C'mon. Be a decent cellmate."

They walked – begrudgingly, on her part – toward the clinic's back hallway. It was darker here, but Nezha, of course, moved with the misplaced confidence of someone who never expected to get caught. They ducked past an office, crept down a narrow side passage, and pushed open the door to the staff pantry.

Empty.

A fluorescent light flickered on overhead with a harsh buzz. The shelves were lined with paper cups, powdered coffee, and a stash of what had to be the staff's emergency snacks.

Rin looked at him, scandalized. "Do not even think about it." But the idiot was already moving. He grabbed a random bao without even checking what it was, tore it open with his teeth, and began munching with the glee of a child.

"Are you insane?!" she hissed. 

"Probably," he mumbled through a mouthful of the soft bun. "But this slaps."

"I am not a part of this," she declared, backing away. "If you get caught, I'm throwing you under the bus."

"Duly noted," he said, waving the food at her. "Thanks for the moral support."

She turned on her heel without another word and stalked out of the pantry, the lights buzzing back to silence behind her. The corridor welcomed her back with the same unsettling quiet, broken only by the distant rattle of the storm outside. Her feet moved quickly now, her breath shallow, the heat in her body rising again. She didn't look back.

Behind her, Nezha probably kept chewing.

What an idiot.

She was now in her cot, willing herself to sleep. Finally, peace. 

Rin finally drifted for what seemed like thirty minutes when the ruckus began. She heard plastic crinkling at first. Then, something fell to the floor. A low curse hissed through the dark.

Rin opened her eyes. Her head pounded. She told herself to ignore it, to stay down, but the sound kept going: frantic now, like someone tearing through a drawer. She thought it was a dream, or some trick of the fever, but the sound came again, sharper this time, desperate. Someone was breathing too loudly.

She swung her legs off the bed, barefoot on the cold tile. The curtain swayed as she pushed it aside. She walked towards the noise. 

"Who –" Her voice cracked. "What the hell are you doing?"

Nezha was crouched by the supply cabinet. Not rummaging – clawing. His hands were trembling so violently from panic that a box of gauze slipped through his fingers and burst open like a startled bird. The light from the night lamp caught the edge of his face. His throat bobbed. He couldn't seem to swallow. He turned, voice hoarse, brittle.

"I'm dying," he said hoarsely. "Sorry. It's not very original."

The delivery was so perfectly him – cheeky, stupid, maddening – that it took a second too long for her brain to catch up.

Rin came closer. Then she saw it clearly now.

His chest heaved like a machine out of sync. Skin blotching red up his neck. The raw flush around his eyes. His pupils were huge. And still, still, he was trying to joke through it. She could see the panic in the way his fingers fumbled the labels - couldn't grip, couldn't read.

"The bao," she whispered. Her stomach dropped.

He nodded, once. "Shrimp surprise. Who knew."

"You unbelievable fucking moron."

"I was hungry."

He coughed, bent forward, wheezing. The sound was wet and wrong. His chest heaved, ribs catching on air that refused to come. The skin around his eyes was puffing, blooming scarlet. His neck had begun to swell.

"Antihistamines," she said, half to herself. "Where the fuck –"

Her body snapped into motion – some old emergency instinct kicking in, muscle memory taking over where logic failed. She shoved him aside and tore through the cabinets. 

Her hands were shaking as she tore open the drawers, knocking bottles over and flinging labels aside. The fever made everything swim. She slammed one drawer too hard, and pain shot up her wrist – she didn't stop.

Behind her, he was gasping. Short, shallow, like an engine stalling.

"Rin," His voice cracked on her name. "I – can't –"

"Shut up," she snapped, though her breath was unraveling. "Don't talk. Just – don't –"

There it was – the foil packet. She ripped it open with her teeth and pressed two pills to his mouth. "Swallow."

He took them without a word. That scared Rin more than anything. He had no quip this time. His knees gave as she shoved him into the chair. He was listing sideways. His fingers clawed at his own throat like something in him knew it was failing.

"Breathe through your nose," she said, voice rising. "Shallow. Not fast."

"I can't… breathe. I think – I think it's my spine – why is my spine itchy?"

"Wait - shit. Shit."

He laughed or tried to, but it dissolved into a ragged cough. "Is this what dying feels like? Because honestly – underwhelming."

Her vision was blurring. She smacked the nurse call button multiple times, but no one came. 

"Fuck this," she hissed, turning back to the cabinet. The fever made her limbs clumsy. She nearly slipped on the scattered gauze. The drawers all looked the same now – white, endless, empty.

"Where – where is it –" Behind her came a gurgling sound. She froze.

"Rin," he rasped, barely audible. His lips had gone dusky. 

The fear hit her like an impact – stomach to throat, a blunt force she couldn't name. She yanked open another drawer, slammed a tray aside, and found the plastic casing – the EpiPen.

She turned.

He saw it. "No."

"Yes."

"Fuck, wait –"

"Shut the fuck up."

"Rin, please –"

She jabbed the needle into his thigh before he could finish.

He jerked, a strangled sound leaving his throat. His hands clawed the arms of the chair. The air seemed to split open. She stayed there, palm pressed to the pen, jaw clenched, forcing herself not to panic, not to think.

"Breathe," she said, though her own lungs were burning. "Breathe, Nezha –"

He convulsed once. Then the breath came. 

The silence afterward was obscene. The rain outside had stopped, leaving the world hollow and ringing. His head dropped. His mouth opened and closed like he'd forgotten how to shape words. When he finally spoke, it was a cracked whisper. "That hurt."

She stared at him. "Good."

"I could've –" He swallowed, weakly. "That could've –"

"Yes," she said flatly. "It could've."

He exhaled a thin, trembling laugh. "Not my best night."

"You're a fucking idiot," she said quietly, still holding his arm. "You almost died over a bao."

He gave the ghost of a laugh, eyes closing. "Worth it?"

"Shut up."

After Nezha had gathered enough strength to stand up and Rin had cleaned up their clutter, they both went back to the sleeping quarters. Rin only realized as she crawled back under her blanket that his cot was next to hers, divided by a curtain. He reached up with a weak hand and drew it shut between them. She turned onto her side, fever humming through her skull. From the other side of the curtain came his voice, faint and rasping. "Thanks."

They lay down in their individual cots in silence for a few moments, the tension slowly dissipating like the storm outside. The nurse never came. No one ever did.

Eventually, she spoke. "Go to sleep, Nezha."

"Fine," he muttered, easing himself up, still trembling. "But if I stop breathing again, I'm haunting you."

"You already haunt me," she whispered to herself, voice unheard by him. "In the worst way."

She lay in bed, curled to one side, sweaty, cold, and tired, but still too shaken to sleep. The rain poured outside. Both were still recovering from the mental aftermath of it all. 

