The house had already fallen asleep by the time I returned.
No voices.
No footsteps.
Only the distant hum of traffic drifting through the half-open window at the end of the hallway.
I climbed the stairs without making a sound, unlocked my bedroom door, and stepped inside.
Darkness greeted me immediately.
The only light came from the streetlamp outside, slipping through the curtains in thin golden lines that stretched across the floor. It was enough to paint the room in fragments—half shadows, half light.
Enough.
I closed the door behind me.
The latch clicked.
Quiet.
My fingers loosened around the strap of my bag.
It hit the floor with a dull thud.
For a moment—
I didn't move.
My breathing remained slow.
Controlled.
Too controlled.
Then something inside me shifted.
I crossed the room in three quick steps and dropped to my knees in front of the old wooden cabinet tucked into the corner.
The bottom drawer groaned softly as I pulled it open.
Inside, buried beneath folded blankets and forgotten clothes...
was him.
A rabbit.
Once white.
Now faded into an uneven shade of gray.
One ear hung lower than the other, stitched together with black thread after tearing years ago. The stuffing had settled unevenly beneath the fabric, making one arm thinner than the other. Its stitched smile had begun to unravel, leaving it looking almost... exhausted.
I wrapped my fingers around it carefully.
Almost gently.
Then stood.
Without a word, I carried it across the room and hooked the worn fabric loop around the metal hanger fixed against the wall.
The rabbit dangled silently.
Waiting.
I lowered my head.
Strands of dark hair slipped across my face, hiding my eyes from the room.
Slowly...
I reached for my phone.
09:00
I set the timer.
Placed the phone on the desk.
And pressed...
Start.
The first punch landed without warning.
A dull thump echoed through the room.
Then another.
Another.
Another.
No shouting.
No crying.
No anger on my face.
Just impact.
Again.
Again.
Again.
The rabbit swung slightly after every hit before settling only to be struck once more.
Minutes passed.
The timer counted down mercilessly.
07:48
My breathing grew heavier.
Not because I was tired.
Because I refused to stop.
05:16
The skin across my knuckles finally split against the repeated impacts.
Warm blood coated my fingers before dripping lazily onto the wooden floor.
I hated it.
I hated hurting myself.
But I hated stopping even more.
03:02
The rabbit's stitched ear tore open again.
Loose threads dangled helplessly.
I kept going.
00:41
Blood splattered faintly across the pale fabric.
Neither of us complained.
Neither of us moved away.
Then—
00:00.
The alarm rang.
Immediately...
I stopped.
Exactly.
On time.
The room fell silent again.
The rabbit continued swaying gently from the force of the final strike before eventually becoming still.
I stood there for several seconds, chest rising and falling in slow, measured breaths.
A single drop of blood rolled from my knuckles.
Then another.
Soft.
Rhythmic.
Tapping quietly against the wooden floor.
I looked down at my hands.
Split skin.
Fresh blood.
Nothing unusual.
Without cleaning them...
I stepped closer.
My knees gave out before I had the chance to think.
I lowered myself onto the cold wooden floor, my back resting lightly against the wall. The room was silent except for the faint ticking of the timer that had only just stopped.
Slowly, I lifted the rabbit from where it hung.
It was large enough to cover nearly half of me when I pulled it into my lap, its worn body folding awkwardly against my chest. Loose threads brushed against my bloodied fingers as I adjusted it carefully, almost instinctively, making sure its torn ear wasn't bent beneath its weight.
For a long moment, I simply sat there.
Head lowered.
Hair veiling part of my face.
Blood slid lazily down my knuckles, dripping onto the rabbit's faded fur before falling to the floor between my feet.
Neither of us moved.
Neither of us made a sound.
My injured fingers reached out carefully, brushing against the rabbit's torn head with surprising tenderness.
The same hands that had just destroyed it now smoothed its fur as delicately as though it might break.
"I'm sorry..."
My voice barely rose above a whisper.
"I really am."
I stroked its ear once.
Twice.
"You know I love you."
A faint smile appeared.
Fragile.
Almost affectionate.
"I always will."
Another drop of blood slipped from my hand onto its faded fur.
"I don't enjoy hurting you."
Silence answered.
