KIERAN:
She stormed off into her room, stomping like a pissed-off cartoon character... somewhere between an angry cat and an overcaffeinated bunny. I watched her go with a smirk tugging at the corner of my mouth. She even slammed the door like it personally offended her. Cute.
The apartment slipped into quiet after that, but my mind kept buzzing. So that was it then—she'd finally caved. After the back-and-forth, the drama, the I-have-a-boyfriend declarations, and all that fake resistance, she still gave in.
One little push and a fat stack of cash did the job. Kina was mine... for a few weeks, at least. Not in the mine-mine way. Yet. Just in the she-signed-up-for-this-and-now-she's-stuck-with-me way. It was almost too easy.
But now came the real problem. This apartment? Yeah. I couldn't live like this. Everything looked like it'd been dragged out of a post-apocalyptic garage sale. The wallpaper was peeling like it was trying to escape the wall. The furniture had clearly lost the will to live. The curtains? I've seen better fabric wrapped around butchered meat. That rice cooker she worships sounded like a fucking IED about to go off every time it breathed. I had half a mind to shoot it myself.
I had pulled out my card earlier and told Rocco to handle it. New couch. New table. A rice cooker that didn't sound like a death threat. Even curtains that didn't smell like they remembered Y2K. All from my off-grid account, naturally. No paper trail, no questions. I wasn't about to live in squalor just because the girl was allergic to upgrades.
But I'll give it to her... she made it fun.
She was easy to tease, all bark and jittery nerves. Especially earlier, when she tried to drag me off the couch like I weighed ten pounds. I barely moved, and she came tumbling down instead, right into me. All wide eyes and burning cheeks. I could feel her breath, her heartbeat, her outrage simmering under all that fake confidence.
She looked so damn cute I nearly tilted my head up just to see how far I could push her. But I didn't. I let her go. Barely.
A chuckle slipped out before I could stop it. I pressed my head back against the couch and shut my eyes, letting the grin linger.
Yeah. This was going to be fun.
And maybe, just maybe, I'd start to like the chaos.
^^^
I woke up with a slow, dull burn riding the left side of my torso, right beneath the ribs. Eleven days post-gunshot wound felt like someone had shoved a hot coin under my skin and forgot to take it back out. It didn't throb unless I moved wrong, but it pulsed, like a tiny reminder that I wasn't invincible. Just inconveniently hard to kill.
What really jolted me, though, wasn't the pain.
It was the sound of something violently sizzling, followed by the unmistakable stench of burnt protein. My eyes snapped open. For a second, I thought the apartment had spontaneously combusted.
I hauled myself up, half limping to the kitchen, ready to put out a fire or tackle an intruder with a steak knife, only to freeze at the doorway.
There she was.
Kina.
Standing in a cloud of smoke like some deranged breakfast demon coughing like she had a fish bone stuck at the back of her throat.
She looked like she was reenacting the final scene of a cooking competition where everything goes wrong. Her hair was in a crooked ponytail. Her hoodie was inside out. She had a spatula in one hand, a scorched pan in the other, and an expression that said she either regretted her life or was seconds from snapping.
She scraped a half-burnt mess of scrambled eggs into two plates with the solemnity of someone burying a pet. Then she dumped the pan into the sink, and it hissed like it had just been rescued from the depths of hell.
I just stood there. Speechless. Bewildered.
She turned around and jumped like a startled cat seeing its reflection. "W-what are you doing standing there like a damn creep?!"
"I live here now," I said flatly. "What are you doing?"
She puffed her chest in defiance. "Making breakfast."
I blinked. "That's breakfast?"
To be fair, it looked like scrambled regret. Some parts were black and crisp like tree bark. Other parts were barely cooked and glistening like mucus. The eggs looked like they were having an existential crisis mid-fry. Like they didn't want to be a part of any of this either.
Kina caught my expression and immediately went full defense mode. "You know what? If you don't wanna eat it, don't. I was trying to be nice—God forbid I show basic human decency to the arrogant jerk who's been sleeping on my couch for nearly two weeks, bleeding on everything and judging my rice cooker—"
I grabbed one of the plates and walked away, cutting her off. "Relax. I'll eat it."
Honestly? I mostly wanted to shut her up.
Ten minutes and a toothbrush later, we were seated cross-legged across from each other at the coffee table. She'd laid out a few side dishes, some pickled veggies, a bowl of miso soup that smelled surprisingly decent probably because it was the ready made kind, and a weird little salad with corn and mayo that looked like it came from a high school bento. Not that I was complaining.
Kina muttered something under her breath just as I picked up my chopsticks.
"Itadakimasu," she said, soft, almost embarrassed.
My mouth twitched. I didn't say it back—I wasn't in the mood to be cute.
I took a bite of the eggs.
And I died.
Instantly.
It was like chewing a sponge soaked in regret and motor oil. Burnt outside, raw inside, and somehow rubbery all the way through with too much salt? My body physically recoiled. But I held my poker face.
Barely.
She looked up, eyes narrowing. "Well?"
I chewed again, slower. The flavor profile was something between betrayal and desperation.
"…It's definitely food," I said, forcing the words out with the dignity of a man on trial.
I chased the eggs with a mouthful of miso soup, hoping it'd drown the taste. It didn't. It only confused my taste buds more.
Next came the pickled radish, too sour.
Then the mayo-corn salad, why was that sweet?!
I stared down at my plate, my brain screaming for backup as I calculated the probability of surviving this meal. It was like tactical warfare, and I was losing. If my enemies didn't manage to kill me first, her cooking definitely would. Death by breakfast, courtesy of one very determined disaster chef.