Rin closed her eyes, allowing the sleep to welcome her. She had just begun to drift, the fever pulling her down like a slow tide, when his voice ruptured the hush – low, grating, sleep-thin.

"You ever think people here are full of shit?"

Rin didn't move. Her cheek was pressed to the cool side of the pillow, eyes half-lidded. "Aren't the meds making you sleepy?" Rin's voice dripped with exhaustion and annoyance.

"Just a question."

She sighed. "Do you ever not need an audience?"

"Jury's out," he replied, dry. "But you're my favorite one to piss off."

There was a rustle on the other side of the curtain. A shift in weight. She could picture him lying on his back again, arms folded behind his head like he owned the damn clinic bed. Always so cavalier, even when breathless, even after nearly dying.

Still, she didn't answer.

So he tried again.

"I mean, really – do you think people actually get better in places like this? Or do we just learn how to rehearse it better?"

She opened one eye. The question lingered.

She hated that it lingered.

"You sound like a drunk philosophy major," she muttered, voice still hoarse.

"I'll take that as a compliment."

Rin turned onto her side, facing the thin curtain now. Just enough to pretend there was distance, but not enough to believe it.

"Maybe it's not about getting better," she said eventually. "Maybe it's about not falling apart as loudly."

His breath caught in a half-laugh. "God. That's bleak."

"You asked."

He let out a sound – half sigh, half hum. For once, he didn't fire back.

Then he said, "You're always this cynical, or is it a recent development?"

"Lived long enough."

"Twenty-five isn't that long."

Rin blinked up at the ceiling, expression unreadable in the dark.

"It is," she said. "When every year feels like you're borrowing time."

That silenced him. For a moment, at least.

Nezha replied, "You ever think about what you'd be doing if you hadn't ended up here?"

"No," she lied.

Nezha gave a quiet scoff. "Bullshit."

She didn't correct him. She had thought about it. Of course, she had. What kind of life would've unfolded if she hadn't run herself into the ground, if she hadn't stayed silent for too long, if she hadn't ignored every warning sign until her body forced the shutdown?

She thought about it every damn morning. But she didn't owe him that truth. 

"You first," she said instead.

He let out a puff of air. "Art, maybe. Teaching. I don't know."

"You don't seem like the patient type."

"I'm not. But I like watching people try to figure things out."

She smiled into the pillow, just a little. "So you'd be a terrible teacher, but a great instigator."

"Exactly."

They fell quiet again.

Outside, the wind shifted through the pine trees, their branches whispering in the hush between confessions. The clinic felt impossibly still. The kind of stillness that only came after something ugly had just passed, or was just about to.

He spoke again, quieter now.

"You're hard to read, you know."

"I prefer it that way."

"Yeah, but sometimes it's like you're drowning and still trying to keep your mouth shut."

Rin's jaw clenched. "That was poetic," she said, flatly.

"I've been workshopping it."

He didn't apologize. She didn't ask him to. Instead, she exhaled slowly and deliberately.

"You talk too much."

"You think too much."

The insult hung between them like a taut thread, but neither cut it.

Rin closed her eyes again, trying to find the edge of sleep. Her body was still sore, heat lingering in her bones, but her mind – traitorous, aching – was wide awake now.

Nezha's voice came once more, softer than the rest. So soft she almost missed it.

"Do you want to die, Rin?"

Rin was caught off guard. She froze.

"Sometimes," she said. "But mostly I just want the noise to stop." 

The pause that followed stretched long and heavy. 

"Same," he said, finally. "But I think I'd miss the noise if it were gone."

She didn't answer. She didn't need to.

Sleep came more slowly that night. The silence felt less like something to escape, and more like something that had finally, finally made room for both of them.

•─────⋅⋅─────•

It was almost morning when Rin woke up, her joints stiff and her head thick with the residue of fever. Her breath fogged faintly in the chill that had settled across the clinic.

Every muscle in her body ached, though not in the way that mattered. The ache was secondary. The absolute exhaustion lay somewhere deeper, behind her eyes, in that hollow part of her chest where adrenaline had roared for hours the night before and was now spent.

Nezha had not died last night. He is alive.

The fact lay there, cold and unyielding, a stone lodged somewhere in her throat. He had not died – though for a moment, the air had thinned around him, and she had seen the exact shade of blue that overtakes the body when it begins to surrender. 

The image of him struggling to breathe refused to leave her. It should have been absurd – he was ridiculous, an idiot made of bravado and noise – but not then. Not when his body turned traitor. Not when every shallow gasp had carried the echo of another death she had already lived through.

Her father had not fought like this. His heart had betrayed him one afternoon, without spectacle or warning, like a bird collapsing mid‑flight. There had been no time to call for help, no breath to beg with, no trembling hands for her to steady. All that was left was silence – dense and absolute – as if the world had agreed that was all he deserved. The painful difference was that Nezha had struggled this time. That was somehow worse.

The memory of it unspooled now with an almost physical ache: the crash of the pill bottles, the useless panic that surged through her as she searched for the right one, the way her fingers trembled but did not fail. The terrible intimacy of proximity – her knees in the dust, his pulse flickering beneath her hand like something wild caught in a snare. If she had been slower – half a minute, a single breath – he would have joined the quiet. His body would have stilled, and she would have been left once again with the terrible guilt that follows every kind of ending.

She would have seen, this time, that it was her fault.

She tried to rise now from the cot on unsteady legs, the world tilting slightly before righting itself. Her body obeyed out of habit, not will; her mind lagged somewhere far behind. Across the curtain, she heard him shift – alive, wheezing softly, an ordinary sound that grated against the sanctity of morning. She moved the curtain aside softly to take a peek. 

Nezha had not died last night. He is alive.

She hated that word – alive. It throbbed with implication.

Why had she looked? Why had she checked for the sound of his breathing? He was nothing to her: a thorn lodged under the skin, loud where she was silent, chaotic where she was precise. His presence irritated her like a rash that refused to heal. And yet, at the first sign of collapse, her body had moved toward him.

Perhaps because it remembered having learned long ago that failure was unbearable, her father's death had been a theft; this one would have been negligence. The difference was ruinous.

Nezha had not died last night. He is alive.

She told herself that again and again, like a prayer that refused to work. She did not care, right? He was an irritation, nothing more. He would recover, and they would return to their quiet antagonism, and she would forget the way his eyes had found hers in that last lucid moment before the pen sank into his skin.

Even as she thought it, she could feel the lie splinter. Because the truth was simple, and it sickened her: she had saved him not out of kindness, not out of pity, but out of fear –  fear of repetition, of history looping back on itself, of her own hands being empty again. She would not bury another body that had been breathing an hour before. She would not listen to another heart stop while hers went on. She had saved him because she could not stand the silence that follows death. She had saved him because she was terrified of what it said about her if she didn't. 

