Day 8. Late morning.
-12°C inside the unit.
Warmth claimed the space between them with Alessia's leg draped over his waist and her arm across his chest and her face buried in the curve of his neck, indigo hair splayed across the pillow like spilled ink.
Jae-min's hand rested on the curve of her hip with his thumb tracing slow circles on her bare skin where her thermal shirt had ridden up during the night, and he squeezed her flesh firmly with a deep instinctive possessiveness flaring in his chest.
He didn't move because he didn't want to, the bunker warm at thirty-two degrees with the generator humming and the faint smell of gun oil and antiseptic mixing with the lingering trace of her shampoo.
Alessia stirred with her fingers tracing lazy circles on his chest before squeezing, not gently but possessively.
"Stop looking at the ceiling." Alessia mumbled, a soft grounding warmth lacing her tired voice.
"I'm not." Jae-min denied, his tone flat and detached.
"You're thinking. I can feel it. Your heart rate changes when you think." Alessia observed, a faint anxious edge creeping into her composure as she pulled herself up and straddled him with her hair falling forward to curtain them both.
"What time is it?" Jae-min questioned, his voice quiet and commanding.
"Late. Almost ten." Alessia answered, a heavy exhaustion weighing down her words.
"We slept in." Jae-min noted, his tactical mind already calculating the lost hours.
"We earned it." Alessia countered, a fierce defiant protectiveness ringing in her tone. "Yesterday was a lot."
'Victor Reyes. The breach. Eight armed officers. Uncle's chest exploding in red mist.' Jae-min recalled, a cold, heavy weight pressing against his ribs as the memories stacked. 'Sixty seconds of silence. Then golden light and Uncle sitting back up.'
Alessia's fingers found his jaw and turned his face back to hers, her touch warm and gentle and the kind that didn't demand but reminded.
"Stop reliving yesterday. I'm right here." Alessia murmured, a desperate aching love softening her clinical composure as she kissed him slow and deep.
His hands slid up her thighs with his fingers pressing into soft skin and pulling her hips down against him, squeezing her backside firmly with a primal territorial need seizing him as she shivered against him in a full-body tremor that had nothing to do with cold.
He kissed her back because she was right and she was always right and she was the only thing in this frozen hell that made him feel human.
— • • • —
Breakfast was absurd.
Jae-min stood at the center of the bunker with everyone watching, Alessia at the table with Ji-yoo and Rico on a supply crate cleaning his sidearm and Jennifer cross-legged on the floor hugging her knees and Yue in the corner with her back against the wall and her jian resting across her thighs.
"Before you ask." Jae-min breathed, his voice cold and commanding. "Yes. I planned for this."
He reached into the void and pulled out a white thermal box, then another, then another.
In the corner, Yue's fingers tightened around the hilt of her jian with a subtle shift almost invisible, the air around Jae-min's hand having folded with space compressing and reality parting and something deep in her chest responding.
'This isn't heat from a furnace. This is standing inside the furnace.' Yue burned, a fierce involuntary heat flooding through her core as her thighs pressed together. 'Every time he reaches into space, something inside me answers.'
Three boxes stacked on the kitchen counter.
"What is that?" Ji-yoo demanded, her elegant, deadly composure cracking into sheer curiosity.
"Breakfast." Jae-min answered, his tone flat and precise.
Alessia opened the first box and stared before looking at Jae-min.
"Is this wagyu?" Alessia questioned, a stunned disbelief widening her blue eyes.
"A5. From Miyazaki Prefecture." Jae-min confirmed, reciting the logistics without effort.
He opened the second box.
"Lobster thermidor. Flash-frozen at negative forty. Still good." Jae-min continued, opening the third. "Truffle risotto. Black winter truffles from Alba."
The bunker went silent.
Ji-yoo's chopsticks were already in the air.
"You absolute psycho." Ji-yoo breathed, a fierce protective hunger overtaking her manners. "You hoarded wagyu. In the middle of an apocalypse. While everyone else is eating canned tuna."
"I also have canned tuna." Jae-min replied, his monotone unchanged.
"Wagyu!" Ji-yoo demanded, a fierce territorial craving burning in her eyes.
"And expired crackers." Jae-min added.
"WAGYU, Jae-min!" Ji-yoo roared, a fierce, desperate longing pitching her voice higher.
"I went to Blackbird Fine Dining before the freeze. Ordered two hundred army-ration packs for the group." Jae-min explained, his tactical mind recalling the precise execution. "While I was there, I noticed the walk-in cooler. Chef's personal stash. I told him to pack it separately. Tip was fifty thousand pesos."
"Of course it was." Ji-yoo snapped, a sarcastic, exasperated affection coloring her tone as she was already chewing with her eyes rolling back.
"Oh my God!" Ji-yoo moaned, a pure, unfiltered delight escaping her lips.
"I hate you!" Ji-yoo added, a fierce loving contradiction aching around the mouthful of beef.
"You're welcome." Jae-min replied, a cold, detached amusement daring to flicker in his black eyes.
Rico picked up a piece of lobster with his fingers and looked at it like it was a miracle.
"This is better than my wedding dinner." Rico declared, a warm, grounded gratitude rumbling in his chest.
"Both of them." Rico added, a dry battle-hardened honesty dropping the words without flinching.
Alessia watched Jae-min pull out real ceramic plates and cloth napkins and a bottle of 2019 Barolo.
"You planned this." Alessia stated, a pragmatic awe settling over her features.
