Ten o'clock. Alan stood at Alina's apartment door, backpack on his shoulder.

Inside it were a few things that, at a glance, looked ordinary: his laptop, a charger, a small black plastic bag, and a thumb drive the size of his thumbnail.

What made them anything but ordinary was the reason he'd brought them.

He still remembered that night—the bar, the alcohol, the fragments of memory that felt like they'd been torn out by force. Alan had never liked the feeling of not being in control. And now… that control had a name: Alina.

The closer he got to her, the clearer it became: he needed two things at the same time.

To know Alina—and to make sure he wasn't walking into the same trap twice.

"I brought chocolate."

"Oh, thank you." Alina took the box with a wide smile. Swiss dark chocolate, low sugar—minimal packaging, the kind of price tag that made you wince.

"Come in, make yourself at home." Her voice was easy. She set the chocolate on the table, then nudged the mop to the corner. A faint lemon-and-antiseptic smell greeted him.

Alan stepped into the living room.

One thing hit immediately: tidy.

Not the sterile, museum kind of tidy where you were afraid to touch anything—but the kind that was lived in. Tissues in the corner of the desk. Glasses rinsed and put back. Slippers facing the right direction.

Alan suddenly felt like his own apartment was a total pigsty.

Alina came back from her room carrying a laptop and a thick sketchbook. "This is the UX draft. Inventory system—but the main thing is the interface has to look polished."

Alan opened the sketchbook. Page after page of blue-to-purple gradient palettes, rounded button sketches with subtle hover effects, even custom illustrations for empty states. 'Aesthetics above all else,' he thought. But the design itself—it was solid.

"Isn't the grade supposed to be mostly about logic?"

"Yeah, but if the UI looks good and it's responsive, it gives you a boost."

"Is that how it works now?"

"Pretty much, which is why I need help with the code. I can do the mockup in Figma, but the second it's time to export to HTML… I blank."

Alan smiled faintly. "Okay. Share your Figma access. I'll work from here."

Alina logged into her account and shared the prototype.

Alan's screen turned into the kind of battlefield he enjoyed: VS Code, Prettier, Live Server.

'Click-clack-click-clack.'

```html

```

"Tailwind?" Alina asked, curious.

"Faster than writing CSS by hand," Alan said without looking up. "I'll have this done in no time."

He clicked Live Server.

The browser opened.

Alina's mockup came to life.

"Wow, you're… really good at this," Alina murmured, genuinely caught off guard.

Alan only nodded—like it was nothing.

It wasn't.

Not because of the code.

Because of the way she was looking at him when she said it.

When Alina stood up, she said casually, "Okay, I'm leaving it in your hands. I'll be in and out—multitasking. Laundry and cooking."

"Go ahead."

The moment she was out of sight, Alan stared at the screen for a few seconds longer than he needed to.

He could hear running water. Dishes. The sounds of someone comfortable in their own space.

And for a second, Alan wanted to be comfortable too.

The thumb drive came out of his pocket.

He plugged it into the open USB port on Alina's laptop.

Command Prompt opened.

```

robocopy "C:\Users\Alina\Documents" "E:\backup\documents" /E /Z /R:1 /W:1

robocopy "C:\Users\Alina\Pictures" "E:\backup\pictures" /E /Z /R:1 /W:1

```

The progress bar ran silently.

47%… 79%… 100%.

Alan swallowed.

He didn't open her chats.

He didn't touch anything clearly personal.

He was only securing fragments of information—names, places, dates—the kind of details that usually formed a pattern.

The drive came out.

Went back into his pocket.

Then Alan returned to VS Code like a man who had just done something he didn't want to think about too hard.

By the time Alina came back in her apron, Alan had already added a real-time search feature to the inventory table.

"How far along are you?" she asked, settling beside him.

"Eighty percent. Just need to integrate a dummy API for the item data." He pulled up the browser preview. "The hover effects match your mockup exactly. Even that loading animation you sketched—I built it."

Alina smiled wide. "You're a genius."

Alan held her smile for a fraction of a second too long.

And only then did it hit him: he'd come here telling himself to keep his distance—and now he was busy trying not to get too close.

The smell of garlic and hot oil drifted out of the kitchen. Alina was singing along to a pop song playing at full volume—off-key, wrong lyrics, zero shame about either.