So she had moved. So she had saved him. Now? She hated herself for it.

The shame came in waves, low and suffocating, until it filled her throat. What right did she have to play at salvation? What arrogance, to think she could outpace the things that had to die? She had only postponed it – his death, her own collapse, the inevitable turning of the wheel.

She sat back down on her cot, sheets damp against her skin. Beyond the thin partition, he coughed once, a small sound. Her pulse leapt at it, traitorous as ever.

"Not my fault," she whispered, as if saying it could make it accurate, but the words were hollow even to her own ears.

He shuffled out eventually, face gray and sallow. He looked like something dragged half-alive from a flood. She barely acknowledged him, but he didn't speak either. Maybe he remembered. Perhaps he understood what she had done for him. Perhaps he didn't.

She didn't want thanks. She wanted out. Still, her mind echoed the same chant.

Nezha had not died last night. He is alive.

•─────⋅⋅─────•

Breakfast passed in silence, broken only by the faint rasp of the two breathing through congestion and the occasional clink of metal against ceramic. The porridge was bland, but Rin didn't notice. She chewed and swallowed with mechanical precision, as if the body could move without the mind.

Across from her, Nezha cleared his throat.

"You slept well?"

His voice sounded rough, scraped raw from the inside. She didn't look at him.

"Kind of."

He didn't respond, not with a joke, not with a smirk. He just watched her quietly, his face unreadable. That unnerved her more than anything else. Afterward, they returned their trays to the nurse's desk, neither speaking a word. She kept her head down, shoulders tight, her walk clipped and focused. He followed not quite behind, his presence like a misplaced shadow.

The hallway outside was damp with early mist. It clung to the windows like breath on glass, diffusing the sun into a pale, formless smear. The pines beyond stood still, half-swallowed by fog.

His footsteps trailed behind her. She didn't turn.

"Rin."

She let the silence hold.

Then, softer, he said, "Thanks. For last night."

She paused, not fully, just enough to shift her head, her voice low and measured.

"I'd forget it if I were you," she said, calm but cutting. 

It landed between them like a shard of glass. She didn't look back. She didn't need to. She could feel the silence that followed, could sense the way it clung to him like dust refusing to be shaken off.

Back now at their cots, the curtain between them was thin. Not quite opaque, not quite private. It fluttered faintly each time the fan rotated its way, a lazy breath slicing through the stillness of the clinic. On the other side of it, Nezha had gone quiet again – either asleep or pretending to be. Rin lay on her back, eyes open, the ceiling dotted with faint rust stains. Her fever had ebbed, but her thoughts hadn't.

What gnawed at her wasn't the illness. It wasn't the fatigue or the ache in her joints. It was the fact that no one knew what had really happened the night before. And now? Now it was over, just like that. By morning, he was upright, and she was the only one who knew how close it had come. Her hands had been steady. Her chest had been fire. She hadn't been saving Nezha. She had been saving herself – from what, she didn't want to know.

Soon after, the click of heels reverberated in the room. Dr. Daji entered like a storm, dressed in clinic white. Early 30s, short hair clipped sharply around her jaw, lanyard swinging with every step. Not as warm as Dr. Lira, but never cold. Her style of affection was closer to a knife's edge – smirking, laced with danger, but real if you knew how to read it.

"Ah," she said, peering over her clipboard without greeting. "The dynamic duo returns."

Rin blinked.

From the other cot came a barely muffled groan.

"Well," she said, with no preamble. "You two looked like you survived the night." Dr. Daji was nonchalantly reading through her clipboard, clearly clueless about what really happened the night before.

Rin stiffened. Nezha groaned behind the curtain. "Barely."

Dr. Daji was the kind of doctor who always seemed to know more than she let on. She was not a psychiatrist, nor was she technically their handler, but she rotated often enough in the medical wing that she'd become a kind of unspoken intermediary. 

She eyed them both, then flipped her clipboard around. "No signs of secondary infection. Just stubborn fevers, some weakness, probably dehydration," she said casually. "I'd say it's viral, but given the way you look–" she flicked her eyes toward Nezha, then to Rin, "and the fact that it's not flu season yet, I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is what happens when you hide in a courtyard during a downpour."

Rin's throat bobbed, her gaze avoiding Daji's. Nezha coughed once, then covered it with a groan. "Coincidence."

"Oh sure," Daji deadpanned. "So was the lightning storm."

The silence that followed was almost impressive. Daji didn't push. She never did. She let her words sit like traps in a forest trail: silent, sharp, and waiting to be stepped on. Instead, she reached into her coat pocket, retrieved two prepackaged pills, and set them on the table between the cots.

"Take those with water. Not juice or soda. Water. I don't care how dehydrated you feel, Nezha, if you vomit electrolytes again, I'm making you clean it."

Nezha flipped her off weakly. Daji ignored it with grace honed from years of treating angsty men with superiority complexes.

"You'll both be staying here another night or more until your fever breaks," she added.

"What – why –" Nezha began, but Daji cut him off.

"Because I said so. Your white blood counts are still elevated. I'm not signing off on your discharge until you can sit up without looking like death's apprentice."

She turned to Rin. "Unless you want to go back early? Start your double duties? I'm sure Lira has a groundskeeping slot with your name on it."

Rin didn't move.

"Thought so," Daji said brightly.

She lingered for one more beat, as if checking for cracks.

Then, softly, "Whatever stupid stunt you pulled to end up soaked in that storm, you're lucky this is all you got."

Rin's throat tightened.

Dr. Daji didn't wait for a response. She pivoted smoothly, scribbled something on her clipboard, and exited with the same controlled force she'd entered with.

Behind the curtain, Nezha stirred.

"You think she's going to report to Silan about this?"

Rin didn't answer. Her eyes stayed fixed on the pill by her cot. Her hands, limp by her side, had gone cold again. Something about Daji's last words stayed.

Lucky, Daji had said. 

Last night hadn't been luck at all. It had been panic and instinct. It had been a selfish, ugly refusal to be the one who failed again. She hadn't saved him out of kindness. She had done it because if he died, she'd have to carry it. 

And Rin? She was so damn tired of carrying everything.

Chapter Text

Everything was wet. Everything was cold. Everything hurt.

The garden reeked of mildew and old rot. Dawn hadn’t even committed to the sky yet – just a pallid grey bleeding through the fog, as if morning itself didn’t want to be here. Pines loomed like sentries, their branches heavy with dew. 