"I planned everything." Jae-min confirmed, an absolute unyielding certainty anchoring his voice.
"How much did you spend on this?" Alessia pressed, her doctor's pragmatism fighting against the sheer absurdity.
"Eight hundred thousand. More or less." Jae-min answered.
Ji-yoo choked on her wagyu.
"Eight hundred." Ji-yoo wheezed, a shocked, breathless sound escaping her.
"Money is paper, Ji-yoo. It has no value when the world ends." Jae-min cut in, his tone brooking no argument. "What has value is this. Calories. Nutrition. Morale. A hot meal that makes people feel human for ten minutes."
He poured Alessia a glass of wine and set it in front of her with his hand lingering on the small of her back and sliding down to squeeze her backside firmly, a brief warm press of Del Rosario possession that made her glance up at him with the tips of her ears turning pink.
"You hate wine." Alessia observed, a soft, flustered surprise catching in her throat.
"You like Barolo." Jae-min countered, his voice dropping to a quiet, intimate certainty.
"How do you know that?" Alessia pressed, a vulnerable, trembling confusion in her eyes.
"I know everything about you, Alessia." Jae-min declared, a possessive absolute devotion lacing his cold tone.
She stared at him, then smiled with that crooked, genuine smile that made his chest ache.
Jennifer reached for the risotto and hesitated, glancing up not at Jae-min's face but at the edge of his shoulder with her cheeks flushing pink.
"Is it okay if I —." Jennifer started, her voice a submissive, terrified whisper.
"Eat. All of you. There's more where this came from." Jae-min breathed, a commanding yet reassuring weight settling in his tone.
She took a small portion and pressed her chin to her chest and ate in silence with her knees drawn tight.
'He remembers everything about everyone. And I can't even look at him while he's standing three feet away.' Jennifer ached, a sickening, agonizing jealousy twisting her insides. 'I want him to want to put his child inside me the way he wants her.'
Yue hadn't moved from her corner when Jae-min pulled out one more container, smaller, and set it on the floor in front of her.
The spatial fold rippled through the bunker again, and Yue's jaw tightened with the heat returning sharper and coiling low in her stomach.
"Dan dan noodles. Sichuan peppercorn oil. Ground pork. Chili crisp." Jae-min offered, his tactical mind calculating the precise leverage needed.
"You knew I was coming?" Yue questioned, her voice cold and quiet and fiercely guarded.
"No. But I knew someone would eventually. And if that someone was Chinese, I wanted leverage." Jae-min answered, his detached precision unbroken.
Yue stared at the container, then at Jae-min, then back at the container, and she opened it and ate one bite with her expression not changing one millimeter.
But she ate the entire bowl in silence, every last grain.
Ji-yoo watched with her mouth open.
"She didn't say thank you." Ji-yoo observed, an indignant protective suspicion narrowing her eyes.
"She doesn't need to." Jae-min replied, a calm, commanding acceptance in his voice.
"She's terrifying." Ji-yoo snapped, a fierce protective wariness bristling.
"She's useful." Jae-min countered, his tactical assessment devoid of emotion.
"Same thing in your vocabulary." Ji-yoo shot back, a sharp resentful fear lacing her words.
Five people ate wagyu beef and drank Barolo and pretended for exactly forty-five minutes that civilization hadn't ended.
It was the best breakfast of Jae-min's life, twice.
— • • • —
10:30 AM.
The corridor.
The bunker door was ruined, not damaged but ruined, the original six-inch reinforced steel blast door blown off its hinges by Victor's breaching charge, with the frame warped and the locking mechanism a mangled lump of metal and shattered bolts.
Jae-min stood in the doorway with his hands on his hips, staring at the damage.
"That door cost more than my first car." Rico observed, a warm, grounded amusement softening the blow as he stepped up beside him.
"It cost more than my first condo." Jae-min countered, a cold, detached irritation flattening his voice.
"Four hundred thousand. And eight men with a single breaching charge." Rico measured, a wise knowing patience in his tone.
"I know what happened." Jae-min cut in, a sharp commanding authority snapping in his words. "The frame needs to be replaced. Not repaired. Replaced."
"Then why are you standing here staring at it?" Rico pressed, a wise patient probing softening the question.
"Because I'm deciding whether to fix it or upgrade it." Jae-min answered, his tactical mind already revolving the variables.
He returned three minutes later carrying a steel beam, a welding kit, a plasma cutter, a new hydraulic cylinder, and a torque wrench that looked like it belonged on an aircraft carrier.
Ji-yoo appeared in the doorway.
"Oh no." Ji-yoo snapped, a fierce, dreaded exasperation flaring in her chest.
"Oh yes." Jae-min confirmed, a cold, commanding certainty anchoring his voice.
"You're going to do that thing where you stare at a problem for two minutes and then solve it in a way that makes everyone feel useless." Ji-yoo accused, an indignant protective irritation narrowing her eyes.
"I don't do that." Jae-min denied, his tone flat.
"You literally did that yesterday with the Black Hole." Ji-yoo pressed. "You made Jennifer question her existence."
"I-I heard that!" Jennifer called from inside the bunker, a submissive, embarrassed quiver shaking her voice.
"Good!" Ji-yoo yelled back, a bold defiant challenge ringing through the hallway. "Because it's TRUE!"
Jae-min ignored both of them and knelt in front of the ruined door frame with the plasma cutter in hand, sparks flying as he carved away the warped sections of steel.
Rico watched for thirty seconds, then sat down on the hallway floor and pulled out a hand-rolled cigarette and lit it.
