The words came out harsher than Hikaru intended. She watched Naomi flinch slightly, then square her shoulders with a determination that seemed out of place on someone who looked like she belonged in a library rather than a combat academy.

"You’re not fine. Nobody who just almost died is fine. But I understand that you don’t want me here right now, so I’m going to leave." Naomi paused in the doorway, one hand on the frame. "For what it’s worth, I won’t say anything to anyone. About any of this."

Hikaru didn’t respond. She heard Naomi’s footsteps cross the living room, heard the front door open and close for the second time, and then there was only one other heartbeat in the apartment besides her own.

Monroe was still there.

She could feel him standing somewhere behind her, probably near the bathroom door, probably looking at the back of her head and thinking whatever thoughts lottery winners thought when they discovered their roommate had been lying about fundamental aspects of their identity for months.

"The towels are ruined."

His voice cut through the quiet so sharply that Hikaru’s shoulders twitched. She turned her head just far enough to catch him in the corner of her vision. He leaned against the doorframe with his arms folded, and whatever he was thinking, his face gave away nothing.

"What?"

"The towels. The ones you bled all over. They’re toast. Blood doesn’t come out of white fabric. I don’t care what those internet cleaning guides try to tell you."

Hikaru stared at him.

"I’ll buy new ones," she managed after a beat. "I’ll pay for everything. The medical supplies, the cleaning, whatever it costs."

"That’s not why I said it."

He pushed off the frame and walked past her, crouching down to open the cabinet under the sink. When he straightened up, he was holding a fresh towel, folded neatly in half. He held it out toward her without looking anywhere near her body. His eyes stayed locked somewhere around her left ear with the kind of pointed focus that felt almost hostile in how careful it was.

"Cover yourself. Then we can talk."

Hikaru took the towel and wrapped it around her torso, tucking it beneath her arms until she was as covered as she could be without actual clothes. The fabric was soft against her skin, and she hated how much better it felt than the compression bandages she’d worn every day for three years.

Monroe sat down on the edge of the bathtub. He was close enough that she could see the individual threads in his jacket, far enough that he wasn’t crowding her. The position looked almost casual, like two friends having a conversation in a normal bathroom that wasn’t streaked with drying blood.

"You said you knew. From the beginning."

"I said I suspected. There’s a difference." He ran a hand through his hair, and Hikaru noticed for the first time that he looked tired. Not just normal tired, but the kind of exhaustion that came from carrying too many things at once. "The walls are thin. You train at weird hours. Sometimes I could hear you taking the bandages off, and the sounds you made weren’t the sounds someone makes when they’re unwrapping a normal injury."

"You could have said something."

"And what would that have accomplished? Hey roommate, just checking, are you secretly a woman pretending to be a man for reasons I’m sure are fascinating? That seemed like a great way to make you hate me even more than you already did."

Hikaru felt her jaw tighten. "I don’t hate you."

"Really? Every time I try to have a conversation, you shut me down. Every time I’m in the common area, you leave. I thought maybe it was a cultural thing, or a personality thing, or just a general ’I’m better than you and don’t want to associate with lottery trash’ thing."

The words cut because they were accurate. Hikaru had kept Monroe distant on purpose, treating him with the kind of coldness that kept people from asking questions. Because every bond she formed here became another tether, one more thing that would slow her down when she needed to disappear again.

"It wasn’t about you."

"I figured that out eventually." He leaned back against the tile wall. His eyes, when they finally met hers, were darker than she’d registered before. Brown with gold scattered through them like fragments of light. "You were protecting yourself. Keeping everyone far enough away that they wouldn’t start wondering. I understand that. I’ve been doing something similar since I arrived."

That made her pause. "You? What do you have to hide?"

His mouth curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile. "Everyone has something, Hikaru. Some of us are just better at pretending we don’t."

The use of her name, her real name, sent a strange shiver down her spine. He’d said it without hesitation, without the weird emphasis some people put on names when they were learning to use them. Like he’d known it all along and was just now getting permission to say it out loud.

"How much do you actually know? About why I’m here, about what I’m running from."

"Almost nothing. I know you’re not from California. I know your family has enough influence that you felt the need to run to another continent to escape them. I know whatever happened in Japan was bad enough that you’d rather bleed out on a bathroom floor than risk anyone finding out the truth." He paused.

"And I know you’re scared. Not of the academy or the training or even the other students. You’re scared of being sent back."

Hikaru’s breath caught in her throat.

"I’m not going to ask you to explain," Monroe continued. "Your story is yours. But I need you to understand something, because we’re about to go into a gate together and I’d rather not have any confusion about where we stand."

"And where do we stand?"