Rin dug like she was trying to hit the earth’s core. The rusted spade bit into soil and snapped against a buried root. Her wrist throbbed, and her knees ached. Her breaths came shallow, tinged with smoke that wasn’t there. 

Beside her, Nezha sneezed obnoxiously. 

“Bless you,” said Jiang flatly, not even glancing up as he dropped a burlap sack of compost near their feet.

“Don’t bless him,” Rin snapped. “He probably did that on purpose.”

Nezha snapped his head towards her and let out a scoff. “What kind of deranged logic is that –”

“You sneezed on me, you plague rat,” Rin snapped.

He raised his eyebrows. “We’re literally outdoors.”

“Yet, you still manage to be a biohazard.”

Jiang exhaled through his nose, the breath sharp as it cut through the morning air. “This is why I prayed for rain,” he muttered, walking away without emotion, and left them to rot in their assigned purgatory.

It had been three days since they were discharged from the clinic – three days since that night of blistering panic and adrenaline. No one knew, of course. Not a single soul heard of the almost-death. Not a single soul knew about the way Rin had bolted from her bed, barefoot, sweating, and barely conscious, to save a boy she hated. No one knew she’d watched his chest seize beneath her hands, or how her fingers had trembled as she helped shove meds into his mouth like a lifeline.

No one knew. She would never tell them because then it would be real. Real meant dangerous. Real meant she had to admit that she cared.

“Your form’s terrible,” he said after a while. “No offense.”

“Shut up,” Rin said. She continued digging, but this time, with much force, paralleling her thinning patience.

“Just saying. The dirt’s not going to submit out of fear,” Nezha replied as he continued working around the new compost sacks.

“Then it has something in common with you,” Rin quipped back.

He let out a low breath, almost a laugh, but didn’t answer. She wanted to hurl the spade at his face. Instead, she dug harder. She let the soil catch under her nails and the blisters bloom in her palms. She let her sweat pool at the base of her spine and sting her eyes. Anything to drown out the echo of his voice, rasping I can’t breathe.

Nezha hummed under his breath, some tuneless melody that gnawed at the edges of her concentration. It was the kind of thing he did just to provoke her. She recognized it now. The push-and-pull, the button pressing, the way he danced around tension like it was a game and not something that could gut a person.

Jiang was pretending not to watch her. He thought he was being subtle, thought the way he busied himself with the wheelbarrow or the tangle of ivy along the garden wall made him invisible. 

Still, she could feel it – the steady, cautious orbit of his gaze, the way people looked at a bomb they’d been told might go off but weren’t given instructions for when it did. He pretended to inspect the compost heap, but every few seconds his eyes slid back to her, counting her breaths, checking the distance between her hands and the spade. 

None of them ever were.

Of course, her doctors were talking again. She could hear it in the way silence changed when she entered a room, in the clipped cadence of the nurses who smiled too quickly, in the pity of their glances. They always started this way: the quiet conferences, the clinical glances that lingered just a fraction too long. It was the same rhythm every time – the minor signs of containment that said they were already discussing her again. 

She’s slipping. Keep an eye on her. Don’t let her run this time. 

She could see it all, transparent as glass. Her name, written neatly at the top of a report, reduced to a column of symptoms – a woman dissected. They didn’t even have to look her in the eye to know her. She was data. A predictable sequence of self-destruction.

The worst part was that she couldn’t even argue, because she knew what they saw when they looked at her. The sweat-soaked girl digging holes in the dirt as if she were trying to bury her own self. The one who had run under the sun with a fever until she tripped. The one who didn’t stop moving because stillness meant remembering, and remembering meant the noise would return.

She could trace the logic of her self-destruction as clearly as a map. She could narrate her own downfall while it was happening, watch herself fall from the inside. There was no mystery to it, no tragedy worth romanticizing. It was rote, mechanical, almost boring in its inevitability. She hurt herself because it was easier than asking for help. She ran herself into collapse because it was easier than sitting in silence. She ruined her body because pain was the only language she trusted to be still real. She was her own executioner, her own coroner, her own priest. She’d learned every role by heart.

The spade struck stone again and again. The sound was dull and final, like something closing. She pressed harder until her wrists trembled, the vibration traveling up her arms, spreading through her chest. The soil was slick with rain, clinging to her fingers. Her palms ached. She liked it. 

Her first few weeks here were manageable, so how did this descent even start? What triggered it? The thought crept in, uninvited but inevitable: maybe it was the date. The anniversary of the morning of her attempt that no one talked about anymore. The body remembers before the mind does – she’d read that somewhere. She believed it now. Her muscles always grew restless near this day, her chest tight, her skin too thin. Every nerve felt like a live wire humming.

Maybe it wasn’t the anniversary. Perhaps it was him. The stupid mirror metaphor the doctors had been forcing down their throats – two people cut from the same wound, reflections caught in each other’s ruin. She wanted to claw the word out of her chart. If he were her reflection, she wanted to smash every surface that could hold them both. If they claim they were mirrors, then what did that make her? Loud, erratic, volatile? An obnoxious spectacle of damage? He was chaos embodied, and she despised him for it – the recklessness, the defiance, the way he treated everything like a performance. But no matter how much she tries, she can’t escape the gravity of him. The more she resisted, the more she felt the pull.

She didn’t even like him. He infuriated her. He laughed like the world wasn’t on fire, like there wasn’t a war inside his skull. He walked through the facility as if it were temporary, like the walls couldn’t hold him. He disgusted her. He was a symptom of everything she despised, yet she couldn’t stop thinking about that night. When he lived – when he actually fucking lived – something inside her cracked open. It was not relief but rather something uglier. His survival had proven that some deaths were preventable. Which meant that her father’s, the one she couldn’t stop replaying in her head, the one she hadn’t been fast enough to catch, hadn’t been. She had failed her father, failed the only person who had ever truly cared about her, and she would carry that failure like a scar carved into her.

Rin didn't notice her movements were erratic now. The spade ripped through the soil, sending clods of dirt spraying across her top. The ground was too soft now, soaked through from the earlier rain, and gave too easily, like flesh splitting under a blade. She wanted resistance. She wanted to earn the pain. Her muscles trembled more.

She was aware of how ridiculous she looked – this girl digging at the ground like she could exhume meaning from it. Jiang was now hovering a few meters away, pretending not to be alarmed. Nezha, on the other hand, took notice and looked her way. Her hair was sticking to her temple in damp strands now. She must have looked unhinged. Her heart was hammering now, too fast for the work she was doing. She gritted her teeth, swallowed the nausea that rose like bile. She could feel the panic building, the familiar kind that didn’t have a trigger, just an origin. It was a pulse that started in the chest and spread throughout the body at once. Her vision blurred. 