"You're going to need help with the frame alignment." Rico offered, a warm patience breaking the silence.
"I know." Jae-min deflected, a stubborn, detached focus hardening his voice.
"I'll hold the beam." Rico offered again.
"Then stop being stubborn and let me help." Rico insisted, a firm fatherly command anchoring his words.
"Fine. Hold the left side." Jae-min conceded, a reluctant cold acceptance dropping his shoulders.
They worked in silence for an hour, with Jae-min cutting and Rico holding, and sparks painting the frozen corridor in orange and white, while Ji-yoo leaned against the wall, eating leftover wagyu from a container.
"You two look like a home improvement commercial." Ji-yoo observed, a teasing affectionate warmth lightening her deadly elegance.
"Shut up, Ji-yoo." Jae-min snarled without looking up.
"Fixing the family home. Bonding over power tools." Ji-yoo continued, a bold, fierce playfulness dancing in her voice as she took another bite. "Very heartwarming."
"I will put you in the void." Jae-min threatened, a dark, commanding promise underlying his monotone.
"You can't. You tried once, and Alessia threatened to sleep on the couch." Ji-yoo countered, a smug protective triumph flashing in her eyes.
"That was ONE time." Jae-min breathed, a rare vulnerable panic cracking his cold facade.
"She meant it." Ji-yoo stated, a fierce absolute certainty anchoring her smirk.
"I know she meant it." Jae-min admitted, a quiet, heavy dread settling in his chest.
Rico exhaled smoke with the corners of his mouth twitching.
"You two haven't changed since you were eight." Rico observed, a warm nostalgic affection rumbling in his chest.
"Nine." Ji-yoo corrected, a fierce possessive pride defying the timeline.
"Eight. You used to fight over the TV remote." Rico replied, a wise, knowing amusement softening his tone.
"He always won." Ji-yoo complained, a bitter lingering resentment flaring in her gut.
"Because I was faster." Jae-min stated, a cold tactical precision stating the fact.
"Because you were MEANER." Ji-yoo shot back, an indignant, fierce accusation ringing in her voice.
"Same thing." Jae-min dismissed, a blunt logical simplicity.
"It is NOT the same thing!" Ji-yoo insisted, a fierce, passionate indignation squaring her shoulders. "Speed is a physical attribute. Meanness is a character flaw. They are categorically different."
"You're categorically annoying." Jae-min muttered over the plasma cutter.
"I heard that." Ji-yoo snapped.
"You were meant to." Jae-min replied.
Ji-yoo threw a piece of wagyu at his head, and he caught it without looking and ate it.
"Good wagyu." Jae-min noted, a cold detached approval.
"I HATE you." Ji-yoo snapped, a fierce loving contradiction flushing her cheeks.
"Nine out of ten. Better than the lobster." Jae-min added, chewing calmly.
Ji-yoo threw another piece, and he caught that one too.
"Are you just going to keep catching everything I throw?" Ji-yoo demanded, an exasperated, furious confusion pitching her voice high.
"Yes." Jae-min confirmed, a cold tactical certainty anchoring his monotone.
"What if I throw the broom?" Ji-yoo challenged, a dangerous, bold curiosity glinting in her black eyes.
"Then you'll have nothing to sweep with." Jae-min countered, a logical, detached precision dismantling her threat.
"What if I throw myself?" Ji-yoo challenged, a fierce, reckless defiance lifting her chin.
"Then I'll catch you and put you in the corridor and tell you to sweep." Jae-min answered, a cold, commanding finality closing the subject.
Rico exhaled smoke.
"She gets the drama from her mother's side." Rico observed, a warm, knowing patience softening the correction.
"We get the drama from YOUR side." Ji-yoo shot back, a fierce, indignant loyalty defending their mother's honor.
"My side is stoic. Professional. Dignified." Rico declared, a firm, grounded stoicism squaring his shoulders.
"You cried during a Pacquiao vs. Mayweather fight." Ji-yoo accused, a sharp playful affection grinning through her words.
"That was allergies." Rico insisted, a warm defensive embarrassment hardening his tone.
"You cried THREE times." Ji-yoo pressed, a relentless, fierce amusement.
"Manila pollen is very aggressive." Rico stated, a grave, grounded dignity refusing to crack.
"There's no pollen in January. In a condo. On the fourteenth floor." Jae-min pointed out, a cold logical precision delivering the killing blow.
Rico took a long drag.
"You both are traitors to this family." Rico declared, a warm, grounded affection softening the indictment.
Jae-min torqued the new bolts into place, and the locking mechanism seated itself with a satisfying chunk.
"Four hundred thousand pesos of engineering." Jae-min seethed, a cold, bitter fury simmering. "Destroyed by eight men with a ten-thousand-peso breaching charge."
"And replaced for free." Ji-yoo added, a smug playful pride curling her lips. "By your magic storage dimension."
"It's not magic. It's spatial manipulation." Jae-min corrected, a sharp technical insistence clipping his words.
"It's magic." Ji-yoo insisted.
"It's physics." Jae-min countered.
"You store CARS in there, Jae-min!" Ji-yoo argued, an exasperated, passionate logic.
"That's still physics." Jae-min stated.
"You stored a WAGYU COW in there!" Ji-yoo pressed.
"That was the chef's walk-in cooler. I stored the entire cooler." Jae-min clarified, his voice flat and unapologetic.
"You stored a WALK-IN COOLER!" Ji-yoo repeated, a shocked, breathless awe dropping her jaw.