Behind his laptop screen, Alan let out a quiet smile. His fingers were still moving across the keyboard, finishing out the responsive grid for the inventory table.

"Alan!" Alina appeared carrying a wooden tray. On it: a plate of golden fried chicken, a bowl of green vegetable soup, and a tall glass of pink strawberry milk. "Lunch! I remembered you liked strawberry milk yesterday."

Alan looked up. His eyes flicked between the code on screen and the warmth on Alina's face.

"I made the chicken from scratch. Full spice blend." She set the tray beside his laptop and gently pushed the screen back. "Break time. Fifteen minutes."

Alan nodded.

"Try the soup first."

Alina watched him, chin resting on her hand, expression full of quiet hope.

Alan picked up the spoon. The smell alone made his throat tighten. Not because it was bad. His body just… didn't agree with it.

But he looked at Alina's eyes. Bright. Completely genuine.

For her, he told himself.

Alan opened his mouth, brought the spoon to his lips, and swallowed.

It was going down like broken glass. His throat pushed back. His stomach lurched immediately. Cold sweat prickled at his temple. He held his breath, gripped his own knee under the table hard enough to keep himself from spitting it out right then and there.

"How is it?" Alina asked, eyes wide and waiting.

Alan forced the corners of his mouth up. Stiff. But enough.

"Good," he said, voice slightly rough. "Really good."

Alina's face lit up like she'd just won something. "Oh thank God! I was scared it was too salty."

Without warning, Alina picked up the ladle again. "Here, have more. You must be starving. Eat up."

Alan's plate—which had just lost one spoonful—was full again. A mountain of vegetables. Broth running over the edges.

Alan stared at the plate with carefully concealed horror.

'I'm toast.'

Ding-ding-ding!

The doorbell went off three times in a row, sharp and loud.

"Who is that?" Alina turned, visibly annoyed. "The nerve, interrupting people while they're eating."

She stood up and walked to the door, feet hitting the floor with purpose. "One second. Just keep up."

The moment Alina's back disappeared through the doorway, Alan moved.

'Uhk.'

He spit the contents of his mouth into a thick tissue he grabbed from the box, then crumpled it into a tight ball.

But the problem wasn't over. The mountain of vegetables was still staring at him from the plate.

His left hand went into his pocket—a small black plastic bag, already rolled up neatly. In a matter of seconds, his spoon worked like a machine: moving the chicken aside, then scooping every last piece of vegetable and broth into the bag.

Half the strawberry milk followed.

Tied tight. Buried in the backpack beside his chair.

The fried chicken sat untouched on the plate—the one thing in front of him he could actually eat.

Ding-ding-ding!

"Stop pressing the bell, that's so annoying," Alina's voice floated from down the hall.

Alan sat back down. His breathing was still slightly off, the residual nausea still sitting at the back of his throat—but the table looked clean.

When Alina came back, Alan was calmly eating a piece of chicken.

"You finished the soup already?" she asked, settling back into her seat.

Alan nodded, unhurried. "Yeah. Seasoning was just right."

"Right?! That's a family recipe." Alina smiled, satisfied, and went back to her own plate. "What about the milk?"

"Perfect sweetness. Refreshing."

Alina didn't suspect a thing. She kept eating, talking about the notoriously brutal Web Programming professor.

Alan nodded along, eyes drifting every so often to the cursor still blinking in his unfinished line of code.

"Come on, stop zoning out."

"Yeah."

Alan complied, picking up another piece of chicken with his fingers. This time he didn't pull the meat off the bone first.

Crack.

A sharp, grinding sound as he bit straight into the thigh. The bones splintered between his teeth—clean, quick, gone completely.

Alina stared.

"You ate the bone?"

"Yeah, it's good."

"You're genuinely built different. Your teeth—does that not hurt?"

"I'm used to it."

"You don't want rice?" Alina tried again.

"No."

"Wheat bread?"

"No. The chicken's enough."

"You're such a picky eater, like a five-year-old. Your body needs real nutrients to function."

"My metabolism works differently. I don't need much."

"That can't be right," Alina said, eyebrows pulling together.

"I'm still standing."

"True, I guess. Maybe I should eat more meat if that's the secret to being like you."

"Please don't try that."

"I'm genuinely curious though. You're just… different. Eating the bones, the glowing contacts. You're not like most people."