Why did she always do this? Why couldn’t she just stop? Why was there always this need to destroy something, to bleed, to burn? She knew it was stupid. She knew it was cliché. The tragic girl who can’t stop running into walls. She wanted to laugh at herself, but even that felt indulgent. She hated herself so much she could taste it, metallic and bitter, sitting at the back of her throat like swallowed rust. Every thought branched into another accusation: she was dramatic, broken, exhausting, impossible to understand. She ruined every room she entered. She was the person people survived, not the one they remembered. 

Her head was screaming. The thoughts were moving too fast to catch: 

You’re weak. You’re useless. You’re selfish for saving him for the wrong reasons.

Her grip faltered. The spade slipped from her hands and fell into the mud with a dull thud. The edge tore through the flesh of her palm. A cut opened, thick blood trickling down her hand. She let it. She wanted to watch it. To see proof that something inside her could still leave. She stared at it, chest heaving, the blood soaking into the soil. It was almost beautiful, the way it disappeared into the earth like an offering.

Finally, she thought, finally something she could control.

The pain from the slice in her hand sharpened, hot and alive, and for one dizzying moment, it silenced the pain inside her. It hit her then, in the quiet that followed: she wasn’t kind at that moment because she cared, or because she’d changed, or because she was capable of forgiveness. She was kind because she was terrified. Because she couldn’t stand the thought of another person dying in front of her while she just stood there. Because she’d rather burn her hands raw trying to save someone she hated than watch the world prove again that she couldn’t. 

Nezha noticed before anyone else. “You’re bleeding,” he said. He wasn’t surprised, just completely annoyed. Rin didn’t answer. She pressed her thumb to the edge of her palm, watched it bloom darker. The sting came late, but sharp, like she'd just remembered pain was allowed.

He stepped closer. “Seriously? You're just going to stand there?”

“It’s nothing,” she muttered.

His eyes flicked to the tool, then back to her. “You're dripping on the damn soil.”

“It’ll clot.”

“God, you’re impossible.”

The words landed heavier than they should’ve. She'd heard that tone before, used it herself. It was disdain layered with something messier.

Rin exhaled through her nose. “Don’t start.”

“I’m not starting.” Nezha’s arms folded. “I’m pointing out that you’re clearly not okay and you keep pretending like you are.”

“And what, you want me to throw a tantrum instead?” Her voice was flat. “Make everyone clap when I finally ask for help?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“No, you just said I’m impossible.”

“Because you are.”

He wasn’t even angry. He just sounded fed up, like someone who’d had this argument a hundred times in his head and was bored with never winning it.

“You don’t eat, you don’t sleep, you run until your legs give out, and now you can’t even hold a damn spade without hurting yourself.”

She scoffed. “Since when did you start keeping score?”

Since I started being the one who has to watch you fall apart and pretend it doesn’t affect me, Nezha thought. But he knew better than to say it aloud. There was no logic to it, this growing awareness, this low-grade fury that spiked every time she acted like her body was disposable. He didn’t really care. She wasn’t his responsibility. They weren’t even friends, not in any absolute sense. It was something meaner, tighter, a fixation carved by circumstance. Two messy minds circling because the alternative was staring down their own abyss.

He swallowed once, jaw working. “I’m not keeping score,” he said finally. “I just noticed.”

Jiang’s voice broke through the tension. “Okay, that’s enough.”

They both looked away at the same time, like children caught mid-fight. “Rin,” Jiang said, gentler now. “Let’s go to the clinic. You’re leaving a trail.”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she nodded and stiffly turned. The blood had reached her knuckles now. She walked off without looking back. 

•─────⋅⋅─────•

The walk from the clinic to Silan’s office was short, but it felt longer than it should have. Rin could still feel the sting of iodine where the nurse had swabbed too hard. Her bandaged hand throbbed in time with her heartbeat, a dull ache pulsing just beneath the skin. She hadn’t asked why she was being summoned. She already knew.

Nezha was there when she entered. 

He didn’t look at her. He sat slouched in the chair farthest from the door, one arm across his chest, the other balled into a fist against his knee. His leg bounced – a controlled, angry movement. The fluorescent lights caught the sharp line of his jaw, clenched so tightly she wondered if it hurt.

Good, she thought. Let it hurt.

She took the seat across the room from him, her back straight. The leather was too warm and too soft, making her feel like she was sinking. She crossed her arms instead of folding them in her lap – less vulnerable that way. The room was too quiet.

Dr. Silan cleared his throat. Beside him, Dr. Lira clicked her pen once. A slight sound, almost polite. She didn’t look up from her notes.

“Thank you both for coming,” Silan began, calm as ever. Rin wanted to roll her eyes. Nezha beat her to it. “Did we have a choice?”

“No,” Lira said plainly. “But we’re glad you showed up anyway.” 

Silan’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “We’ve been reviewing your case notes – individually and together. There’s a development we need to address.”

“Development,” Rin repeated under her breath, sharp. Lira spoke next. “What we’re seeing, in clinical terms, is a disruptive behavioral loop forming between the two of you. One that is no longer conducive to treatment.”

Nezha scoffed. “You’re going to have to try harder than psych jargon.”

Silan leaned forward slightly. “Fine. You’re fixated on each other.”

Stunned silence enveloped the office. Rin blinked. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means,” Lira said, tone steady, “your emotional responses are no longer about your own recovery. They’re about each other. You react more to the other’s behavior than to your own triggers. You adjust not for progress but to win, or hurt, or prove something.”

Rin’s stomach twisted. “That’s not true.”

“Just this morning,” he interrupted, “you both fought during groundskeeping duty. Rin, you cut your hand afterwards. Then you both argued again.”

Lira added gently, “You don’t escalate like this when he’s not around.”

Rin’s mouth snapped shut.

“And you,” Silan said, turning to Nezha, “become more agitated in every session after you’re paired with her. You start fights, skip your afternoon mindfulness practice, and refuse to complete assignments. One too many times.”

Nezha looked away. His jaw twitched once. 

Lira folded her hands. “We understand where this comes from, truly. You’re not doing this to be difficult, but trauma doesn’t always look like withdrawal. Sometimes, it looks like an obsession.”

Rin narrowed her eyes. “You’re calling this an obsession?”

Silan shook his head. “We’re saying your nervous systems have tethered to each other out of survival. You’ve become focal points, anchors. You circle one another because it’s easier than facing yourselves.”

The room felt cold. 

“We see this often in recovery,” Lira continued. “Especially among patients with severe regulation issues. It feels like a connection. It feels meaningful. But it’s actually a form of avoidance.”

Nezha gave a short, humorless laugh. “So now it’s avoidance to acknowledge that she’s constantly spiraling and dragging me into it?”

Rin bristled. “Excuse me –”

“You heard me.”

