The tour ended on Level three.
Jae-min led the group back up to the main hall. The warmth hit them immediately — eighteen degrees, a temperature that felt obscene after weeks of subzero survival. The heating system pushed warm air through vents that Aldrich had designed for comfort, not survival, and for a moment none of them could speak. They just stood there, breathing, feeling their fingers thaw, their muscles unclench, their bodies remember what it was like to not be cold.
Nine people in the foyer. Jae-min. Alessia. Ji-yoo. Yue. Jennifer. Hua. Marie. Uncle Rico. And the young man from the apartment.
He was sitting on the floor against the wall, half-hidden behind his Sailor Moon doll, his cracked glasses slightly askew. He was still too weak to stand for long — they'd pulled him unconscious from his apartment hours ago, skin and bones, a breath away from starving to death in a fortress of anime figurines and manga volumes and a Sailor Moon body pillow taped to the ceiling. He'd managed a few spoonfuls of rice porridge since arriving, but his hands still trembled when he lifted them, and his legs buckled if he tried to stand on his own. He'd held the doll the way a child holds a security blanket — not playfully, but with the quiet, desperate grip of someone who needed one constant thing in a world that had stopped making sense.
Marie noticed him first.
She walked over and crouched in front of him. "You," she said, with the directness of someone who had been famous long enough to stop caring about social niceties. "I've been in this house for hours and I don't know your name."
The young man blinked behind his cracked glasses. His round face flushed. His grip on the doll tightened.
"Paolo," he said. Quiet. Almost inaudible. "My name is Paolo."
"Paolo what?"
He hesitated. Swallowed. His eyes flicked to Jae-min, then to the floor.
"Paolo Villanueva."
Marie smiled. Not her actress smile — the one she used for cameras and premieres and talk show couches. A real one. Smaller. Warmer.
"Well, Paolo Villanueva." She tilted her head. "Welcome to the mansion. It's warmer than your apartment. Barely."
Paolo nodded. His ears were red. He clutched the doll tighter. The effort of even that small movement made his shoulders tremble.
That was it. Short. Simple. Nobody made a big deal out of it. Jae-min gave him a nod from across the foyer — the same nod he gave everyone, equal parts acknowledgment and respect. Ji-yoo raised a hand in a small wave from the staircase. Jennifer offered a gentle smile, the kind she gave to anyone who looked like they needed one. Uncle Rico noted the name silently, the way he noted everything, filing it away behind those steady, unblinking eyes.
Uncle Rico cleared his throat.
"The bodies stay down on Level two," he said. "But not for long. We handle them tonight."
Nobody argued.
Nobody asked how.
...
Level two was quiet.
Uncle Rico stood beside Jae-min in the corridor. The rest of the group had gone back upstairs — Jae-min had told them to settle in, find warm rooms, get food. Only he had stayed.
"Give me a hand," Jae-min said.
He didn't ask what Jae-min needed a hand with. He followed Jae-min to the first locked door.
The collection room.
The thermal blankets were where Jae-min had left them during the tour — seven shapes under white fabric, arranged on the mattresses along the wall. The IV stands had been pushed to the corner. The chemical smell had faded to almost nothing, ventilated by the mansion's systems.
Uncle Rico stood in the doorway. He didn't enter.
Jae-min knelt beside the first mattress. Pulled the blanket back just enough to see the girl's face. Closed eyes. Pale skin. The peaceful stillness of someone who had stopped suffering.
He pulled the blanket back over her. Lifted her — small, light, almost weightless — and carried her to the corridor. Uncle Rico took her from his arms, held her gently, the way a man holds something that deserves gentleness even after everything.
They worked in silence.
One by one. Seven girls from the collection room. Then Jae-min opened the second door — the one with the red stripe — and carried out the last two.
Marisol and the informant.
Uncle Rico took Marisol. Jae-min carried the informant himself. The man was heavier than the girls — not by much, but enough that Jae-min's frozen left hand ached with the effort. The informant's face was turned toward Jae-min's chest, as if he'd been placed that way deliberately. His hand was still resting against Marisol's cheek.
Jae-min laid him down beside the others.
Nine bodies in the corridor. Seven girls. One woman. One man. All wrapped in white. All still.
