Xinyue woke up to the feeling of breathing that wasn't hers in her apartment.
It took a few seconds for the panics to bloom in her – slow, disoriented, the way fear crept in when the mind hadn't yet caught up with the body. The room was bit dim, lit only by the thin bruised -blue glow of the city bleeding through the curtains. Her ceiling fan turned lazily, the shadows stretching and folding like something alive.
Then suddenly the memory snapped into places. The knock, the blood, the man who should have left. Came back with injury, but this time she didn't carry him. He came himself.
She sits up in her couch and turned her head searching for him. And there he was, sitting in the chair beside the couch, exactly where she had last seen him before exhaustion had dragged her under to the sleep. One arm rested loosely on the armrest, his long fingers relaxed but still ready for action. His jacket lay folded over the back of the chair, his shirt darkened where it had soaked through earlier. His posture suggested he is resting, but something in him remained alert, that coiled beneath the surface.
Taehyun hadn't moved it seems, she thought. The realization was strangely unsettling for her. He had said he would stay for a while and then leave. He said it like it's a fact. Still, some part of her had assumed he meant an hour at the most, not long enough to be certain of whether the immediate threat had passed or not. She thought, men like him didn't linger after what they told. Even though he had stayed back before in the pretense of protecting her. They didn't sit quietly in borrowed apartments and watch the slow rhythm of someone's sleep.
Yet here he was. Awake.
Watching her.
Her fingers tightened around the couch blanket. "You're still here," she said to him. Her voice came out steadier than she imagined and she felt it. His gaze lifted immediately, sharp despite the hour. "You were sleeping."
"That's not the answer."
A corner of his mouth twitched, like he is successfully managed to poke her early in morning. "Never said it was…"
She twisted herself in the couch to his direction, wincing faintly as the couch and her body protested for the minor in convince. "You said you'd leave."
"I said I'd leave when it was clear they weren't moving tonight."
"And is it?"
"Yes."
"Then why>???"
"Because you didn't lock your back window."
The word cut through her irritation, like what the fuck?? That's the reason?? She thought. But she didn't say any of those to him. Instead, she frowned at his silly reasoning and spoke. "I did."
"No," he said calmly. "You checked it. You didn't lock it."
She opened her mouth to argue to him, why didn't he tell her? Why didn't he do it himself and then leave? Then stopped. She replayed the memory – the habitual motion, the assumption of checking was enough. Her jaw tightened, and hold back her urge to fight him.
"That doesn't explain why you're still here."
"It does," he replied. "You assume danger announces itself for you."
She swung her legs over the side of the couch and stood, wrapping the blanket tighter around herself like an armor. "I assume you're not my personal security system."
"You're right, I'm not" he said.
Something in his tone made her to pause a second and wait for him to continue. "But," he continued as she expected, " You're already involved. Whether you like it or not."
There it was, the truth she had been skirting since he'd walking back into her life even though he never left. Involvement wasn't a door you opened. It was a line you crossed without noticing, only realizing too late that you were already on the other side. Which she was with holding to acknowledge or accept till yesterday. Still, she didn't voice out her thought to him, because she didn't want him to know.
She walked past him towards the kitchen, needing movement, a distance, something to remind herself she was still in her own home. The floor was cold beneath her feet. She poured herself a glass of water from the purifier and drank half of it too quickly and then set it down with more forces than necessary.
"You don't get to decide anything in my life, I told you before," she said without turning around.
"I didn't decide it," he replied. "I recognized it for you."
She turned the, anger flaring hot and bright. "Recognized what? That I helped you? That I didn't let you bleed out on the pavement? That's called being a human with compassion for the needy."
His eyes darkened at her response, not with offense but with something closer to interest. "No." he said quietly. "That's called refusing to look away."
Taehyun's words landed harder than she expected to her. Human nature, she thought bitterly, wasn't heroic, it wasn't noble. Most people survived by minding their own business, by choosing ignorance when awareness came with risk. She had always known that. She had lived by it, too - kept her head down, her boundaries clean, her life orderly. And yet, she did it.
Xinyue crossed her arms. "You stayed because you think I'm careless."
"I stayed because you're predictable person," he said.
That stung, really irritated her. "Excuse me?"
"You do what you think is right," he continued, unbothered by her emotions. What he wanted to tell her from the beginning for their story intervened. He also kind of regretted not doing it sooner. "Even when it costs you. Even when it's inconvenient. Even when it scares you."
She laughed softly at his response, humorless. "You make that sound like a flaw."
"It is," he said without hesitation. "In my world, it is."
The silence stretched between them. She noticed then the small things she had missed earlier - the way his breathing wasn't entirely even, the faint tension in his shoulders that suggested pain kept carefully leashed. The way he positioned himself so his back was never fully to a door, even now.
"You should be resting," she said finally.
"So should you."
"I don't usually invite armed strangers into my living room."
"But you always invited me, don't you think it's a bit late to say that," he said
She hated how easily he said it. As if exceptions were inevitable, as if lines were meant to blur. She moved back toward the couch and sat, this time more deliberately, meeting his gaze head-on.