"I just..."
My thumb traced the old stitches running across its neck.
"...always end up blaming you."
I closed my eyes for a brief moment.
"Do you know why it's always exactly nine minutes?"
The room remained still.
Of course it did.
"I never forget."
A quiet breath escaped my lips.
"Not even for a second."
I opened my eyes again.
"They say time heals people."
Another slow stroke across its head.
"I think time just teaches people how to hide what never healed."
Carefully...
I lifted the rabbit from the hook.
Holding it against my chest for only a second before walking toward the wardrobe.
The doors creaked open.
Darkness waited inside.
Empty.
Except for one shelf.
I looked down at the rabbit resting in my bloodstained hands.
A long silence passed between us.
Then I smiled.
Small.
Cold.
"You know why it has to be nine minutes..."
I murmured.
"...because you were my ninth birthday present."
A pause.
"...from him."
The warmth vanished from my expression as quickly as it had appeared.
Without another word—
I let go.
The rabbit disappeared into the darkness of the wardrobe, landing with a muffled thud before the shadows swallowed it whole.
I closed the doors.
Slowly.
Click.
Behind me, tiny drops of blood continued falling from my hand onto the floor.
One after another.
Like a clock...
counting down to something that had never truly ended.
The morning did not break; it bled through the gaps in the velvet curtains, a pale, anemic light that offered no warmth.
When my eyes opened, there was nothing. A vast, echoing vacuum occupied the space where my identity should have been. The world was a blank canvas of sterile white ceiling and unfamiliar shadows. This was the routine. Every morning, the reboot sequence required a manual override.
I closed my eyes, forcing the void to collapse inward. Think. Rebuild.
Pieces of the mosaic drifted back into focus. A name: Lune. A pulse: cold, deliberate. But before the history could settle into my bones, a phrase caught in the gears of my mind, spinning with the violent momentum of a centrifugal blade.
Lune is mine.
The words repeated, a sickeningly sweet mantra that wasn't mine, yet lived inside my head like a squatter. Lune is mine. Lune is mine.
My eyelids snapped open. The vacancy was gone, replaced by an immediate, searing heat that scorched the back of my throat. A name attached itself to the mantra, acting as the catalyst for a sudden, volatile surge of adrenaline.
"If Asher thinks he can carve his name into my skin and call it ownership," I whispered into the empty room, my voice barely louder than a breath. "Then I'll make sure he spends the rest of his life learning what it feels like to lose everything he thought was his, and I'll watch him choke on his own ownership."
The thought tasted like copper on my tongue. It quieted the buzzing in my brain. Satisfied with the return of my malice, I swung my legs out of bed.
The descent downstairs was accompanied by the faint, domestic symphony of a sizzling pan and lighthearted laughter.
I paused on the bottom step, my gaze fixing on the man standing in the center of the sunlit kitchen. My father.
To any ordinary observer, he was a masterpiece of human genetics. He stood well over six feet, possessing a long-limbed, effortless grace that made the mundane act of leaning against a marble countertop look like a posed portrait. His hair was a thick, perfectly disheveled mane of dark silver-veined obsidian, catching the morning light in a way that seemed almost deliberate. His face was a study in aristocratic symmetry—sharp, high cheekbones, a jawline that looked chiseled from alabaster, and skin so flawlessly fair it bordered on translucent. But it was his eyes that truly drew the world in: a striking, luminescent hazel that held a permanent, deceptive warmth. His voice, when he laughed, was a rich, velvet baritone that could soothe a panic attack or command a room without ever lifting in volume. He radiated an effortless, magnetic energy that made people instinctively want to please him.
Right now, he was looking down at my mother, his eyes crinkled at the corners with genuine amusement. Mom was giggling, a flush on her cheeks, tilting her head back as if they were teenagers in the throes of a first romance. They looked like a couple who had never known friction, never spoken a harsh word, never spent a single night sleeping in separate rooms.
I felt a familiar, sickening warmth bloom in my chest. I felt happy seeing them like this.
And I despised myself for it.