"Ready?" Jae-min asked.
Uncle Rico nodded.
Jae-min reached into the void.
The cold hit his fingers — not the cold of minus seventy, but the deeper cold of the void itself, the absolute dark that existed between spaces. He pushed further than he'd ever pushed. Past the storage. Past the frozen vault. Past the point where temperature and distance stopped meaning anything.
He tore the opening.
The tear that appeared in the corridor was different from the ones he used for supply pulls. Those were small, precise, surgical. This one was vast — a wound in the fabric of space that opened onto a blackness so deep it made the eye hurt. Through it, Jae-min could see stars. Distant, sharp, unmoving. And beyond them, faintly, the edge of something enormous and bright. The sun.
The corridor went cold. The void's temperature leaked through the tear, dropping the air around them by ten degrees in seconds. Jae-min gritted his teeth. His frozen left hand screamed. His shoulder locked tighter.
Uncle Rico stared at the opening. His face didn't change. But his eyes did — something old and respectful moving behind them, the look of a man recognizing something that was beyond his experience and choosing to face it without flinching.
Jae-min picked up the first body. The youngest girl. Barely breathing when he'd found her, now still. He carried her to the edge of the tear and placed her through it.
She drifted. Weightless. The thermal blanket unfolded slightly in the vacuum, white fabric spreading against the black. For a moment she hung there — small, pale, wrapped in white, suspended between the stars.
Then Jae-min opened a second tear — an exit portal, placed directly between the body and the sun. The pull of the tear caught her and drew her through, and she was gone.
One.
Uncle Rico handed him the next. Jae-min placed it. Opened the exit. Gone.
Two. Three. Four. Five.
The bodies drifted through the void one at a time — white shapes against infinite black, each one caught by the exit portal and pulled toward the brightness. The process was mechanical, repetitive. Jae-min's body ran on autopilot while his mind stayed carefully, deliberately blank.
Six. Seven.
Marisol.
Uncle Rico handed her to Jae-min carefully. The small body — thin, bruised, marked by weeks of things no one should endure — weighed almost nothing. Jae-min placed her through the tear. Opened the exit. Gone.
The informant was last.
Jae-min lifted him himself. The man who'd driven the snowmobile through frozen streets, who'd eaten cold MREs in the bunker, who'd been with the team when the Archbishop's men had surrounded them. The man who'd crawled across a tile floor to reach the woman he loved.
Jae-min carried him to the tear. Placed him through. Opened the exit.
For a moment, the informant drifted beside Marisol. Their blankets unfurled slightly, edges touching. Then the exit portal pulled them both, and they were gone.
Nine bodies. Into the void. Toward the sun.
Jae-min closed the tears.
The corridor was empty. Clean. Just amber light and the hum of computers and the faint residual cold of the void bleeding out of the air.
Uncle Rico stood in the doorway. His face was stone. But his hands were trembling — very slightly, almost imperceptibly, the kind of tremor that a man with fifty years of discipline could hide from anyone who wasn't watching closely.
Jae-min was watching closely.
"You okay?"
"No," Uncle Rico said. "But that doesn't matter. What matters is that it's done."
He turned and walked up the stairs.
Jae-min stood in the empty corridor for a long moment.
Then he closed the door to the collection room. Closed the door with the red stripe.
And followed Uncle Rico up.
...
Uncle Rico was already waiting with a notepad — actual paper, pulled from the study, written in pencil because pens froze — and the kind of expression that said he had already solved the next problem three times in his head and was now presenting the final version.
"Room assignments," he said. "This house has three floors and three underground levels. We're going to use all of them."
He tapped the notepad.
"Here's how it works. Second floor — four bedrooms. Third floor — operation center with attached quarters. Level one underground — the bunker. Cots, blankets, heating. Designed to keep people alive for months."
He looked at the group. Jae-min. Alessia. Ji-yoo. Yue. Jennifer. Hua. Marie. Paolo.
Nine people.
"The master bedroom on the second floor," he said. "King bed, en-suite bathroom, walk-in closet. Jae-min and Alessia."
Alessia, leaning against the wall near the staircase, didn't react.
"Second bedroom. Queen bed, en-suite. Ji-yoo."