"It fit." Jae-min breathed, a detached logical simplicity.
"How does a walk-in cooler FIT in a POCKET DIMENSION?!" Ji-yoo demanded, an exasperated, furious confusion.
"I don't know. It just does. Stop asking questions about things that work." Jae-min dismissed, a cold, commanding finality.
"Everything works until it DOESN'T!" Ji-yoo snapped, crossing her arms.
"Name one time it hasn't worked." Jae-min challenged.
"You tried to store an umbrella, and it came back inside out." Ji-yoo accused, a smug, triumphant memory.
"One time. And umbrellas are structurally ambiguous." Jae-min defended.
"Structurally ambiguous." Ji-yoo repeated, a sarcastic, exasperated disbelief. "You sound like a textbook trying to apologize!"
"Textbooks don't apologize. They correct." Jae-min countered.
"THAT'S THE PROBLEM!" Ji-yoo yelled, throwing her hands in the air.
Rico crushed his cigarette and examined the new door.
"Clean work." Rico assessed, a warm, grounded approval.
"Of course it's clean." Jae-min confirmed, a cold, detached confidence.
"Your father would've laughed at that." Rico said quietly, a warm, heavy grief softening his weathered face.
The hallway went quiet.
'Dad.' Jae-min grieved, a cold hollow pain clamping around his heart as his hand rested on the new door frame. 'You should be here to see this.'
"I know." Jae-min whispered, a cold hollow pain clamping around his heart.
— • • • —
11:15 AM.
The corridor.
Ji-yoo appeared in the corridor doorway with a broom in hand, leaning against the wall and tapping it against her shoulder.
"Hey. Random question." Ji-yoo started, a deceptively casual, dangerous curiosity.
"No." Jae-min refused flatly.
"I haven't even said yet!" Ji-yoo protested.
"The answer is no. Whatever it is. No." Jae-min insisted.
"Okay, hear me out." Ji-yoo pressed, pointing the broom at him. "The parking garage. My car. The yellow Z Nismo. It's still down there, isn't it? Under thirty feet of ice. Probably crushed."
'Her car. Dad bought it for our eighteenth birthday. The same day as my GT-R.' Jae-min recalled, a heavy aching weight settling in his chest as he watched her jaw tighten, and her eyes go flat. 'She's pretending she doesn't care. She always pretends she doesn't care.'
"Ji-yoo." Jae-min called, a commanding, gentle authority softening his cold voice.
"What?" Ji-yoo responded, a defensive trembling anger biting back the tears.
"Your car is fine." Jae-min stated, an absolute unyielding certainty. "I put it in storage the same night. Along with everything else that mattered to you."
Ji-yoo's broom hit the floor.
"WHAT?!" Ji-yoo exploded, a fierce, overwhelming joy shattering her defensive anger as she grabbed his collar with both hands. "MY CAR IS IN ANOTHER DIMENSION RIGHT NOW?!"
"Three days before the freeze. I was in the parking garage running inventory." Jae-min explained, his tactical mind recalling the execution. "I saw your car, saw Uncle Rico's Raptor, saw my GT-R. I knew the basement wasn't reinforced. So I put them all in storage."
"Your Raptor too, Uncle." Jae-min added, turning to Rico.
Rico stared at him for a long moment.
"My Raptor is in a magic closet." Rico said slowly, a heavy grounded restraint anchoring his shock.
"Spatial storage." Jae-min corrected.
"A magic closet." Rico repeated, a wise, exhausted acceptance.
Ji-yoo grabbed Jae-min by the collar and shook him with both hands pressed close against his chest, her fierce koala-like clinginess completely overtaking her.
"YOU HAD MY CAR THIS WHOLE TIME, AND YOU DIDN'T TELL ME?!" Ji-yoo screamed, a betrayed, passionate fury blazing.
"When would I have told you? During the shoot-out? Over wagyu?" Jae-min deflected.
"ANY OF THOSE TIMES WOULD HAVE BEEN FINE!" Ji-yoo roared.
"You were busy choking on lobster." Jae-min pointed out.
"I WOULD HAVE STOPPED CHOKING FOR MY CAR!" Ji-yoo insisted.
"You'd be dead. From choking. On lobster. In a bunker. At the end of the world." Jae-min listed.
"WORTH IT!" Ji-yoo declared.
"It wouldn't be worth it because you'd be DEAD!" Jae-min countered.
"I'd die knowing my car was safe." Ji-yoo insisted.
"The yellow." Ji-yoo's voice cracked slightly.
"Is it still yellow?" Ji-yoo questioned, a terrified, agonizing hope trembling.
"It's still yellow, Ji-yoo." Jae-min confirmed, a quiet, certain warmth breaking through his cold command.
She sat down on the corridor floor right there, cross-legged in the middle of a frozen apocalypse hallway, staring at nothing.
"My car is okay." Ji-yoo whispered, a fierce defiant relief forcing the words past the lump in her throat.
"I can pull it out whenever you want." Jae-min offered quietly, a commanding, gentle devotion softening his voice.
She looked up at him with wet eyes and wiped them fast and aggressively.
"Don't be nice to me right now. I'm mad at you." Ji-yoo warned, a fierce, stubborn pride fighting back the gratitude.
"You're welcome." Jae-min replied, a cold, detached amusement flickering.
"I said I'm MAD at you!" Ji-yoo insisted.
"Noted." Jae-min accepted.
"I hate you!" Ji-yoo snapped, a fierce loving contradiction.
