It was two in the morning when I woke up with a throat so dry it felt like sandpaper. I lay in my enormous bed and tried to convince my body that it did not actually need water, that I could simply roll over and go back to sleep. My body disagreed with the kind of vehemence that only comes from basic biological needs being ignored.
I sat up with a groan. The unicorn pajamas rustled softly around me. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city glittered with a million lights. Somewhere out there, normal people were sleeping in normal apartments with normal kitchens they could find in the dark.
I was not normal people, and this was not a normal apartment.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed. The marble floor was cold against my bare feet. Everything in this penthouse was cold at night. The marble and the glass and the silence all conspired to make me feel like I was living inside a very expensive refrigerator.
"Chen Home," I whispered into the darkness. "Lights on. Low. Please."
Nothing. The smart home system continued its silent rebellion against my existence. I was a stranger in my own house, and the house knew it.
Fine. I would find the kitchen in the dark. How hard could it be to locate the one room in a twelve-thousand-square-foot penthouse that contained water? I had been living here for days now. Surely I had absorbed enough spatial awareness to navigate my own home without a map and a compass.
I stepped out of the bedroom and into the hallway. The city lights provided just enough glow through the distant windows to see outlines and shapes and absolutely nothing that looked familiar. The hallway stretched in both directions, long and wide and lined with doors that could lead anywhere. Bedrooms and bathrooms and closets and secret passages to other dimensions. I had no idea which direction led to water and which led to more confusion.
I picked left, or maybe it was right, and started walking.
The first door I opened was a linen closet. Shelves and shelves of white towels that glowed faintly in the darkness like friendly ghosts. They were soft and fluffy and completely useless for hydration. I closed the door with perhaps more force than was strictly necessary.
The second door was a bathroom. Not the one with the enormous tub carved from a single piece of marble. This was a smaller bathroom, only slightly larger than a normal person's entire apartment. Gold fixtures. Heated floor. A toilet that probably had features I could not begin to understand. I did not need a bathroom. I needed water. I closed that door too.
The third door was a private gym. Treadmills and weights and a yoga mat unrolled on the floor like someone had been using it recently. Machines I did not recognize lined the walls. A wall of mirrors reflected my unicorn-clad self back at me from every angle. I looked ridiculous. A billionaire in children's sleepwear, lost in her own home, hunting for water like a desert explorer who had taken a very wrong turn.
I closed the door and kept walking.
The next door was a wine cellar. Temperature-controlled and filled with rows and rows of bottles stretching into the darkness. Reds and whites and champagnes and vintages I could not pronounce. Thousands of dollars of wine, perfectly preserved and waiting for a woman who apparently never drank any of it. The bottles sat in their careful racks, silent and judgmental. I did not need wine. I needed water.
I closed the door and kept walking.
The next door opened into a room with a grand piano. Black and glossy and enormous, sitting in the center like it owned the place. Moonlight streamed through the windows and caught the polished surface. It was beautiful and haunting and completely wasted on me. I did not know how to play the piano, or at least I did not think I did. Maybe the old Vivian had been a concert pianist in her spare time. Maybe she had entertained guests with Chopin and champagne. Or maybe it was just another expensive thing in a penthouse full of expensive things, purchased and forgotten like everything else.
I closed the door gently. More gently than the others. The piano felt different somehow. Sad and lonely and waiting for someone who was never coming back. I understood that feeling more than I wanted to admit.
I kept walking. The hallway finally opened into a larger space. The air changed and became cooler. The faint scent of chlorine drifted toward me.
I had found the indoor pool.
It stretched before me like a perfect rectangle of turquoise water. Underwater lights glowed softly, casting rippling patterns on the ceiling. The room was warm and humid, a tropical oasis hidden on the top floor of a skyscraper. I stood at the edge and stared at the water that was so calm and still and completely unnecessary. Who needs an indoor pool when you own an island? Who needs an island when you cannot remember buying it?
My throat was so dry it felt like sandpaper. I had found a gym, a wine cellar, a piano, and a pool. No kitchen. No water. Nothing to drink except thousands of dollars of wine I was too tired to open and too responsible to consume at two in the morning while lost in my own home.
I kept walking. Past the pool and through another doorway and down another hallway. The penthouse was endless. A labyrinth of luxury designed by someone who had never needed to find water in the dark. I was beginning to think I would die here and be discovered weeks later by Lucas, who would find my dehydrated body still wrapped in unicorn pajamas and would probably blame himself for not leaving better directions.
And then, finally, I found it.
A library. Shelves and shelves of actual books that lined the walls from floor to ceiling. Leather-bound volumes and paperback novels and everything in between. The old Vivian apparently read, or at least she collected books. Whether she actually read them was a different question I was too tired to consider.
The library was warm and cozy in a way the rest of the penthouse was not. There was a fireplace and a velvet chaise lounge and a large window overlooking the city. It felt lived in and loved and completely different from the cold minimalist perfection of every other room I had stumbled through.
And there, in the corner, disguised as an antique globe, was a mini-fridge.
I almost cried with relief. I crossed the room and opened the globe. The top half swung upward to reveal a small refrigerated compartment. Inside were bottles of water. Fancy water in glass bottles that probably cost more than gasoline. And champagne, because of course there was champagne in every room of this penthouse.
I grabbed a bottle of water and twisted off the cap. I drank directly from the bottle like a woman who had been wandering the desert for forty years. It was cold and crisp and slightly mineral. It was the best water I had ever tasted in my entire forgotten life. I finished the entire bottle in seconds and grabbed another.
I sank onto the velvet chaise lounge and looked around the library while I caught my breath. Books surrounded me. Stories I had probably read or meant to read or bought because they looked impressive on the shelves. The fireplace was dark and cold, but I could imagine it lit and crackling and warm. The kind of place where a person could sit and read and feel like a human being instead of a portrait.
Somewhere in this labyrinth, Lucas was probably asleep in his modest apartment across the city, in a place he could navigate in the dark without getting lost. I envied him. And I missed him, which was strange because he was my assistant and I had only known him for a few days in this new forgotten life.
Tomorrow I was asking him to draw me a map. A real map with labels and directions and a little red star that said "You Are Here." Because I was tired of being lost. Tired of opening doors to things I did not need. Tired of wandering through my own home like a stranger who had broken in and was hoping no one would notice.
I finished the second bottle of water and stood up. I looked around the library one more time. Somewhere in this penthouse, there was a version of me waiting to be found. Not the cold, efficient billionaire who owned everything and felt nothing. The other one. The one who had cried so hard she forgot everything. The one who had a friend named Sophie and emergency unicorn pajamas and maybe a reason to keep going.
I did not know where she was. But I was going to find her.
Even if I needed a map.