Twenty minutes later, Tòumíng was slumped on the couch in the recreation room like a sack of sad potatoes, his legs sprawled out, his back curved into a C-shape, his chin resting on his chest. He was chewing on a Supplement A-3 bar with the enthusiasm of someone eating cardboard—slow, mechanical bites, his jaw moving in a zombie-like rhythm, his eyes half-lidded and unfocused. Every few seconds he'd pause, crack the knuckles on his left hand one by one with his right, then go back to gnawing on the metallic-tasting granola bar like Ken Kaneki after a bad breakup.
Svetlana was sprawled across his lap like a giant cat, her legs draped over the arm of the couch, her head resting against his shoulder, her phone held above her face as she scrolled through something. She was warm, heavy, a comforting weight that kept him anchored to the present even as his mind drifted through the fog of healing and exhaustion.
"You know," Cupid's voice came from inside his chest, softer than usual, almost gentle, "you should be proud of yourself. Mastering the signal nerve technique—stopping pain signals from reaching your brain—that's not easy. Most hosts take years to figure that out. You did it in weeks."
Tòumíng grunted, his mouth full of compressed calories and disappointment.
"I'm serious," Cupid continued, and there was something rare in his voice—genuine warmth, maybe even affection. "You've come a long way from the kid who passed out from a broken jaw. You're learning to control your body, to override its limitations. That's... impressive. I don't say that often."
Tòumíng swallowed his bite of Supplement bar and mumbled, "Thanks, old man."
"You're welcome, you suicidal idiot."
The common room was packed. Ghost Claw stood by the door, her arms crossed, her gas mask tilted slightly as she watched the TV. Lucy was sprawled in an armchair, her purple hair catching the light from the flickering screen, her split tongue occasionally flicking out as she scrolled through her phone between complaints.
Marco and Polo sat on the floor with their backs against the couch, their shoulders touching, their earlier fight forgotten for now. Ben was curled in the corner with a new popsicle—blue again—sucking on it with the vacant expression of someone who'd checked out of reality entirely.
Think Tink The Tinkerer sat cross-legged on the floor with Cfuar draped across his shoulders like a scaly scarf, the lizard's head resting on top of his, both of them watching the movie with identical expressions of blank confusion. Sven was in a folding chair, his mop leaning against the wall beside him, his eyes darting between the TV and the door like he expected something to explode at any moment. Sasha sat on a beanbag chair, her red pigtails drooping, her face still pale from the medical work she'd been doing all day.
And in the corner, wrapped in a blanket like a burrito, was Melvin. He'd woken up approximately seven minutes ago and had shuffled into the common room without saying a word, his eye bags somehow worse than usual, his hair sticking up in seventeen different directions. He'd grabbed a blanket, wrapped himself in it, and collapsed into the corner with the kind of exhausted acceptance that came from years of narcolepsy and irregular sleep schedules.
They were all watching Commando. The 1985 classic. Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime, ripping phone booths out of walls, carrying logs, killing dozens of bad guys with weapons and without.
Svetlana shifted on Tòumíng's lap, her hand coming up to poke his cheek. "You know," she said, her accent thickening the way it always did when she was about to tease him, "I know you like vatching dumb American television instead of superior form of media, anime."
Tòumíng didn't respond. Just kept chewing.
Svetlana pouted. "You are supposed to argue vith me. That is how this vorks."
Still nothing.
Lucy, from her armchair, decided to fill the silence with commentary. "Okay, wait, wait, wait." She sat up, pointing at the TV screen where Arnold was currently mowing down a small army with what appeared to be an unlimited-ammo assault rifle. "Why isn't he reloading? He's been shooting for like three minutes straight. That's not how guns work, right? Like, they run out of bullets?"
Marco groaned. "Lucy, please."
"No, I'm serious! And why is he carrying a log? Like, a giant log? What is that for? Is that a weapon? Why wouldn't he just use the gun? He has a gun!"
"It's for lifting," Polo said. "It's a training montage thing."
"So he's working out in the middle of a mission? While people are trying to kill him? That seems inefficient."
Polo opened his mouth to respond, then closed it. "I... I actually don't have a counter-argument for that."