"Why me?" He didn't answer immediately. That, more than anything, unsettled her, because she has been asking him this same question for some times now and his answers were always vague. Something that never satisfied her.
"People don't get dragged into your kind of mess for no reason," she pressed again. "So why me? Answer to me properly, not your usual vague answers"
His eyes dropped, briefly, to the floor. When he looked back up, something had shifted in him not softened, but sharpened, like a blade turned to catch the light. "Because you didn't ask my name," he said.
She blinked. "What?" she responded to him in surprise.
"In the alley," he explained. "You didn't ask who I was. You didn't ask what I'd done. You didn't ask why someone wanted me dead. You treated the wound and took me in."
"That's my job." She fought back.
"No," he said. "It was your choice."
She opened her mouth to protest, then stopped. Because he was right, and she hated that he was right.
Humans like explanations no matter what. It liked categories, the victims, criminals, innocent, guilty everything. They made the world easier to navigate. She had stripped all of that away and focused on the blood, the damage, the simple fact that someone would die if she didn't act. At this time she felt like an idiot, and idiot for not listening to anyone and anything, for not stepping back – when the patient file gone missing, when patient disappeared over night, when an unknown patient appeared, when Taehyun told her to make a choice, for everything.
She swallowed hardly. "That doesn't make me special."
"It makes you dangerous," he said softly. "To yourself."
Something twisted in her chest. For a moment, neither of them spoke. The city outside hummed, distant and indifferent to their emotions. Somewhere below a car alarm chirped and fell silent again.
"Are you afraid of me?" he asked suddenly.
The question was so direct and unexpected it almost startled her. At first, she considered lying it would have been easier. "Yes," she said instead. "But not for the reason you thing."
His brow lifted slightly. "What do I think Xinyue? Tell me."
"I'm afraid," she said slowly, choosing each and every word that need to follow, "because you make it feel like staying is normal. Like this…" she gestured between them, the quiet, the proximity, the way everything wrapped itself around her apartment "…is something people do."
His gaze softened at her for a fraction. "It is something people do."
"People don't sit in stranger's apartments all the night watching them sleep."
"I know I'm still a stranger, but people stay," he said. "When leaving feels like abandonment."
The word hung between them, which was heavy and unexpected. She stared at him for a long moment with nothing to express. "You think leaving would have been abandoning me?"
"I know it would have been," he replied.
Xinyue felt like her throat tightened, irritation mixing with something dangerously close to understanding. People are naturally not very kind, but it was consistent. They stayed where, they felt responsible. They stayed where guilt anchored them. They stayed where something unfinished lingered in the air. She thought what might made him stay instead of leaving.
She rubbed at her temples. "You don't know me. "
"No," he agreed at her. "But I know the patterns."
"And you decided you can predict me? You are seriously something." she said it with a disbelief in her face.
"I thought that if I had left, you would have spent the rest of the night staring at your door, listening for sounds that may or may not come," he said.
She didn't say anything for that, because she knew there is no answer for it. And whatever he said is right, it made her a bit small and self-conscious of the thought of there are people who sees her. She exhaled slowly. "You can't protect me forever."
"I don't intend to."
"Then what is this?" she demanded. "What are you trying to do or prove?"
He rose from the chair in one smooth motion, not approaching, not retreating just standing, tall and undeniably present. "I'm buying time."
"For what?"
"For you to decide," he said. "Whether you want to pretend it never happened… or accept that it already changed something."
Her pulse quickened at it. His close proximity made it worse, and she could see the faint lines of exhaustion at the corners of his eyes, the discipline in the way he held himself together despite pain. He smelled faintly of metal and rain and something darker she couldn't name.
"Human nature," she said quietly almost to herself, "is to choose the path that hurts least."
He looked at her with something like approval. "And yet, you rarely do," he said to her shaking his head slightly. The truth of it settled uncomfortably in her bones.
She stepped back, breaking the moment that felt like scared. "You are not staying forever."
"No."
"But you're staying the rest of the night."
"Yes."
She nodded once, took a sharp and decisive breath. "Then you're sleeping here."
His lips curved faintly at it. "I don't sleep."
"You rest," she corrected. "In the chair. And if you bleed for the second time on my furniture again, I will personally throw you out. I can't believe you once again managed to get hurt"
A soft sound escaped him, something dangerously close to laugh. "There is nothing to bleed for, and I will do as you wish, doctor."
She turned away before she could analyze the warmth that spread through her chest at the sound of the title.
When she went back to lay back down in her own room, the apartment no longer felt empty. That should have frightened her more than it did. Instead, she found herself listening not the for the footsteps to appear in the hall. Not for threats beyond the door, but for the quiet, steady presence of a man who chosen to not to leave.
As time ticking, she realized her sleep crept back in, wasn't about good or evil. It was about staying when walking away would have been easier.
And that night….
He didn't leave. But stayed once again.