Ji-yoo was already walking toward it. She'd heard "bed" and "bathroom" and that was all she needed.
"Third bedroom. Two single beds. Jennifer and Yue."
Jennifer's cheeks flushed pink at the mention of sharing a room. She ducked her head slightly — a small, shy gesture that she tried to hide by adjusting her braid. Her fingers found a loose strand behind her ear and tucked it back with movements that were more nervous than practical.
Yue nodded.
"Fourth bedroom. Single bed. Marie."
Marie raised an eyebrow. "Mr. Rico, you're giving the actress the small room?"
"I'm giving the woman who's been sleeping on a frozen couch in an unheated house for three weeks an actual bed with an actual door. You want to argue with that?"
Marie smiled. "No. I want to hug you. But I won't, because your ears are already red."
Uncle Rico's ears were, in fact, red.
He cleared his throat and continued.
"Third floor — the operation center. There are attached quarters. A cot, a desk, a bathroom. Hua, that's yours. You've been staying there since you claimed this place."
Hua nodded from the stairs. She was already heading back up.
"Level one underground. The bunker. Cots for twenty, field kitchen, heating. That leaves two people."
He looked at Paolo and Uncle Rico.
"I'll take one of the bunker cots," Uncle Rico said. "Close to the stairs. Close to the entrance. If something comes through the front door at three in the morning, I'm the first one it meets."
"That's not noble," Marie said from her doorway. "That's tactical."
"Same thing, at my age."
Marie smiled again.
Paolo had barely made it to the living room couch. He was sitting with his Sailor Moon doll in his lap, his thin frame sinking into the cushions, still pale, still trembling faintly. He looked between them with wide eyes behind his cracked glasses.
"What about me, Mr. Rico?" Paolo asked. His voice was small, hopeful.
"The other bunker cot," Uncle Rico said. "Level one has heating. You'll be warm. And you won't have to listen to Jae-min and Alessia through the walls."
Paolo blinked. Looked at Jae-min. Looked at Alessia.
"I — that's — I wasn't —"
"Paolo," Jennifer said gently. Her voice was warm, kind, with a softness that made the young man's blush deepen. "He's teasing you."
"Oh." Paolo hugged his Sailor Moon doll tighter. "Right."
"This couch is incredible though," he added quietly. "I would marry this couch."
"Don't," Jae-min said. "There's been enough romantic complications for one day."
He wasn't looking at anyone in particular.
Yue's ears went red.
Ji-yoo grinned from her doorway.
Jennifer's cheeks, which had just started to return to normal, flushed pink again. She busied herself with her braid, tucking loose strands behind her ear with fingers that weren't quite steady. Her gaze dropped to the floor, and she stayed very still for a moment — the way she always did when she was trying to make herself small.
Alessia didn't grin.
...
People settled.
The mansion was large enough that everyone could find a corner — a window seat, a reading nook, a patch of floor in the sunroom where the grey light came through the frost and made everything look like it existed inside a soap bubble.
Ji-yoo claimed the largest bathroom on the second floor and spent forty-five minutes in it. She emerged looking like a different person — clean hair, scrubbed skin, wearing actual clothes instead of layers of survival gear. The effect was startling. She looked less like a refugee and more like the musician she'd been before the freeze.
Marie explored the second floor with the quiet appreciation of someone who understood spaces. She ran her fingers along the banister, tested the mattress in her room, opened every drawer in the dresser. An actress reading a set, memorizing her blocking.
Uncle Rico helped Paolo down to the bunker on Level one. The young man could barely walk — his legs shook with every step, and he leaned heavily on the wall with one hand while clutching his Sailor Moon doll with the other. Uncle Rico guided him to a cot, pulled the blankets over him, and set a bottle of water and a bowl of rice porridge within arm's reach. Paolo listened with wide eyes and nodded at everything, too weak to do much else. His cracked glasses had slipped down his nose, and he didn't have the energy to push them back up.
Jennifer and Yue took their room quietly. Yue claimed the bed by the window. Jennifer took the one by the wall. She unfolded the blanket Uncle Rico had given her, smoothed the corners, and sat on the edge of the mattress with her hands in her lap. She didn't say much. When she did speak, her voice was soft — gentle, a little shy, careful with her words the way she'd always been.