"That's just in your head."

"I'm serious. What's the secret?"

"There isn't one."

"I'm starting to think it's performance-enhancing drugs. Or maybe you just cheat off someone else's work."

"I would never go that far. And when I was explaining things to you earlier—did I look like I was reciting someone else's answers?"

"No, fair point. Ugh, just tell me the trick."

"Not now. There's a time for everything. Let's finish what's in front of us first."

"Fine."

Alina went back to eating, a small smile on her face.

Alan let himself smile too.

But underneath it, something nagged—a strange, low-grade guilt.

He had just lied to keep one simple thing intact: her smile.

The empty plates sat on the table—Alina's rice gone, Alan's chicken half-eaten on purpose, staged to avoid suspicion. Alina gathered everything and headed to the kitchen, humming the same song from earlier. Water running, plates clinking. Alan went back to the screen, finishing the last lines of the real-time search script.

Less than five minutes later, Alina came back and sat beside him, carrying a small bowl of sliced papaya and strawberries. The smell of ripe fruit cut through the lingering spice.

"After all that protein, fruit is mandatory. Cholesterol's not going to regulate itself." She pushed the bowl toward Alan, then glanced at the screen. "So where are we?"

Alan leaned over. "Done. Just needs your sign-off—check it against the Figma mockup you gave me."

Alina moved closer, her shoulder nearly brushing his arm. She scrolled through page by page: the header with the exact blue-to-purple gradient from her sketch, the hover buttons transitioning smoothly, the inventory table fully responsive on mobile. Her finger tapped the screen when she found the loading animation—the spinning rabbit she'd drawn on page 17 of her sketchbook.

"Wait—that's my rabbit!" Her eyes went wide. "You actually built this from scratch? You didn't just grab a template?"

"A template wouldn't match your custom color palette." Alan pointed to the relevant lines in VS Code. "I used Tailwind for speed, but the structure is all original. The grid system follows the flowchart you scribbled on the back of the sketchbook."

Alina went quiet for a second, then let out a slightly pained smile. "You know—I spent a whole night last week trying to get one button to center. I gave it `margin: 0 auto` and the whole layout just collapsed. I was about to cry."

"That happens when the parent element doesn't have a defined width." Alan typed quickly, and two lines of code snapped the button perfectly into place. "CSS is like a puzzle—every piece has to know what the others are doing."

"That's incredible." Her voice was soft, but real. "My professor is going to be shocked. I had honestly already accepted a C."

"If they ask how the data shows up in the table, just say: 'JavaScript DOM manipulation—pulling from an object array defined in a separate file.'" Alan pointed to the `data.js` folder in the project. "Web Programming professors usually don't care whether you wrote it yourself or not, as long as you can walk them through the logic at the presentation."

Alina nodded, then grabbed a slice of papaya from the bowl. "Here. Eat something. Keep that brain running."

Alan accepted it with a thin smile—fortunately small enough to sell. He swallowed it like medicine, performing enjoyment.

"Speaking of which…" Alina looked at him while chewing a strawberry. "What kind of family are you from? You code like you came out of the womb doing it."

"My dad's a specialist physician, my mom's a pediatrician. They're in Devon, England right now. My sister's a scientist in Shanghai." Alan closed his laptop slightly, leaving space for a pause. "But I went a different direction. Computer science—I didn't want to live in their shadow."

"That's impressive." Alina pointed toward the second screen on her desk. A photo of a young girl standing in a frost-covered orange grove, flanked by an elderly couple with kind faces. "Those are my grandparents. My mom passed when I was two. My dad left when I was seven—never came back."

Alan didn't say anything. He looked at the photo without blinking.

"I've been pushing myself to get through school and into a job as fast as I can. I don't want to be a burden to them." Alina laughed softly, but her eyes had gone glassy. "I used to have zero tolerance for people like you—skipping class, fighting, acting like the future didn't apply to you. Like you had no responsibility, even with parents who'd worked to put you in school."

Alan looked down. His fingers found the edge of his chair.

"But it turns out…" Alina touched his arm lightly. "You just needed someone to point you in the right direction. Not to yell at you—but to say, 'Hey. You're capable of more than this.'"

Alan's head came up slowly. Something in his expression shifted—not sadness, more like a layer of ice that had finally started to give.