“You think I want you involved in anything I do? You think I run in the heat to impress you?”

“Then why do you keep almost killing yourself in front of me?”

“Enough,” Silan said sharply. It cut the room in half.

Rin felt heat crawl up her neck. “Look, I’m pretty sure you all got this wrong. I don’t even want to be associated with him.” 

“Now that,” Silan murmured, “is a pattern we’ve noticed. You both react to feedback as if it were an attack. You interpret guidance as a threat. And when threatened, you look for an opponent.”

His eyes flicked between them. “You have chosen each other.”

Silence pooled like oil.

Nezha scoffed. “We don’t even like each other.”

“That,” Silan said, “is precisely the problem.”

Lira continued. “Hostility often masks dependence. It is easier to project anger onto another person than to examine one’s own wounds. You’ve become mirrors – reflecting the parts you most refuse to see.”

Rin’s pulse thudded once, hard. Not this again. 

Silan’s voice softened. “Brains under trauma will anchor themselves to anything that offers clarity. A fixation gives the mind boundaries, something to push against instead of falling inward. You have become each other’s scaffolding. And that scaffolding is collapsing.”

Nezha’s mouth worked like he wanted to argue, but no language surfaced.

“You are not healing,” Lira said. “You are circling.”

Rin swallowed, thick. “So what? You’ll lecture us until we magically improve?”

“No,” Silan said. “We separate you.”

Nezha looked up. “What?”

“You’ll enter individualized programs starting tomorrow,” Lira explained. “Separate therapy groups, separate schedules. Meals are staggered at times. You are not to speak without supervision. No exceptions.”

Rin blinked. “You’re serious.”

“You’ll have your own support systems,” Lira said. “You’ll each get more targeted sessions. We’re not punishing you. We’re recalibrating your environment to break the loop.”

“You’re isolating us,” Nezha said.

“We’re allowing you to regulate without each other,” Silan corrected. “You’ve been borrowing structure from proximity. That’s unsustainable. We want to teach you how to stabilize independently.”

He met Nezha’s glare without blinking. “You are keeping each other sick.”

Rin stared at the desk, throat tight. Something ugly twisted behind her ribs: rage, humiliation, fear, she couldn’t tell. The wound in her palm pulsed harder.

“This is ridiculous,” she muttered. “You’re making this into something it’s not.” Lira gave a small, sad smile. “We’re not the ones who made it.”

Nezha stood slowly, hands clenched. “I’m not doing this.”

“You are,” Silan said. “Because if you don’t, you stay stuck. And if she stays stuck, she keeps bleeding.”

That landed. Nezha didn’t speak again. He just walked out, jaw locked, shoulder brushing the door on the way.

Rin waited until the footsteps faded.

“Will it help?” she asked, quietly. “Being apart?”

Lira’s voice softened. “Only if you let it.”

Outside, the hallway was dimmer now. The light had shifted. Rin didn’t see Nezha on her way out. And for some reason, that made something twist uncomfortably in her chest.

•─────⋅⋅─────•

The sun was too beautiful.

It spilled over the east wing in soft gold, warm enough to heat the tiled courtyard but not so bright as to burn. A breeze moved through the trees, shaking petals loose like confetti. It was the kind of day that didn’t happen often at St. Eustace. The air smelled faintly of cut grass and fabric softener. It was the kind of weather that made you forget where you were.

Beside Rin, Tala was humming. “Isn’t it gorgeous out?” she said brightly. “Like stupid pretty. I almost forgot this place is hell.”

Rin grunted. They’d just finished at the dispensary – Rin for her anti-depressants and mood stabilizers, Tala for her migraine cocktail – and now they stood at the edge of the courtyard, two pill cups and one overly enthusiastic mood between them. A piece of paper crinkled in Rin's hand, her new schedule, freshly printed and still warm. She stared at it like it might rearrange itself if she just blinked hard enough.

Tala peeked over her shoulder. “You got your new schedule?” she asked, already reaching. “Ooh, wait, can I see? I wanna know what they gave you. Bet it’s insane.”

“It’s not,” Rin said, even as she handed it over.

Tala unfolded the sheet with a kind of reverent curiosity. Her hair was braided today, two thin strands pulled back like a crown, the rest spilling down her shoulders. She looked like she belonged in the sun. Rin hated how easy she made it all seem.

“Damn,” Tala said after a moment, eyes scanning. “They really moved you. New therapy group, new wake-up block, even meals – what the hell is ‘mindful breakfast’?”

“Granola with more shame.” 

Tala snorted. “You’re with the new kids. All the quiet ones. Meanwhile, we still have Nezha.”

Rin didn’t flinch, but something in her hand tightened.

Tala, ever oblivious, went on. “He was pacing after group this morning. Almost bit Lakan’s head off for touching his sketchpad.”

Rin gave a noncommittal shrug.

“You’re really not gonna ask about him?”

“No.”

“Not even a little?”

“No, Tala.” It came sharper than she intended.

Tala blinked. “Okay. Got it.”

They stood in silence for a beat, the breeze catching the corner of Rin’s schedule. Then, softer, Rin spoke.

“They think we were mirroring each other.”

Tala glanced up.

“The doctors,” Rin clarified. “Said we were stuck. That being near each other made us worse. That we were using each other as a way to avoid everything else.”

Tala raised her brows in amusement.

Rin went on, slower. “Apparently, that’s a thing with trauma brains. You find someone who makes sense of the noise. Even if it’s the wrong kind of sense.”

“And you agree?” Tala asked.

Rin paused. “I think I want to.”

That was the closest she’d get to honesty.

She forced a small and rehearsed smile. “It’s better this way. Clean break.”

Tala didn’t answer, but she nodded. Tala seemed like she didn’t believe her, but knew better than to press.

•─────⋅⋅─────•

Rin had eased into the new schedule the way a body eases into cold water. Stiffly at first, then all at once. Now, it almost feels normal.

Almost.

She no longer shared corridors with the same faces. Her therapy group was new – six strangers with downcast eyes and fidgeting hands. She still had Dr. Lira, though. In a way, that helped, or maybe she only told herself that to avoid the ache of losing everything else.

Nezha, of course, remained with the old group: Tala, Juro, Irinka, and Lakan. The ones who laughed a little too loudly in the courtyard corners. The ones she used to pretend not to watch.

Now, Rin spent her mornings practicing breathwork and journaling, and her afternoons in art therapy or reading by the koi pond, where the sun shone in sheets of light too beautiful for a place like this. She was no longer allowed to run. They mentioned something about adrenal response and reconditioning, but Rin knew they didn't want another self-destructing episode from her. So she did pilates twice a week with Tala and Irinka, which made her feel ridiculous and stiff, like a folding chair trying to stretch.