Lucy pointed at the screen again. "And who is that guy? The one with the mustache? Is he the bad guy? He looks like a bad guy. Wait, no, he's helping Arnold. So he's a good guy? But he has a bad guy mustache. That's confusing."
"That's Bennett," Marco said. "He's the secondary antagonist."
"Then why is he helping Arnold?"
"He's not. That's a different guy. The one with the mustache and the chain mail vest is the main villain."
"They have chain mail? In the 1980s? In America? Why would anyone wear chain mail to a gun fight?"
"It's... it's a style choice."
"A terrible style choice."
"Agreed."
Lucy wasn't done. She kept going, pointing out every logical inconsistency, every moment that didn't make sense, every explosion that should have killed someone but didn't. "So he just jumped out of a plane? Without a parachute? And landed in a swamp? And survived? How? Swamps are shallow! He'd break his legs! All of his legs! He has two legs, he'd break both of them!"
"That's the point," Tòumíng said quietly, but his voice was flat, empty, lacking the usual enthusiasm he'd have for action movie nonsense.
Lucy stopped. She looked at him. They all looked at him.
He hadn't defended the movie. He hadn't argued. He hadn't done his usual "it's called suspension of disbelief, you philistine" rant. He'd just sat there, chewing his Supplement bar, staring at the screen with dead eyes.
Lucy's expression shifted. The playful annoyance faded into something more complicated. She looked away, crossing her arms over her chest, her split tongue flicking out nervously.
"It's not like I care or anything," she said, her voice pitched higher than usual, forced casual. "I don't care if you defend the movie or not. It's just weird, okay? You always defend this dumb stuff. Like, always. Every time. You've got an opinion about everything. The gun calibers, the explosion physics, the tactical errors. But now you're just sitting there like a lump. It's... it's unsettling."
She shifted in her chair, not looking at him, her cheeks flushing slightly. "Not that I was paying attention to what you usually do. Because I don't. I have better things to do than memorize your movie opinions. That would be pathetic. I'm just saying, it's noticeable. When someone changes. You'd have to be blind not to notice. And I'm not blind. I have perfect vision. Twenty-twenty. So I noticed. That's all. Whatever."
She huffed, pulling out her phone and scrolling aggressively. "Besides, this movie isn't even good. You want a good action movie? Honestly, Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever is way better. That's a real classic."
The room went silent.
Tòumíng's head snapped toward her. His whole body turned, one hundred and eighty degrees, pivoting on the couch like a turret locking onto a target. His eyes, which had been dead and empty moments ago, were now wide, burning, alive.
"What did you say?"
His voice was dead serious. No humor. No sarcasm. Just cold, flat, dangerous.
Lucy looked up from her phone, startled. "I said Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever is—"
Tòumíng stood up. Svetlana slid off his lap onto the couch cushion, her eyebrows rising. The Supplement bar fell from his hand and rolled across the floor. His fists were clenched at his sides, his jaw tight, his entire body vibrating with barely contained outrage.
"Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever," he said, each word precise and venomous, "is the worst action movie ever made. And I'm not saying that hyperbolically. I'm saying that as someone who has watched over three hundred action movies in the past month. YES I HAVE NO LIFE!, I have done the research. I have the credentials. And I am telling you, with absolute certainty, that Ballistic is an insult to the genre, to filmmaking, and to anyone with functioning eyeballs."
He started pacing, his hands gesturing wildly. "First of all, the plot makes zero sense. Zero. The two main characters—Ecks and Sever—are supposedly the best assassins in the world, but they spend the entire movie running away from each other instead of fighting. They meet like three times, and every time, something interrupts them. A bomb goes off. A building collapses. A helicopter crashes for no reason. It's like the writers were afraid to let them actually fight, so they just kept throwing explosions at the screen to distract you."
He paused, took a breath, and kept going. "Second, the editing is incomprehensible. The action scenes are cut so fast you can't tell what's happening. There's a car chase where the camera shakes so much you'd think the cinematographer was having a seizure. And the sound design? Terrible. Every gunshot sounds like a firecracker. Every punch sounds like a wet slap. There's no weight to anything."