She found Jae-min in the hallway twenty minutes later. He was checking the locks on the front door, running his fingers along the frame the way he'd done at every safehouse since the freeze started.
"Jae-min."
He turned. Her voice was quiet. She was standing in the doorway of her new room, half-hidden behind the frame, her fingers gripping the edge of the door like it was the only thing keeping her upright.
"Everything okay?"
She nodded. Then shook her head. Then nodded again.
"I just — I wanted to say thank you. For the room. And for — for everything. Before. Today." She was staring at the floor. "I know the kiss was — I know it was a lot. And I'm sorry if I made things weird. I didn't mean to. I just — I wanted to help. With the link. With making sure nothing happened on the road. And then it just — happened, and I—"
She was rambling. Her ears were red. Her fingers were white-knuckled on the doorframe.
"Jennifer."
She stopped. Looked up at him. Through the blur, he could see the shine in her eyes — not tears, not yet, but the kind of shine that came from holding something back for a very long time.
"You don't owe me an apology."
She held his gaze for a moment. Then she ducked her head again, tucked another strand of hair behind her ear, and retreated into her room. The door closed with a soft click.
Jae-min stood in the hallway.
Through the mental link, he felt her settle onto the bed. Felt her draw her knees to her chest. Felt the quiet, aching warmth that radiated from her consciousness — the kind of warmth that came from a heart that had been full for a very long time and had learned to hold it gently, even when it hurt.
He turned away from the door and went to find his sister.
...
Ji-yoo was in the kitchen, raiding the pantry. She had a can of preserved peaches in one hand and a spoon in the other, and she was eating directly from the can with the unselfconscious pleasure of someone who had not eaten peaches in three weeks.
She found Jae-min in the doorway and grinned around the spoon.
"Want some?"
"No."
"More for me."
She ate in silence for a moment, leaning against the counter, bare feet on the warm tile floor. Then she set the can down, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and fixed him with a look that Jae-min recognized immediately.
It was the look she gave him before a performance review. Before calling him out. Before saying something that would make him wish he'd stayed in the bunker.
"So."
"So."
"Three kisses on a snowmobile."
Jae-min didn't move.
"I know it was today. I was here. In this house. Waiting for you to come back. And you come through that door with Yue's lips swollen and Jennifer looking like she'd been —" Ji-yoo tilted her head, searching for the right words. "Jennifer looked like Jennifer looks when she's happy."
Jae-min leaned against the doorframe. He'd known this was coming. He'd been waiting for it since the moment he'd walked through the front door.
"Three kisses. On Yue. Five seconds on the last one. Her fingers in your hair." Ji-yoo's grin was spreading. "Jennifer told me. She was very sweet about it. She always tells me everything. I think she thinks she's helping."
"The last one lasted five seconds," Ji-yoo continued. Her voice was light, the same tone she used when she was about to say something devastating at a dinner party. "Five seconds is a long time."
Jae-min crossed his arms.
"Ji-yoo—"
"Then you kissed Jennifer. At the door. The nine-second one." Ji-yoo pressed both hands to her mouth. Her shoulders were shaking. She was trying very hard not to laugh. "Nine seconds, Jae-min. That's not insurance. That's a love letter."
Hua, who had appeared silently in the kitchen doorway with a pot in her hands, set the pot down on the counter.
"I'm going to check the greenhouse," she said.
Neither of them noticed her leave.
"You kissed Yue three times," Ji-yoo said. "Then you kissed Jennifer. That's four kisses today that weren't with your girlfriend."
Jae-min didn't respond.
"And you slept with Hua."
The kitchen went quiet.
Ji-yoo's grin faded. Not completely — she was still Ji-yoo, and Ji-yoo always found something funny in everything — but the teasing edge softened into something more serious.
"Alessia doesn't know about that yet. Does she."
It wasn't a question.
"She knows."
"She knows you slept with her cousin?"
"She knows."
Ji-yoo studied him for a long moment. Her eyes moved across his face — the blurred gaze, the set of his jaw, the way his arms were crossed too tight against his chest.
"How'd she take it?"
"She hasn't talked to me about it yet."
"But she knows."
"She knows."
Ji-yoo picked up the can of peaches. Took another bite. Chewed slowly.