How utterly pathetic, I thought, my mind dissecting the emotion with clinical cruelty. Human beings are the only creatures on Earth that will willingly ingest poison just because the vial is wrapped in a pretty bow. We are biologically hardwired to crave stability, even when we know that stability is a theatrical production staged by monsters. Happiness is just a chemical bribe the brain pays itself to forget that the house is burning down. They smile, and the past is supposed to evaporate? Absurd.
"Lune!"
My father had spotted me. The magnetic hazel eyes locked onto mine, and his face broke into a dazzling, brilliant smile that could have melted glaciers. "You're awake. Come, sit. I'm making those blueberry crêpes you used to love."
I did not move from the threshold. My expression remained as flat as a dead pulse.
"Why are you here, Dad?" I asked, my voice dropping the temperature in the room by ten degrees. The laughter in the kitchen died instantly. "And where exactly were you hiding for the last thirty days while the dust settled from your latest disappearing act?"
My mother's smile vanished, her shoulders instantly hunching inward. My father's expression didn't crumble, but the warmth in his eyes hardened into something fragile.
"Lune, please, it's breakfast—" my mother started, her voice trembling.
"Did you have to bury another body, or did you just need a month-long vacation from the suffocating mediocrity of your own choices?" I continued, my tone conversational, almost pleasant, yet dripping with a venom that made my mother flinch as if physically struck. "It must be exhausting, maintaining the illusion of a perfect patriarch when your hands are constantly stained with things soap can't wash off."
The silence that followed was heavy, suffocating, and beautifully awkward. The theatrical production had crashed to a halt. My father opened his mouth, his throat working as he prepared a carefully constructed, charming defense.
"Lune, let me explain—"
"Actually, don't," I interrupted, cutting him off with a dismissive wave of my hand as I finally walked into the kitchen. "Guess what? I don't care. I don't want the answer anymore. The truth is always so much duller than the lies we invent for you anyway."
I pulled out a chair at the dining table and sat down, scraping the wood loudly against the tile.
Across the table, my mother let out a soft, shuddering breath. Relief washed over her face, a visible loosening of her jaw simply because I had decided to drop the interrogation.
I watched my mother with a profound, internal disgust. Look at her. So fearful. So utterly pathetic. She was a creature entirely dictated by the emotional weather of the men around her, a parasite clinging to the host of my father's charm, willing to accept any lie just to keep the peace. A domesticated animal grateful for a kick as long as it's followed by a scrap of meat. I would rather tear my own heart out with a rusty nail than ever become a hollow, trembling vessel like her.
Then my eyes shifted to my father, who was quietly placing a plate of food in front of me. And him. The golden god with rot in his bones. I hate it when people say I have his eyes. I hate it when they say I inherit his intellect. To be like him is to be a parasite that needs an audience to exist. I am self-sustaining. I am my own architect.
I picked up my fork, about to take a bite, when my father's hand suddenly shot out, gently but firmly grasping my left wrist.
"What happened to you, my dear?" he asked.
His voice was a soft, liquid melody, dripping with an agonizingly genuine tenderness. His thumb lightly brushed against the heavy, purplish bruising and raw lacerations encircling my hand—the remnants of a violent encounter he knew nothing about.
For a fraction of a second, the icy armor around my chest fractured. The sheer, unadulterated warmth of his touch seeped into my skin. I melted inside, a rare, terrifying sensation of wanting to lean into the comfort of a parent, to confess, to be protected.
The weakness lasted for the space of a heartbeat. Then, the switch inside my brain flipped back into place with a cold, metallic click.
I ripped my hand away from his grip with a sudden, violent aggression that sent my fork clattering against the porcelain plate. I looked up, my eyes wide, unblinking, and entirely devoid of human warmth.
"Your dynamic with my mother has clearly warped your perception of boundaries, Dad," I said, my voice smooth, level, and terrifyingly devoid of anger. "But let me make this entirely clear: my flesh does not belong to your narrative. If you touch me again without my explicit permission, I will ensure that the next thirty days you spend away from this house will be spent in a pine box six feet under the dirt. Do I make myself clear, my dear dad?"
My father froze, his face pale, his charming demeanor completely shattered by the absolute certainty in my voice.
I calmly picked up my fork, speared a piece of the crêpe, chewed it deliberately, and swallowed. I finished my breakfast in total, uninterrupted silence, rose from the table without looking at either of them, and walked out the door.