"I know." Jae-min answered, a quiet, certain warmth accepting the lie.
"And you're going to tell me EVERYTHING you stored in that pocket dimension later." Ji-yoo demanded, pointing her broom. "If you stored my guitar pedals and didn't tell me, I will find a way to kill you."
"I stored your guitar pedals." Jae-min stated.
'All fourteen. Including the limited edition Ibanez Tube Screamer she waited six months for.' Jae-min recalled, a quiet fond warmth pressing against his ribs. 'The 1987 Fender Stratocaster. And the Marshall JVM amp.'
"All fourteen of them. Including the limited edition Ibanez Tube Screamer you waited six months for." Jae-min listed, his tactical mind reciting the inventory. "Your 1987 Fender Stratocaster. And your Marshall JVM amp."
Ji-yoo sat back down on the floor because her legs gave out.
"My Strat." Ji-yoo whispered, a fragile, devastated awe.
"It fit." Jae-min breathed.
"How does a MARSHALL AMP FIT in a POCKET DIMENSION?!" Ji-yoo demanded.
"I don't know. It just does. Stop asking questions about things that work." Jae-min cut in.
"I hate you so much." Ji-yoo finally managed, a fierce, overwhelmed affection cracking her voice.
"I know." Jae-min confirmed.
Rico crushed his cigarette.
"The Raptor. It really is okay?" Rico questioned, a quiet, vulnerable hope cracking his military stoicism.
"Pristine condition, Uncle. Matte black. Thirty-seven-inch mud terrains intact. Not a scratch." Jae-min confirmed.
Rico was quiet for a moment.
"That truck was my baby." Rico murmured, a warm, heavy grief.
"I know." Jae-min answered, a quiet, accepting understanding.
Rico nodded once, then turned and walked away.
Alessia appeared in the bedroom doorway, leaning against the frame with Jae-min's shirt hanging off one shoulder.
"You put her car in the void." Alessia observed, a pragmatic knowing warmth.
"I put everyone's cars in the void." Jae-min corrected.
"Even mine?" Alessia pressed, a surprised, fragile hope.
"You had a white VW Golf GTI. I put it in storage too." Jae-min confirmed.
"I never told you I had a Golf." Alessia murmured, a stunned, vulnerable confusion.
"I know everything about you, Alessia." Jae-min declared, a cold, possessive certainty.
"You're kind of obsessive." Alessia observed, a pragmatic, exasperated affection.
"I prefer thorough." Jae-min corrected.
"That's the same thing." Alessia countered.
"It's not. Obsessive implies irrationality. Thorough implies competence." Jae-min stated, a commanding, unyielding certainty. "I am exceptionally competent."
She sipped her coffee and smiled behind the mug with glassy eyes.
"I loved that car." Alessia murmured, a heavy aching grief.
"I know." Jae-min answered, a quiet possessive devotion.
— • • • —
1:00 PM.
Inside the bunker.
Jae-min assigned tasks with military precision.
"Ji-yoo. Corridor. Shell casings and glass." Jae-min ordered.
"I'm a guitarist!" Ji-yoo protested.
"You're a guitarist with a broom. Sweep." Jae-min countered.
"My hands are ARTISTIC INSTRUMENTS!" Ji-yoo declared.
"Your hands are holding a broom. Sweep." Jae-min repeated.
"This is oppression." Ji-yoo muttered.
"This is chores. Oppression requires intent." Jae-min corrected.
"I FEEL your intent!" Ji-yoo snapped, sweeping the first shell casing.
"Jennifer. Medical bay. Restock supplies. Count the bandages." Jae-min instructed, a precise directive softening slightly as he looked at her.
"I don't know how to count bandages." Jennifer whispered, a submissive terrified anxiety.
"Count them anyway. All of them." Jae-min breathed, a cold, absolute patience.
"What if I count them wrong?" Jennifer questioned, a desperate anxious need to please.
"There's no wrong way to count. Only unfinished ways." Jae-min stated.
"That doesn't make sense." Jennifer whispered.
"It doesn't have to. Just count." Jae-min countered.
"Ms. Shang. Stand watch at the stairwell. If anything moves, tell me." Jae-min instructed.
Yue stood, picked up her jian, and walked to the stairwell without a word.
Ji-yoo swept the corridor while humming a Neon Genesis Evangelion theme song badly and off-key and at full volume.
"Is that Cruel Angel's Thesis?" Jennifer called from the medical bay, a quiet, cautious curiosity.
"The very same!" Ji-yoo confirmed, a bold, fierce pride.
"Please stop." Jennifer whimpered.
"Never!" Ji-yoo refused, a defiant, joyful passion.
"She's been singing that song for twenty years." Jae-min breathed without looking up from the ammunition crate. "She doesn't know the words. She never learned them. She just hums the melody. Incorrectly."
"It's not incorrect. It's interpretive." Ji-yoo defended.
"It's painful." Jae-min stated.
"You're painful!" Ji-yoo snapped back.
"That doesn't even make grammatical sense." Jae-min pointed out.
"GRAMMAR IS A CONSTRUCT!" Ji-yoo declared, lifting her broom like a torch.
"A construct that prevents you from sounding like a stroke victim." Jae-min countered.
"I AM AN ARTIST. I TRANSCEND GRAMMAR!" Ji-yoo proclaimed.
"You transcend pitch too. And rhythm. And basic melody." Jae-min added.
"You know what? You're RIGHT. I'm going to sing LOUDER." Ji-yoo decided.
"Please don't." Jae-min begged, a rare vulnerable dread.