"You're an idiot," she said. Not cruel. Just factual. The way someone states the weather.
"I know."
"Alessia is going to kill you."
"I know."
"Or she's going to cry. Which is worse."
"I know."
Ji-yoo set the can down. Wiped her mouth. The grin was coming back — slower this time, more cautious, like an animal approaching something that might bite.
"I'm not mad," she said. "I'm actually impressed. In a horrified, what-is-wrong-with-my-brother kind of way." She turned and walked past him into the hallway. Her hand patted his shoulder as she went — once, twice, three times, the way she patted him when they were kids and she'd just said something mean and wanted to make sure he knew she still loved him.
Her laugh echoed down the hallway — bright, delighted, the sound of someone who had just been handed ammunition and knew exactly when to use it.
Jae-min stood in the kitchen.
The peaches were still on the counter. The spoon was still in the can. The greenhouse was still downstairs. Hua was probably standing in the humid warmth surrounded by tomato plants, staring at nothing, thinking about the conversation she'd just overheard.
He went to find Alessia.
...
She was in the upstairs hallway.
Standing outside the master bedroom door. Not going in. Just standing there, one hand on the wall, the other hanging at her side. Her face was turned toward the window — the grey frost-covered glass that showed nothing but the white expanse of Forbes Park and the skeletal trees and the dead, frozen world beyond.
She didn't turn when he approached.
"Alessia."
Her name hung in the hallway between them. She didn't respond. Not immediately. Her shoulders rose once — a deep, controlled breath — and fell again.
"Can we talk?" she said. "In the bedroom. Alone."
He pushed the door open. Held it for her.
She walked past him without touching.
...
The master bedroom was large. King bed, walk-in closet, en-suite bathroom. Aldrich's room, once — the walk-in closet was half the size of Jae-min's old apartment, and the bed could sleep four. The sheets were clean, pulled from storage in the void, thick cotton that felt like luxury after weeks of military foam and thermal blankets.
Alessia sat on the edge of the bed. Jae-min sat beside her.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
The mansion was quiet around them. Through the walls, muffled sounds — footsteps on the stairs, the distant hum of the supercomputer two floors below, the soft clatter of Hua doing something in the kitchen. Through the floor, the faint vibration of the heating system pushing warmth through the vents.
"I need to say all of this," Alessia said. "And I need you to not interrupt until I'm done."
"Okay."
She took a breath. Her hands were in her lap, fingers interlaced, knuckles white.
"You slept with my cousin."
The words came out flat. Controlled. Like a diagnosis.
"Before you knew she was my cousin. Before you knew there was any connection. I understand that. I've had time to process that part." She paused. "But you still slept with her. And then you brought me here. To the same house. And you didn't tell me."
Jae-min said nothing.
"Then today. You left to bring the others back. And you kissed Yue. Three times. On that snowmobile. Five seconds on the last one. Her fingers in your hair. Your hand on her face."
Her voice tightened.
"And then you walked through that door and kissed Jennifer. Nine seconds. You called it insurance. Nine seconds is not insurance, Jae-min."
She stopped. Her jaw clenched. The trembling started in her shoulders and spread to her hands.
"Three women. My cousin. My teammate. Your empath. And I was here. In this house. Waiting. While you were out there kissing all of them. And then I had to find out about it from Ji-yoo. From Jennifer. In a room full of people."
The words landed like stones.
She didn't continue. Her hands were in her lap, fingers interlaced, knuckles white. She was staring at the floor, and her jaw was clenched so tight that the muscles in her neck stood out like cables.
Jae-min waited.
And then she broke.
Her shoulders shook. The trembling spread — from her shoulders to her hands, then to her jaw. Her face crumbled — not dramatically, not loudly, but the way a wall crumbles when the foundation gives way. Slow at first. Then all at once.
The tears came.
She cried without sound at first. Just tears streaming down her face, dripping off her chin, falling onto her interlaced fingers. Her lips pressed together so hard they went white. Her chest heaved with the effort of keeping the sobs inside, and for a moment she couldn't breathe at all, just sat there with her face breaking and her body shaking and no sound coming out.
