The house was quiet in the middle of the night.
So quiet that even a mouse would run away in fear of what came next.
I'll give you a hint.
It wasn't Santa.
I moved through the hallway barefoot, my steps silent on the worn floorboards. I had lived here long enough to know which ones betrayed you and which ones didn't. The third board from the bathroom. The fifth from the stairs. The one outside Zhenlan's door that groaned if you stepped wrong.
I avoided them all.
The air felt different at night. Cooler. Still. The kind of quiet that didn't mean peace, just the absence of movement. It settled into the walls, into the floorboards, into the space between breaths. Even the house seemed to be listening.
The survivors were asleep.
Most of them.