"CRUEL ANGEL'S THEEEEEESIS." Ji-yoo belted, a deafening passionate horror echoing off the concrete walls.
Alessia pressed her palms against her ears.
"Is she always like this?" Alessia questioned, a pragmatic pained endurance.
"Every single day." Jae-min confirmed, a cold hollow resignation.
"How have you survived thirty-four years?" Alessia pressed.
"Earplugs. And spite." Jae-min answered.
The humming shifted to something slower and grungier, with distorted power chords ringing out in the wrong key from Ji-yoo's throat.
Jae-min's hands stopped moving.
"Is that 214?" Jae-min questioned, a cold, dreaded recognition.
"The one and only!" Ji-yoo confirmed.
"Stop." Jae-min ordered.
"It's a masterpiece!" Ji-yoo argued.
"You're butchering Rico Blanco's vocals with a broom handle in your hand." Jae-min accused.
"Rico Blanco would WEEP with joy at my interpretation." Ji-yoo declared.
"He's weeping. Not from joy." Jae-min countered.
"CLASSIC Rivermaya are the BEST! The REAL Rivermaya. Bamboo on vocals. Perf on guitar." Ji-yoo declared, a fierce, passionate evangelism.
"The new lineup is better." Jae-min stated.
Ji-yoo's broom hit the floor.
"WHAT did you just say?!" Ji-yoo demanded, a shocked, furious betrayal.
"New Rivermaya. Post-reformation. 'Balisong.' 'Liwanag sa Dilim.' 'You'll Be Safe Here.' Cleaner production. Better songwriting, no solo gimmick." Jae-min argued.
"GIMMICK?!" Ji-yoo's voice cracked. "You called Perf De Castro a GIMMICK?!"
"I called him unnecessary. Gimmick was shorthand." Jae-min clarified.
"I'm going to kill you!" Ji-yoo declared, replacing her broom with her bare fists.
"You weigh a hundred and ten pounds." Jae-min observed.
"I will END you!" Ji-yoo threatened.
"You couldn't end a sentence." Jae-min countered.
"GRAMMAR!" Ji-yoo snapped. "SHUT UP ABOUT GRAMMAR!"
"Perf De Castro. The legendary lead guitarist. Have you HEARD his 214 solo?! The live version?! The way he bends that note at the eighth bar?" Ji-yoo proclaimed, a reverent, passionate awe. "It's not music. It's a religious experience!"
"It's a guitar solo, Ji-yoo." Jae-min breathed flatly.
"It's an EARGASM!" Ji-yoo insisted.
Jennifer's voice drifted from the medical bay.
"She's right about the solo." Jennifer whispered softly, a submissive, timid agreement.
"Thank you, Jennifer!" Ji-yoo cheered.
"I don't know anything about guitars. I just like the word eargasm." Jennifer admitted, a shy anxious honesty flushing her cheeks thinking about the word 'orgasm'.
"It's NOT a real word!" Jae-min snapped.
"New Rivermaya had more hits. More fans. More impact. Numbers don't lie." Jae-min argued.
"Numbers are for SPREADSHEETS. Music is for SOUL. And Perf De Castro IS soul." Ji-yoo declared.
Rico's voice came through the walkie-talkie.
"Ji-yoo's right." Rico ruled, a warm, grounded finality.
"HA!" Ji-yoo celebrated, pumping her fist.
"Perf's solo on 214 is the finest piece of Filipino guitar work since Resty Fabunan." Rico added, a wise nostalgic appreciation.
"I'm surrounded by idiots." Jae-min muttered.
"You're surrounded by people with TASTE." Ji-yoo shot back.
"New Rivermaya is better." Jae-min declared stubbornly.
"DEAF!" Ji-yoo yelled. "ABSOLUTELY DEAF!"
Rico's voice crackled again.
"Corridor is clean. No devices. No surprises." Rico reported. "But Jae-min. There's a handprint on the wall. About six feet up. Frozen blood. It's not one of ours."
Jae-min paused.
"Victor's?" Jae-min pressed.
"No. The fingers are too long. And there are four of them, not five." Rico described, a grim battle-hardened fear. "Looks like a claw mark."
The bunker went still with Ji-yoo stopping mid-sweep, and Jennifer freezing in the medical bay doorway and Alessia setting down the magazine.
"Jennifer." Jae-min's voice was flat and commanding. "The signal you felt last night. From outside the dead zone."
"I can still feel it. Faint. Like a radio station just barely coming through." Jennifer whispered, pressing her palm against her temple. "It's not hostile. At least I don't think it is. It's more like scanning. Like a lighthouse."
"How far?" Jae-min demanded.
"Maybe two, three kilometers?" Jennifer estimated, her voice trembling. "It's not human. It thinks in patterns I've never felt before."
Yue's voice drifted from the stairwell.
"Three kilometers southeast. I can feel it too." Yue reported, a cold detached precision. "Something is moving out there. Something that bends space."
"Like Jae-min?" Ji-yoo questioned, a fierce protective dread.
"No. Different." Yue assessed, comparing the signatures. "His power is clean. Precise. This is jagged. Like broken glass."
"Then we wait." Jae-min decided, a cold, commanding finality.
"Something with CLAW MARKS is on our wall, and your response is 'we wait'?" Ji-yoo demanded.
"We don't have enough information to act. Running toward an unknown threat is how people die." Jae-min confirmed, an absolute unyielding certainty. "When it comes to us, I'll handle it."
"You're insufferable." Ji-yoo muttered.