He was full speed now, pacing faster, his voice rising. "Third, the acting. Lucy Liu and Antonio Banderas are both talented actors—I will acknowledge that—but this movie makes them look like amateurs. The dialogue is so bad it's almost impressive. 'I don't have a choice.' 'Yes, you do.' 'No, I don't.' That's an actual conversation. Two minutes of that. Back and forth. And the director kept it in. He watched the footage and said 'yes, this is the take we'll use.'"
Tòumíng turned to face the room, his arms spread wide. "And the worst part? The absolute worst part? The final fight. After ninety minutes of avoiding each other, Ecks and Sever finally fight. For thirty seconds. And then they team up to fight the real villain, who is a guy with a mustache and a bad suit. The fight lasts two minutes. The villain dies. The movie ends. That's it. No resolution. No character arc. Nothing."
He stopped, breathing hard, his chest heaving. His eyes were bright, focused, alive in a way they hadn't been all day.
And then he saw their faces.
Marco was grinning. Polo was nodding approvingly. Ben had actually taken the popsicle out of his mouth to listen. Think Tink The Tinkerer... existing. Svetlana was beaming. Even Melvin had opened one eye.
Lucy had a small smile on her face, the kind she tried to hide but couldn't quite manage. "Welcome back," she said, her voice dry but warm.
"Shut up."
"I'm serious. That was a good rant. Seven out of ten."
"Only seven?"
"You stumbled on the sound design point. Lost your rhythm for a second."
Tòumíng huffed, but the corner of his mouth was twitching upward.
Lucy stood up, stretching her arms above her head, her phone still in her hand. "Anyway, my job here is done. I'm gonna go doom scroll in my room where there are no terrible movies or emotionally stunted miners."
She started walking toward the door, her purple hair bouncing with each step.
Tòumíng reached out and grabbed the TV remote from the coffee table. He jingled it.
Lucy stopped. She didn't turn around.
"Hey," Tòumíng said. "You wanna pick a show?"
She turned, slowly, one eyebrow raised. Her expression was carefully neutral, but her eyes were bright.
"Fuck yeah."
Twenty minutes later, they were watching Love Island. And Tòumíng was asking questions.
"Wait, wait, wait." He pointed at the screen, his face scrunched in confusion. "So she picked him? The guy who literally lied to her face? The guy who said 'I'm only interested in you' and then was making out with someone else five minutes later? She picked THAT guy?"
"It's a game," Lucy said, not looking away from the screen. "They're playing a game."
"But why would she pick him when the other guy is RIGHT THERE? The other guy who actually seems nice? Who hasn't lied to her? Who—"
"It's a game, Tòumíng."
"So they just lie to each other for fun? That's the show? That's the plot? People lying to each other in bathing suits?"
"Yes."
"That's not a plot! That's just... that's just a group chat with better lighting!"
Lucy's eye twitched.
"And what's with the narrator?" Tòumíng continued, gesturing at the screen. "He's just describing what's happening. 'She's crying because he picked someone else.' Yeah, I can SEE that! I have EYES! I don't need a British man telling me what I'm literally watching!"
"It's for dramatic effect."
"It's for idiots! Who needs narration for a reality show?! This isn't a nature documentary! 'Here we see the male in his natural habitat, attempting to impress the female by talking about his cryptocurrency portfolio.' That's what it sounds like!"
Lucy grabbed a pillow and pressed it against her face, muffling a scream.
"And why do they keep having the same conversation? 'Where's your head at?' 'Where's your head at?' 'No, where's YOUR head at?' For twenty minutes! Twenty minutes of 'where's your head at'! It's like watching two chatbots try to flirt!"
"Tòumíng—"
"What's the prize for winning anyway? Love? Money? A lifetime supply of bad spray tans? They're all orange! They look like they've been dipped in Cheeto dust!"
Lucy snapped. She grabbed the remote from the coffee table and chucked it at Tòumíng's head.
It hit him square in the forehead with a satisfying THWACK.
"OW! What the hell?!"
"SHUT UP!" Lucy was on her feet, her face red, her split tongue flicking furiously. "You're doing it on purpose! You're doing exactly what I did earlier but for REALITY TV and it's SO MUCH WORSE!"
Tòumíng rubbed his forehead, grinning. "Welcome back."
"Shut. Up."