Then a sound escaped. Raw. Ugly. Wrenching. The sound of someone who had been strong for so long that they'd forgotten what it felt like to not be, and now it was all coming out at once.
"Alessia—"
"I'm not finished."
He stopped.
She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. Her whole body was shaking now — not just trembling, shaking, the kind of shaking that comes from crying so hard your ribs hurt.
"I know why you did it. I know the road was bumpy. I know Jennifer was going to tell. I know you didn't know Hua was my cousin. I know — I know all of it."
She dropped her hands. Her face was wet, eyes swollen, nose running. She looked nothing like the composed, elegant woman who had pulled shotgun pellets from a lung with her bare hands. She looked young. Small. Lost.
"But knowing doesn't fix it. Knowing you had reasons doesn't make it hurt less. I was here. In this house. Waiting for you. And you were out there, and you were — you were with other women. My cousin. My teammate. Your empath. And you didn't tell me. You let me find out from other people."
She wiped her face with the back of her hand. Rough. Graceless.
"I was here. Pulling shotgun pellets out of your sister with my bare hands, emptying myself so she could breathe, and you were out there kissing other women."
She pressed her lips together. Her chin trembled.
"I felt stupid. I felt like everyone knew something about my own — about the person I—" Her voice broke. "I love you. And I felt like I was the last one to know."
Jae-min reached for her.
She flinched.
Not away from him. Just — flinched. The involuntary twitch of someone whose body didn't know whether to accept comfort or brace for more hurt.
He pulled his hand back.
"Alessia."
"Don't say it's nothing. Don't say it didn't mean anything. Don't tell me you love me and that's supposed to fix it. I know you love me. That's not the problem."
She looked at him. Through the tears. Through the swelling.
"The problem is that you didn't tell me. Any of it. Not Hua. Not Yue. Not Jennifer. You let me find out from other people. Ji-yoo. Jennifer. Everyone knew before I did. And I was sitting right there."
The words hung in the room like something fragile.
Jae-min sat still.
She was right.
He'd slept with Hua before knowing the connection, but he hadn't told Alessia afterward. He'd kissed Yue because she was warm and close and brave, and he hadn't told Alessia. He'd kissed Jennifer and called it insurance, and he hadn't told Alessia. Three women. Three secrets. And Alessia had been here, in this house, waiting for him to come back.
"I'm not going to apologize for wanting it," he said.
Alessia flinched again.
"Because wanting it isn't the same as choosing it. And I need you to hear the difference."
She looked at him. Through the tears. Through the swelling. Her eyes were red and raw and searching.
"I'm not going to stand here and tell you none of it meant anything, because it did. Hua means something. Yue means something. Jennifer means something. Every person in this house means something, and I'm not going to lie to you about that."
He paused. Chose his next words carefully.
"But I'm here. With you. In this room. In this bed. And I'm going to keep being here, with you, every night, for as long as you'll have me. Not because I owe you. Because I choose you. Every day. Every time."
Alessia stared at him.
The tears were still running, but something in her face had shifted — the raw, open wound of her grief was still there, but underneath it, something else was visible. Something that looked like the beginning of a decision.
"You slept with my cousin. You kissed my teammate. You kissed your empath. And you're telling me you choose me."
"Yes."
"That's not — Jae-min, that doesn't make sense."
"It doesn't have to make sense. It just has to be true."
She shook her head. Wiped her face with the back of her hand. The gesture was rough, graceless — nothing like her usual composure.
"You can't just — you can't just collect people. You can't just—" She gestured vaguely, encompassing the house, the team, all of it. "You can't have all of them."
"I'm not trying to have all of them."
"Then what are you trying to do?"
He didn't answer immediately. He looked at her — really looked, even through the blur, at the tear-streaked face and the red eyes and the hands that were still shaking in her lap.
"I'm trying to keep everyone alive," he said. "And somewhere in the middle of that, feelings happened. With you. With Hua. With Yue. With Jennifer. And I'm not going to pretend they didn't."
"Feelings," she repeated. Flat.
"Feelings."
"Feelings that resulted in you sleeping with my cousin and kissing two other women."
Jae-min's face twitched. Not a smile. Close.
"Ji-yoo has a big mouth."
"Jennifer told her."
"Jennifer has a kind mouth. She just doesn't know when to stop being kind."