"I'm alive." Jae-min stated.
"Same thing!" Ji-yoo shot back, a reluctant fierce devotion.
— • • • —
9:30 PM.
The bedroom.
Alessia was already in bed wearing one of his shirts, black and oversized and hanging to mid-thigh.
"Get in." Alessia instructed, a firm possessive desire.
"I need to." Jae-min started.
"Get. In." Alessia repeated, a desperate aching need hardening her tone.
He got in, and she immediately rolled on top of him and straddled him.
"Because you think too much. And when you think too much, you forget that I'm here." Alessia murmured, a desperate aching love softening her composure. "And when you forget that I'm here, you forget that you're allowed to be happy. I'm here. You're allowed."
She kissed him, and he kissed her back with his hands finding her hips and sliding up under the hem of the shirt she wore, pressing into the warm skin of her lower back before grabbing her backside with a firm Del Rosario possessiveness.
The shirt was gone in the dark, and she was bare above him in the dim glow of the bunker's emergency lighting.
Four days since he took her virginity, the Del Rosario fire had already turned the composed doctor into a desperately clinging, fiercely passionate woman.
His fingers dug into the soft flesh of her hips hard enough to leave marks, possessive and territorial, his hands grabbing her breasts and kneading with a rough primal hunger that made her gasp.
'Mine.' Jae-min claimed, a primal consuming possessiveness roaring through his blood.
"Jae-min." Alessia breathed, a surrendering, desperate devotion shaking her voice.
He pulled her down, and his mouth crashed into hers, not tender and not careful, and she was grinding against him with her fingers fumbling at his waistband and tugging downward.
"Inside." Alessia whispered, a commanding, desperate craving. "Now."
She sank down in one slow, devastating movement that took him to the hilt, a full shuddering moan tearing from her throat as her body stretched around him and her walls clenched and pulsed.
'Oh God.' Alessia shattered, an overwhelming mind-numbing ecstasy dissolving her clinical composure. 'He's so deep. Every time. Deeper than the last.'
She rode him with the full uninhibited passion of a woman who had spent her entire life being composed and had finally found the one person who made her want to abandon every last pretense of control.
His hands tightened on her hips, bruising and claiming, and he planted his feet on the mattress and thrust upward hard, and she cried out with a sharp, startled sound that dissolved into a moan loud enough to echo off the concrete walls.
Then the phone buzzed against the nightstand, once, twice, and three times, then rapid fire.
Alessia's eyes opened.
"It's her." Alessia declared, a cold, pragmatic certainty anchoring her breathless voice.
"I know." Jae-min confirmed, his hands still on her hips and not stopping.
"Answer it. I want her to see." Alessia murmured, a dangerous possessive challenge curving her swollen lips.
'Mine. Let her see whose I am.' Alessia vowed, a cold, pragmatic triumph burning away any lingering insecurity as Jae-min reached over and picked up the phone and tapped accept.
Kiara's face filled the screen, unwashed hair and dark circles.
"Jae-min." Kiara begged, a desperate, manipulative pleading.
"Kiara." Jae-min answered, his voice cold and detached while his hands hadn't left Alessia's hips and Alessia hadn't stopped moving.
"I made a mistake. The cheating. The lies. Marcus. All of it." Kiara admitted, a manipulative, desperate remorse.
Then her eyes drifted down, and the camera angle shifted; she could see the bare shoulders, the breast, and the hands gripping something below the edge of the frame, the unmistakable motion of a woman's body rising and falling in his lap.
Kiara's face went white.
Alessia chose that moment to lean forward into the camera frame, slow and deliberate, bare shoulders and swollen lips and crimson ears while still moving and still rolling her hips.
"Hi, Kiara." Alessia seethed, a warm, breathless triumph.
"Oh. Your girlfriend." Kiara hissed, a venomous, manipulative rage. "She's a desperate, lonely woman who latched onto the first man who looked at her. That's not love. You're a meal ticket."
Alessia didn't flinch and didn't slow down but placed both hands on Jae-min's chest and pushed herself upright and changed the angle, taking him deeper.
The sound she made, a low, trembling moan she made zero effort to suppress, was louder than any response she could have given.
"You were saying?" Alessia challenged, a breathless, composed mockery.
"He'll get tired of you. He got tired of me, and I'm ten times the woman you are." Kiara started, a venomous, desperate insecurity.
Jae-min's hands tightened on Alessia's hips, and he thrust up into her hard and deep and deliberate, and Alessia's next moan was real and raw.
"Jae-min." Alessia gasped, a raw involuntary pleasure grinding down against him.
'She's watching. And I don't care.' Jae-min realized, a fierce possessive triumph burning through his veins. 'Let her see what she threw away.'
"Do it. Shoot it inside. I want all of it." Alessia whispered, a desperate, commanding need locking her blue eyes onto his black.
He came with the orgasm hitting like a detonation, his hips jerking upward in a primal, consuming release that roared through his veins as his hands clamped down on her hips and he poured into her in thick, hot pulsing surges.
She followed him a second later with a shattering climax ripping through her body, clinging to him in rhythmic desperate pulses as her moans dissolved into something between a sob and his name.
On the phone screen, Kiara watched him surrender and watched him release inside another woman, and something inside her cracked because she had never seen that look on his face when he was with her, not once.
"Jae-min, please." Kiara's voice came out broken, a raw, manipulative desperation.
The bedroom door slammed open, and Ji-yoo barged inside in pajamas with messy hair and a pillow clutched like a weapon.