The lecture hall was already half-full when I entered. I didn't glance at the professor, nor did I scan the room for my usual isolated seat at the back. Instead, I walked straight down the aisle and slid into the empty chair directly next to Melisa.
It was the first time since the college semester had started that I had chosen to sit next to her.
Melisa stiffened instantly, her head snapping around, her eyes widening in a mixture of disbelief and sheer shock. For weeks, I had been a ghost—aloof, sharp, and utterly untouchable. But today, as I settled my bag onto the floor, there was a strange, eerie shift in my aura. The sharp, jagged edges of my usual demeanor seemed to have been sanded down into a smooth, terrifyingly calm veneer.
"Lune?" Melisa whispered, her voice trembling slightly, as if she were afraid that speaking too loudly would make the apparition vanish. "You're... you're sitting here?"
I turned my head slowly, offering Melisa a small, serene smile that didn't reach my eyes. "Good morning, Melisa. I thought it was about time I became a better friend. You don't mind, do you?"
Melisa's breath hitched. My voice was incredibly soft, pitched at a gentle, soothing cadence that felt like a warm velvet blanket. It was a complete contrast to my usual icy monosyllables, and Melisa found herself instantly, helplessly drawn to it. It was like a drug entering her system; she was suddenly starved for more of this unexpected affection.
"Mind? No! No, of course not," Melisa stammered, her fingers nervously tangling together. She leaned in closer, her eyes scanning my face with a desperate, pathetic hunger for approval. "I've... I've missed you so much, Lune. You have no idea. You've been so distant, and I thought I did something wrong. I couldn't sleep last night because I thought you hated me."
I kept my smile fixed, watching the desperate, fragile display of dependency. Look how easily she unravels, I thought, a deep, dark amusement curling in my gut. A single crumb of basic human civility, and she is ready to grovel at my feet. She values herself so little that she measures her worth by the temperature of my gaze. I could tell her to jump out the window right now, and she would only ask if she should dive headfirst. People like her are born to be used, born to be stepping stones for minds that actually possess gravity.
"You could never make me hate you, Melisa," I murmured softly, leaning in just enough to make her eyes light up with manic joy. "You're far too valuable to me. I was just dealing with some... internal clutter. But I'm here now. Entirely yours."
Melisa looked as if she might cry from sheer happiness, her chest heaving as she practically drank in my calculated warmth, utterly addicted to the toxic crumbs of affection being tossed her way.
While Melisa babbled on, completely consumed by her newfound paradise, my eyes drifted across the lecture hall.
Marcos was sitting three rows down.
He didn't try to look back at me. He didn't wave, nor did he try to catch my eye. He simply sat there, his broad shoulders squared, keeping a respectful, deliberate distance. He was giving me space, just as he always did when he sensed the dark, volatile storm brewing beneath my skin. He knew better than to push.
But his silence wasn't absence.
I looked down at my desk. Resting perfectly in the upper right corner was my leather-bound notebook. Next to it lay three neatly organized packets of typed papers—the complete assignments and comprehensive lecture notes for the next three weeks of classes, all meticulously completed in Marcos's sharp, precise handwriting. And resting gently on top of the notes was a small, artisanal glass jar filled with dark chocolate-covered espresso beans—the exact high-caffeine treat he knew I used to curb my morning migraines.
He had slipped into the lecture hall before anyone else, arranged them silently on my desk, and retreated to his seat without a word, expecting absolutely nothing in return. He did it every time I went dark. He bought my favorite black coffees, left umbrellas by my locker when it rained, and quietly threatened anyone who dared to speak my name with disrespect in the hallways. He was a silent, fiercely loyal guardian ghost, orbiting my planet without ever demanding to land.
I looked at the chocolates, then at the flawless notes that had saved me hours of grueling labor.
My expression didn't change. Not a single muscle in my face softened. I didn't look back at Marcos to offer a nod of acknowledgment, nor did I send a text to whisper a thank you. I simply slid the notes into my bag, popped one of the espresso beans into my mouth, and let the bitter taste dissolve on my tongue, entirely indifferent to the devotion laying silently at my feet.