Nevertheless, she did it. She did everything. She had never, in her entire life, followed an altered schedule this perfectly. It surprised her. 

One of her newfound joys in her new schedule was art therapy. It was held in a warm room that smelled like glue and pencil shavings. There were cracked mason jars stuffed with brushes, old shelves sagging under sketchbooks, and an entire cabinet of paint tubes in varying states of decay. Sunlight filtered through gauzy curtains, casting long pale shadows across the floor.

Tala was already at the easel, paint on her hands and nowhere else.

“Today’s prompt,” she chirped, “is ‘Illustrate where the pain lives’. Isn’t that dramatic?”

Rin set her materials down at the station beside her and muttered, “Borderline theatrical.”

Tala ignored her tone, grinning. “I already have, like, five ideas. Should I do the lungs again? Or the skull with flowers? That one made Dr. Lira cry.”

“You just want to be studied,” Rin said.

“I want to be adored.”

There it was again, the exhausting delight of Tala. Everything was bright with her. She moved like a sunbeam no one asked for. Rin found her overwhelming, performative, and emotionally loud. But, she was tolerable in doses. Maybe even necessary.

Tala turned toward her, expression softening.

“Yours looks good,” she said, peeking at Rin’s canvas.

Rin blinked. She hadn’t even realized she’d started.

The paintbrush trembled in her grip. Her strokes had become steadier these days, more certain. Today, she’d sketched the outline of a torso, delicate and precise, bones visible under taut skin, ribs pressed outward as if the cage itself wanted out. The sternum had fine cracks running through it.

She didn’t know what she was painting until it was already there.

“It’s just muscle memory,” she said. “Not real talent.”

“That’s what all secretly gifted people say.”

Rin didn’t respond. She dipped her brush back into a thin wash of grey-blue and continued without thinking. It was easier not to think. The repetition helped. The quiet of it. The structure of a task with an endpoint.

Two weeks of this, and she had completed every assignment, every group prompt, every breathing session. She journaled twice a day, reported her nightmares when asked, and kept her tray clean at lunch. The staff said she was finally stabilizing. Her new medication dosage helped. She could admit that much. The edge had softened.

And, she told herself, it had nothing to do with him.

She hadn’t seen Nezha in fourteen days. Once, she thought she heard him laughing from the rec room, the sound thin and brittle, but when she turned the corner, it wasn’t him. It was just someone else with the same voice shape. The absence didn’t hurt. Not in any real way. If anything, it was a relief. Wasn’t it?

“Mine’s messy,” Tala said, dipping her brush into an alarming shade of fuchsia. “But I kinda like it that way. I think pain’s supposed to be gross.”

Rin didn’t look up. “Mine’s clean.”

“Exactly,” Tala said, as if that meant something.

Rin exhaled, focusing on the crack in the ribcage. She filled it in with careful black. Her hand didn’t shake now. That was something.

She woke before sunrise most days. No alarm, no noise, just that same bolt of wakefulness, as if something had slammed shut in a dream she couldn’t remember. Her chest always hurt for a moment afterward, the air too thin, the sheets too warm. Then the stillness would sink back in, and she’d breathe through it, slow and deliberate, until her pulse found its rhythm again.

She told herself it was progress: waking up early and staying steady.

Outside, the facility stirred. Chairs scraped across the tile in the mess hall. Someone sneezed in the hallway, and she blinked hard before realizing it wasn’t someone familiar. She always thought it might be, at first. The sound had the same rhythm, that same half-swallowed ending.

At breakfast, a nurse smiled at her and said, “You’re glowing lately, Rin.”

Rin smiled back. The motion felt foreign, but practiced. “Guess the meds finally like me.”

The nurse laughed, moved on. Rin stirred her oatmeal until it went cold.

She read now by the koi pond between classes, under the shadow of the trees. Her koi friends broke the water in slow, perfect circles. Her reflection bent with them: face, scarred hand, the hem of her clothes. Sometimes she caught herself turning, half-expecting a shadow to cross the path behind her. Nothing ever did.

Good, she’d think. That’s good.

She’d watch the koi instead, their mouths opening and closing like quiet questions.

When Dr. Lira passed by one afternoon, Rin lifted her hand in a small wave. The doctor smiled, said something kind about how well she was doing. Rin nodded. The word 'well' had begun to sound like something ornamental, pretty but hollow, like a shell bleached empty by the sun.

Tala made another bright, clashing stroke across her canvas. Rin’s painting, by contrast, looked like an X-ray grieving itself. They painted in silence after that. When the timer buzzed for clean-up, Tala turned to her with an easy grin.

“You’re kind of amazing at this, you know?”

Rin wiped her hands with a damp cloth. “No I’m not.”

“You’re right,” Tala said. “You’re terrifyingly good.”

Rin rolled her eyes, but she didn’t argue.

•─────⋅⋅─────•

It was still strange to do Pilates in rehab.

The room looked like any other studio in the city: wide mirrors, pale wooden floors, sunlight spilling through half-open blinds. But outside the glass walls was a garden full of patients. Inside, the mats gleamed like hospital linen. 

The doctors had explained the benefits the first day they joined: low-impact, mind-body integration, and physical regulation of trauma response. Dr. Lira had even used the phrase embodied therapy, as if the body could be negotiated with, coaxed into stillness like a stubborn child.

Rin hadn’t believed it at first. Then, she started to.

She was good at it, better than she expected. Her body had always been something to be punished, pushed, and proven through endurance. Pilates was different. It asked for precision, control, and listening. Her muscles trembled not from exhaustion, but from focus. The tremor felt almost holy. Like effort, finally, without destruction.

“You’re strong,” Irinka told her that morning when they arrived, as they rolled up their mats. “You don’t fight your body. You listen.”

The words caught her off guard. Rin didn’t know how to take kindness when it wasn’t transactional.

“Old habit,” she said instead, dryly. Irinka smiled. “It’s a good one to keep.”

Tala groaned, flopping down beside them. “Can we never do this again? I swear my abs are suing me.”

“You said that last week,” Rin said.

“Gosh, this is torture!” Tala replied, eyes closing dramatically.

Rin shook her head, but the corners of her mouth softened. The three of them stayed like that for a moment, basking in the stillness that came after strain. 

Tala was terrible at pilates. By the third plank, she was swearing softly, grinning through the strain. “This is evil,” she muttered, rolling onto her back. “Why do rich people pay for this?”

Rin smirked. “Because they like the sophistication of it.”

Irinka, on the mat beside her, let out a gentle laugh. “You two make this sound like a war. It’s just breathing.”

“That’s what they say before death,” Tala replied.