She saw everything and her brother naked and flushed and gripping a naked Alessia by the hips while Alessia straddled him, still joined and nothing hidden.
"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!" Jae-min roared, grabbing the blanket and yanking it over Alessia.
"ME?! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?! THE WALLS ARE PAPER THIN!" Ji-yoo screamed back, shielding her eyes with the pillow.
Then she saw the phone and saw Kiara's face on the screen, tear-streaked and contorted.
Her expression didn't change one millimeter as she lowered the pillow and looked at the phone. "Oh. Hi, Dog shit." Ji-yoo stated, a flat, deadly calm.
"Stay out of this." Kiara started.
"No." Ji-yoo cut in, a fierce protective authority. "You don't get to call my brother at midnight and act surprised when he's with his girlfriend. In his bed. In his home that you betrayed."
"You're a cheater, Kiara. You're dog shit." Ji-yoo declared, a fierce contempt lacing every word. "You cheated on him and sold him out. You don't get to call here. You don't get to cry. You don't get to be in his life."
She tilted her head.
"For the record, Alessia is ten times the woman you'll ever be. Because she stayed. You left. That's the whole story." Ji-yoo added, with sharp mocking amusement.
She walked away, and her footsteps faded down the corridor.
— • • • —
In the living room, Yue pressed her back against the concrete wall with every sound having reached her ten minutes ago, every gasp and every cry and every moan amplified by sealed doors until each one may as well have been whispered directly into her ear.
Her face was burning with a full raging blush from her chest to her cheeks to the tips of her ears, her breathing shallow and her fingers white-knuckled around the hilt of her jian.
She turned her face to the wall and pressed her forehead against the concrete, but the sounds wouldn't stop and neither would the heat.
— • • • —
10:54 PM.
The guest room.
Jennifer sat on her bed with her back against the wall, having woken twenty minutes ago, the moaning having started a few minutes later.
She knew whose voice it was from the first breathy syllable because she had memorized every sound Alessia made in the four days since she and Jae-min had started.
'Stop listening. Stop it. Stop it stop it stop it.' Jennifer agonized, a desperate, agonizing shame burning through her as she pressed her palms against her ears hard until it hurt. 'But I can still feel them. Not with my ears. With the tether. The signal is so loud it's drowning out everything else.'
Not words and not thoughts but pure unfiltered emotion, all heat and need and desperate aching love pouring through the walls like water through a broken dam.
She could feel what Alessia felt, the fullness and the rightness and the sense of being claimed so completely that the rest of the world ceased to exist, and through the tether she felt the ghost of him inside her own body.
Not an emotion and not a metaphor but a physical phantom, every inch and every pulse transmitted directly into Jennifer's body, her thighs clenching and a wet heat blooming between her legs that wasn't hers and was hers at the same time.
'I want that.' Jennifer ached, a bitter, agonizing longing tearing through her chest so fiercely it stole her breath. 'I want him to fill me. I want him to put his child inside me. I want him to possess me the way he possesses her.'
She heard voices then, Alessia's low and warm and another woman's sharp and bitter through a phone speaker, and she knew it was Kiara.
'She had him. She actually had him, she cheated, and she lied.' Jennifer despaired, a corrosive, devastating envy eating through her heart. 'And I can't even look at him. I've spent three years memorizing his footsteps and never once dared to knock.'
She stayed on the floor with her knees drawn to her chest and her palms against her ears and her eyes squeezed shut.
The sounds faded, but they didn't stop playing in her head.
— • • • —
11:15 PM.
The eighth floor.
Kiara stood in the dark with Victor's phone dead in her hand, having stolen it from his pocket when they left Unit 1418.
She had seen everything: the mark on Alessia's neck and the way Jae-min's hands gripped her hips with a possession so absolute it was almost violent and the way he had released inside her while Kiara watched through a screen.
'He never looked at me like that. Not once. I had the shell. She has the fire.' Kiara admitted, a cold annihilating realization crushing her chest. 'And I threw it away for a felon with a baseball bat.'
She had no power here, no money, no beauty, no influence, and no Jae-min.
She picked up the phone and opened Jae-min's contact and stared at it, then typed a number she knew very well.
Marcelo Villacorte.
He'd blocked her calls after the freeze, but Kiara knew things about Marcelo that Marcelo didn't want anyone to know: account numbers and properties and a warehouse in Paranaque.
'Jae-min is the most valuable person in this frozen city. Food. Weapons. Shelter. Real power.' Kiara calculated, a cold, manipulative clarity hardening her resolve. 'And I'm going to cash him in. One way or another.'
She typed a message.
[Kiara]: Babe, this is Kiara. I know where Jae-min keeps his supplies. All of them. Every last crate. If you're interested.
Send.
— • • • —
11:58 PM.
Unit 1418.
The bunker was quiet with Jae-min lying in bed and Alessia asleep against his chest, her breathing slow and steady and her hand resting over his heart, skin against skin the way she had insisted on staying.
He stared at the ceiling, with the phone on the nightstand silent now.
'She wanted nothing. Not supplies. Not protection. Just me.' Jae-min reflected, a quiet anchoring warmth pressing against his ribs as Alessia's fingers squeezed his in her sleep. 'The man who reads spreadsheets for fun and cries during anime.'
He smiled at the memory, faint and barely there but real.
Outside, the temperature held at minus seventy with the wind howling across the frozen streets and something three kilometers southeast bending space as it moved toward them.
But here in this room, in this bed with this woman, warm and safe.