"Would you be willing to be that person for me?" His voice came out low.

"Me?" Alina laughed. "I still need someone to hold my hand through a basic Web Programming assignment. But… if you want, we can figure it out together. You teach me to code, I—"

"—teach me to be a better person?" Alan finished it for her, a quiet smile finding its way onto his face.

"Exactly." Alina nodded firmly. "But don't even think about going the hacker route. That world is not worth it."

Alan actually laughed—real, no performance behind it. "Hackers are boring. Too many rules."

"The audacity," Alina said, bumping his shoulder. "Okay, explain Primary Key and Foreign Key again. I don't want to blank if the professor asks."

Alan opened his laptop again. But this time, he didn't go straight to typing. He looked at Alina for a moment—long enough to notice how warm the room felt compared to the silence he went home to.

'Is this what home feels like?' he thought.

Not a building. Not an address.

But someone who waited for you to finish eating, then handed you sliced fruit with a smile—even when you were lying to them about enjoying every bite.

That was something Alan had never felt before. Something in the way he was oriented had shifted. He wanted to be closer to her. To feel the warmth of being near her. To hear her voice.

A simple wish. Should've been easy.

It wasn't.

Nine p.m. The key turned in the lock of Alan's apartment—click. Silence closed in the moment the door shut. No music, no voices. Just a desk lamp burning alone, throwing light across a monitor that never got turned off.

He shrugged off his jacket. Dropped into his chair. For a moment, he just sat there, eyes closed—replaying the lemon smell of Alina's freshly mopped floor, the sound of her laugh when she saw the rabbit loading animation spin, the warmth of their shoulders almost touching on the couch.

But not now.

The thumb drive slid out. Plugged in. The screen lit up with Alina's neatly organized folders: Documents, Freelance, Pictures.

Alan didn't go through it mechanically, folder by folder like a machine. He read—fast, systematic, but with a strange intensity. His fingers stopped on the Music folder. Japanese pop bands most people had never heard of. He noted her favorite tracks—not for the investigation, but because he remembered her humming one of those melodies in the car.

Same with the films. He saved every list.

He wanted to know Alina inside out—and conduct his investigation at the same time.

He moved to the Gallery. Photos scrolled past: Alina and Marina at a pool, in a drawing class, on a parade ground in flag corps uniform. Marina grinning wide, holding a karate trophy; Alina standing behind her, arms crossed, but her eyes bright—proud of her friend, nothing else. Alan scrolled deeper. Summer vacation shots. Marina in a swimsuit—no tattoos, no butterfly symbol anywhere on her.

He kept going. Birthday photos. A shot from her eighteenth—

He stopped.

A slightly blurry photograph. A young Alina—maybe five years old—standing at the edge of a lake. A thin mist sat on the surface of the water. Behind her, a row of English oak trees typical of the South West.

Alan zoomed in. Bottom left corner. Faint text: Slapton Ley, 2010.

His fingers went still.

Slapton Ley. Devon. His territory.

It hit him like a ton of bricks: his mother's voice on the phone last week—"What's her name?"—"Alina Hamish."—and then silence. A pause that went on too long. Carried too much weight.

Did his mother know the Hamish name? What was Alina doing there?

Alan leaned back, staring at the ceiling of his empty apartment. For the first time in years, he wasn't sure of anything.

He had come to Alina's apartment with one objective: find out who she was. Whether she was connected to the group that had been targeting him. Whether Marina—with the green moon phone case—was part of the same network.

But everything he'd found today wasn't a threat.

He'd found a girl who cooked chicken from scratch for someone like him. Who pushed a bowl of fruit toward him so his "cholesterol wouldn't get out of hand." Who talked about her grandparents in a voice that cracked slightly but never once asked for pity. Who—without knowing it—reminded him of what warmth felt like. The kind he'd never had a home to come back to.

Was this the effect of the silver ring bond? The one that only activated in monogamous creatures like him.

With Alina, he could feel more—more aware, more present, more everything.

Alan pressed his hands over his face. The possessive pull was rising. But his mind kept running the plan unchanged.

Because his life was now tied to hers—which meant he had to earn her trust first. Her affection. And once he had that, he'd have the room to investigate what had actually happened that night. The night his wild side had slipped its leash for the very first time.