Despite everything — the tears, the anger, the raw, exposed nerve of the last ten minutes — something flickered at the corner of Alessia's mouth. Not a smile. The ghost of one. The ghost of the ghost of one.
Then it was gone.
"Jae-min." She took a breath. Let it out. "I need — I need you to understand something. I'm not angry at Hua. She's my cousin. I love her. I'm not angry at Yue, and I'm not angry at Jennifer. They've been nothing but good to this team." She paused. "I'm angry because you didn't tell me. You let me find out from other people. In a room full of people. While I was sitting right there."
He had no answer for that. She was right.
"I should have told you before anyone else. The first person I talked to should have been you."
She didn't respond. But her fingers stopped shaking.
"Instead I let Ji-yoo turn it into comedy. And I let you sit there and process it alone."
Alessia took a long, shuddering breath.
"I forgive you," she whispered.
The words came out before she seemed ready for them — slipping out of her mouth like water through a cracked glass, unfiltered, uncontrolled. Her eyes widened slightly, as if she'd surprised herself.
Then she nodded. More firmly.
"I do. I forgive you. But Jae-min —" She looked up. Met his eyes. "If something happens again. Any thing. You tell me first. Before Jennifer. Before Ji-yoo. Before anyone. Me. First."
"Me first."
"Me first."
"Deal."
She looked at him for a long moment. Her face was still wet. Her eyes were still swollen. But the rawness in her expression had shifted — not healed, not gone, but contained. The way a wound is contained by a bandage. Still there. Still raw. But covered.
Then she kissed him.
Not gentle. Not slow. Fierce. Desperate. The kiss of a woman who had just been torn open and was choosing, consciously and deliberately, to pull herself back together around him. Her hands came up to his face — both hands, pressing against his jaw, holding him in place like she was afraid he'd disappear if she let go.
He kissed her back.
His right hand found the back of her neck. His left hand — the frozen claw — pressed against her waist, the useless fingers a weight she leaned into.
She tasted like tears. Like salt and grief and something underneath that was warmer, fiercer, older than any of it.
When she pulled back, her forehead rested against his. Both of them breathing hard.
"Don't make me regret that," she whispered.
"I won't."
"You better not."
She kissed him again.
...
The en-suite bathroom was larger than the entire master bedroom of Unit 1418.
Alessia stood under the shower and let the hot water run over her for five full minutes without moving. The mansion's water was heated by the same backup generators that ran everything else — not scalding, but warm, genuinely warm, the kind of warm that penetrated skin and muscle and reached the bone-deep cold that had been living inside her since the freeze started.
She heard the bathroom door open.
She didn't turn around.
The shower was a walk-in — tile floor, glass walls, a rainfall showerhead that dispensed water in a wide, even pattern. There was room for two. Easily.
Jae-min stepped in behind her.
His hands found her shoulders. Both of them — the right one working, the left one a frozen weight that pressed against her collarbone with a pressure that was more presence than grip. She leaned back into him. The hot water ran over both of them, steam filling the glass enclosure, turning the world into a warm, white blur.
"You're still wearing clothes," she said.
"So are you."
She turned. Reached for the hem of her shirt. Pulled it over her head and let it drop. The water hit her bare skin and she gasped — not from cold, from the shock of heat after weeks of being cold, the body remembering what warmth felt like and reacting with something between pleasure and pain.
Jae-min's shirt came off one-handed. The left arm required help — she pulled the sleeve over his frozen hand, careful not to bend the stiff fingers.
They stood under the water. Skin to skin. Her back against his chest. His arms around her — one strong, one frozen, both holding.
The water ran over them.
She turned in his arms. Faced him. Her wet hair clung to her shoulders and chest, dark against her skin. The water streamed down between them, warm and steady, washing away the salt of tears and the grime of weeks and the residue of everything that had happened since the freeze.
She kissed him.
Slow this time. Deliberate. Her hands flat against his chest, feeling the heartbeat underneath. His right hand traced the line of her jaw, tilting her face up. His left hand rested on her hip, frozen fingers pressing into her skin.
She pressed against him. Felt him respond — the way his breath changed, the way his body shifted, the way his grip tightened.
"You're sure?" His voice was rough.