The instructor, a kind woman with a calm, lilting voice, smiled indulgently. “Breathe through it,” she said. “It’s not a war. It’s a conversation with your body.”

Rin obeyed. Inhale, exhale, draw the core in, lengthen through the spine. She liked the discipline of it. The counting, the small victories. Even the quiet and soft-spoken praise from Irinka after class. 

Suddenly, a sharp noise echoed in the room. Someone gasped.

Rin looked up in time to see one of the women at the far end of the room sway where she was. A second later, she dropped to her knees. The sound of her body hitting the floor was muted, almost polite. The instructor was beside her instantly, kneeling, voice calm but pitched high. “Hey – hey, can you hear me?”

Everything in Rin’s body went still. A hand pressed to the patient’s shoulder. Someone called for water. Another one called for help.

Rin’s throat closed. There was nothing dramatic about it, just a quiet shutting down, like a light flicked off behind her eyes.

Tala was gone in a flash, sprinting barefoot out the door to find the aides. The instructor barked something about the clinic, and the room began to move: the shuffle of feet, the soft chorus of alarm.

Rin didn’t move. Her heart did, though – annoyingly fast. 

A pulse of memory struck her – not visual, not even concrete, just sound. The rasp of labored breathing. The chemical smell of spilled medicine. The shape of his body folding in on itself, the blur of white sheets, her own voice breaking on the word breathe.

Not again, please. Rin thought to herself. 

But the body on the floor was small, middle-aged, and unfamiliar. But it didn’t matter; the shape was enough. Her stomach turned to ice.

“Rin?” Irinka’s steady voice echoed, “Can you grab a towel?”

Rin blinked. The edges of the room came back into focus. Irinka was crouched beside the collapsed woman, hand on her back, murmuring softly. The patient’s chest was moving, albeit shallowly and steadily.

Rin nodded automatically, but her legs didn’t obey.

“I – someone else can –”

“You’re closer, dear.”

Rin’s fingers twitched toward the towel rack, then stopped halfway. Something inside refused. The sight, the smell, the tilt of the woman’s head was too familiar, too near the shape of a night she’d spent awake beside a clinic bed watching someone else try to live.

“I can’t,” she heard herself say. The words sounded small. “I just… I’m sorry.”

Irinka looked up, eyes kind but puzzled. “That’s alright, sweetheart. Go take a breath.”

Rin nodded once and stepped backward too quickly, mat still unrolled, pulse hammering through her wrists. She didn’t remember leaving the room, only the cold of the hallway tiles under her bare feet and the echo of someone calling for water, for help, for calm.

Outside, the air was bright, full of sunlight and noise. She leaned against the wall and pressed the heel of her palm to her chest. Her breathing evened out eventually, slow and measured, the way they’d taught her. But it felt wrong, like inhaling through glass. Though she couldn’t name why, she knew something inside her had cracked just slightly under the weight of a memory she wasn’t ready to remember.

She didn’t stop walking until the hallway ended in sunlight. The doors gave way to heat and sound – the faint hum of insects, the smell of detergent rising from the laundry shed, the dry chorus of cicadas somewhere in the pines. Her pulse still hadn’t settled. It beat behind her ribs like something caged. The koi pond was near, just past the courtyard. She’d been aiming for it without realizing. It was her safe place, her proof that calm could exist.

She should have been fine. The episode wasn’t a real one, not the kind that left marks. The patient had only fainted; there had been no real danger. She hated that her body remembered before she did. Hated how quickly she’d frozen. How her legs had turned to salt. Her progress had been good. She could hear the staff’s gentle and congratulatory voices in her head. You’ve been doing so well, Rin. You have been more grounded lately, more present.

She almost laughed. What would they say if they’d seen her just now, trembling like a child, fleeing a fainting woman? No one could know. Not Tala, not Irinka, not the doctors. Especially not Dr. Lira. She’d turn it into data – heart rate spikes, residual trauma, stress correlation. So she walked faster, as if outrunning the evidence. It was nothing, just a damn blip. Her nerves misfired. She’d felt worse before and survived worse. She told herself this as she crossed the courtyard, breath shallow and deliberate.

Then she heard laughter in the distance. It cut through the quiet like sunlight. She didn’t mean to turn, but her body did like a reflex.  By the basketball court, a group was gathered under the glare – bright jerseys, orange ball, the slap of sneakers on cement. It was the mid-morning sports class. She recognized the outlines first: Lakan, Juro, and a few others she half knew.

Then she saw him. 

Yin Nezha.

He was laughing at something Juro said, head tilted back, the sound carrying easily and unguarded across the open space. He looked a little tanner now, but healthy. There was a lightness to him she didn’t remember – a kind of effortless belonging she had never seen on his face before. His shirt clung damp to his back, his hair darker from sweat. Even from here, she could see how the sun had made a friend of him.

The sight was harmless and ordinary, yet it struck her like heat does after shade. It was sudden, and too much. For everyone else, his laughter was a good sound. For her, it was unbearable. It scraped against something raw inside her, a sound she’d memorized from another context, another night, when it hadn’t been laughter at all but gasping. The echoes overlapped, wrong and right at once, and her breath stuttered.

He looked alive and whole. Like the past months had been nothing more than a passing inconvenience. So maybe the program had worked for him. Maybe he’d been freed by it. Good, she told herself. That’s what this was for, right? Her throat burned. She kept walking, fast now, like distance could scrub the image clean. She didn’t look back, didn’t let her eyes linger even for a second. The gravel crunched under her shoes, a rhythm she could count by. She passed the court, passed the laughter, passed the old ache that tried to follow. The sun pressed against her neck, relentless. Her breath refused to steady.

She finally reached the path to the pond and let herself exhale. It was surrender disguised as breath. The koi moved beneath the surface. She watched them until her reflection broke apart. It didn’t matter, she thought. He didn’t matter. For a moment, she almost believed her words.

Back at the basketball court, Nezha saw her before he meant to. Just a flash of white – her top, collar slightly undone, hair catching the light. She was walking fast. At first, he thought it wasn’t her. Then his stomach told him otherwise. It was the stillness that gave her away – how she held tension like breath. She looked better. He hated that it was the first thing he noticed.

He told himself he didn’t care, told himself he’d stopped caring weeks ago. Still, his hands forgot what they were doing. The ball slid loose, thudded somewhere near his feet. Lakan called out his name; he didn’t answer. Rin didn’t look up or glance his way. She just kept walking, like he’d already been erased. For a second, something hot twisted in his gut – envy, maybe. Or insult. Or the awkward middle space between the two.

So that’s what getting better looked like. 

Fine. Good for her.

He smiled to himself – tight and joyless. Fuck her.

But when she turned the corner and vanished from view, the air around him thinned, and he realized, too late, that he was still watching.