The afternoon was thick with heat, the kind that clung to skin and made the air feel suffocating. Saeles stood in the training room—once a living room before her mother stripped it bare—throwing punches into the worn punching bag.
Her knuckles split again. A thin line of blood trickled down her hand, but she didn't pause. She knew better.
Behind her, the sound of glass breaking echoed from the kitchen.
Her mother was drinking again.
Saeles's heart tightened, but her fists kept moving. Every moment she stayed silent and obedient was a moment she avoided another bruise.
The house felt like a cage holding its breath.
And then—
Something completely foreign happened:
The front door creaked open.
Saeles froze mid-punch, her arm suspended in the air.
Her mother never knocked.
No neighbor visited.
No friends existed here.
The door swung wider.
A small figure stepped inside.
A girl.
Short, round-cheeked, with long hair that shifted from warm brown to misty white and gray. The tips curled slightly, catching the slanted evening light. She had brown eyes—deep, bright, too soft—and a distinct little mole near her lips that made her look like she was halfway through saying something important.
She couldn't have been more than eight or nine.
Her backpack was slung awkwardly over her shoulder.
She blinked at the interior of the house as if she'd stepped into a world she wasn't prepared for.
"Hello?" she called softly.
Saeles stared at her, hands slowly lowering, stunned by the intruder's audacity. No one ever came into this house.
The girl looked at her, eyes widening.
"Oh! Sorry—I didn't know someone was… uh… living here," she said, her voice a mix of nervousness and innocence.
Saeles's heartbeat accelerated with a sharp kind of irritation. An outsider. A witness. A danger.
Her mother would kill her—literally or figuratively—if she knew someone had stepped inside.
Saeles moved.
Not with hesitation.
Not with thought.
Not with fear.
With instinct.
She stormed toward the girl, grabbed a fistful of her shirt, and yanked her so hard the girl stumbled forward, nearly losing her balance.
"Get out," Saeles said. Her voice was cold, controlled, emotionless—but it held the bite of warning beneath it.
The girl tried to speak. "Wait—! I didn't mean—"
Saeles shoved her toward the doorway and pushed her outside with more force than she needed.
The girl fell onto the ground, a puff of dust rising around her.
Saeles stood in the doorway, a shadow against the dim house interior.
"Don't ever come here again," she said flatly.
The girl's eyes flickered with hurt and shock. She scrambled to her feet, brushing dirt off her skirt with trembling hands.
"Oh—um… o-okay…" she mumbled, voice fragile, embarrassed.
She looked at her phone, suddenly panicked.
"I—I'm late for school!"
And then she ran—quick, stumbling steps down the street—her long hair swaying behind her. A tiny figure disappearing into the cluster of houses.
Saeles watched her go.
Her jaw tightened for reasons she didn't understand.
She closed the door quietly—too quietly.
If her mother heard voices, she'd ask questions. And questions never ended well.
Saeles pressed her forehead against the door for a moment, breathing in the lingering scent of the outside the girl had brought with her.
Fresh air.
Warmth.
Something… free.
She backed away and returned to the punching bag, though her strikes felt slightly off rhythm. A distant annoyance buzzed inside her chest.
Why had that girl walked into her house?
Why did she look so… open?
So unguarded?
So alive?
Her mother's voice pierced the room.
"WHY DID THE DOOR OPEN?"
Saeles stiffened.
She swallowed.
She lied.
"Wind."
There was a moment of deadly quiet.
Then footsteps retreated, and the house swallowed itself in tension again.
Saeles punched harder this time, trying to erase the strange feeling crawling under her skin.
The girl would forget this place.
She would never come back.
Saeles convinced herself of that.
But she was wrong.
Very wrong.
Because the girl she had thrown out—
Bada—
was not the type to let go of something that captured her curiosity.
And Saeles, without knowing it, had become the object of her fascination.
A fascination that would grow teeth.
A fascination that would turn into obsession.
A fascination that would never die.