"Stop asking."
She pulled him down.
The kiss deepened. Her arms wrapped around his neck, pulling him closer. His hands moved — right hand sliding down her back, left hand pressing flat against her lower spine, drawing her against him.
The water was hot. The steam was thick. The glass walls fogged until the world outside disappeared and there was nothing but warmth and skin and the sound of water and the taste of her mouth and the feeling of her body pressed against his.
He lifted her. She wrapped her legs around him. Her back pressed against the tile wall, and the shock of cold tile against hot skin made her gasp into his mouth. Then the water ran over them both and the tile warmed, and the gasp became something else.
He was inside her. She didn't remember when it happened — one moment they were kissing, the next he was there, and her body had opened for him without thinking, without deciding, just the pure, involuntary response of wanting.
She bit his shoulder. He groaned.
The water pounded against them. Her fingers dug into his back, nails leaving crescents in his skin. His right hand gripped her thigh, holding her up. His left hand was braced against the tile, the frozen fingers a hard counterpoint to the warmth everywhere else.
She moved. He moved. The rhythm found itself — not frantic, not desperate, but deep and deliberate, the kind of rhythm that builds slowly and doesn't rush. Her breath came in short, sharp gasps. His came out low and rough against her neck.
The steam swirled around them. The water ran hot over their skin. The world outside this glass enclosure had ceased to exist — there was no frozen city, no dead girls, no locked doors two floors below, no apocalypse. Just heat. Just skin. Just each other.
She came first. Her back arched off the tile, her mouth opened, and a sound came out of her that wasn't a word — raw and involuntary and loud enough to echo off the glass. Her body clenched around him, and the force of it triggered his own release, his grip tightening, his face pressed into her neck, a low, guttural sound vibrating against her skin.
They stayed there. Panting. Water running over them. Her legs still wrapped around him. His forehead pressed against her shoulder.
Slowly, carefully, he lowered her. Her feet found the tile. She wobbled. He caught her.
They stood under the water. Holding each other. The steam swirled.
Alessia pressed her face against his chest.
"I'm still mad at you," she said. Muffled by his skin.
"I know."
"I'm going to be mad at you for a while."
"Okay."
"I'm also going to be extremely irritated if you don't do that again."
He laughed. A short, quiet sound that vibrated through his chest and into her cheek.
"I can work with that."
...
They dried off. Jae-min's left hand was too stiff to operate a towel properly, so Alessia did it for him — methodical, efficient, the same precision she applied to everything, her healer's hands working the fabric over his frozen fingers without bending them.
The bed was enormous. King-sized, clean sheets, thick pillows. They climbed in together — Alessia first, then Jae-min, his body settling against hers in the dark.
The room was warm. Eighteen degrees. The heating system hummed through the walls. Through the floor, faintly, the subsonic vibration of the supercomputer.
She curled against him. Her head found the space between his shoulder and his neck — the same spot she always found, the place where his heartbeat was loudest. His right arm wrapped around her. His left arm lay at his side, the frozen fingers extended toward her.
She found them anyway. Threaded her fingers through his. The frozen digits didn't curl back, but she held them anyway, the way she always did.
Her breathing slowed. Deepened.
"I love you," she said.
"I know."
"Say it back."
"I love you."
"Mean it."
"I mean it."
She was quiet for a long moment.
"Jae-min."
"Yeah."
"If you kiss anyone else without telling me first, I will poison your food."
"Noted."
"I'm serious."
"I believe you."
"Good."
She pressed closer. Her body relaxed against his, the tension of the last hour finally draining out of her muscles. Her breathing deepened. Her fingers tightened around his frozen ones.
"Goodnight, idiot."
"Goodnight."
She slept.
He stayed awake for a while longer, staring at the ceiling of the master bedroom, listening to her breathe. Two seconds in. Two seconds out. Steady. Warm. Alive.
Through the floor, faintly, he could hear the bunker — the soft creak of cot springs as someone shifted in their sleep. Through the mental link, Jennifer's consciousness hummed with quiet warmth. Not satisfaction. Not calculation. Just warmth. The kind of warmth that came from a heart that had been full for a very long time and had learned to hold it gently, even when it hurt.
Jae-min closed his eyes.