"You’re my roommate. That means we share space, we share walls, and apparently we share bathrooms covered in blood. It also means that if anyone comes looking for you, anyone who shouldn’t know where you are or what name you’re using, they’re going to have to go through me first."

"Why would you do that? You don’t know me. You don’t owe me anything."

"Because nobody should have to run alone." His voice was quiet, and for a moment he looked like someone much older than eighteen, someone who had seen things that left marks deeper than scars. "And because you’re a good hunter. Better than most of the guild kids who think their family names make them invincible. If you get sent back to Japan because some nurse filed the wrong paperwork, that’s a waste of potential. I hate waste."

"That’s a very practical reason."

"I’m a very practical person."

They sat without speaking. The bathroom carried the smell of copper and antiseptic. The late afternoon light through the small window had changed from gold to something darker, more burnt. Outside Hikaru could hear students moving between buildings. Their voices reached her like sounds from a different world entirely.

"The gate on Friday," she said. "Your team and Blair’s team. Combined operation."

"Yeah. Vale’s idea of team building, apparently."

"I’ll be there. Whatever the nurse says tomorrow morning, I’ll be there."

Monroe looked at her for several seconds. Then he nodded. "I know you will. You’re too stubborn to let a little blood loss stop you."

"Is that a compliment?"

"It’s an observation. Compliments are for people who don’t almost die in my bathroom. I have standards."

The corner of Hikaru’s mouth twitched. She tried to stop it, but the movement came anyway. It felt strange on her face. Like using a muscle she’d forgotten existed, one that had atrophied from months of disuse. The last time she’d smiled at something someone said, she’d still been in Japan. She’d still been pretending the arranged marriage was something she could accept.

Monroe caught the expression. His eyebrows went up slightly. "Did you just almost smile?"

"No."

"You did. I saw it. That was definitely the beginning of a smile."

"You’re mistaken."

"I’m never mistaken about facial expressions. It’s a gift." He stood up from the tub edge and stretched, his back popping audibly. "This is a historic moment. We should mark it on the calendar. ’The day Hikaru Tanaka’s face did something other than murder people with her eyes.’"

"My face doesn’t murder people."

"Your face absolutely murders people. I’ve seen freshmen cry just from making eye contact with you in the hallway."

Hikaru opened her mouth to argue. Then she realized she didn’t actually have an argument. She had, in fact, made a first-year cry last week by staring at him too long in the training hall. He’d dropped his practice sword and run out of the building.

"I should clean this up. The blood on the floor, the towels, all of it."

"You should rest. Nurse’s orders."

"The nurse isn’t going to clean my bathroom for me."

"No, but I can." Monroe pushed himself up from the bathtub edge and grabbed the cleaning supplies from beneath the sink. "You go lie down. Drink water. I’ll handle this."

"I can’t ask you to do that."

"You’re not asking. I’m telling." He pointed toward the bathroom door with the spray bottle. "Bed. Now. Before I start wondering if you actually want to die and this whole protective roommate thing was a waste of effort."

Hikaru opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. Her body was heavy with exhaustion, the kind that came from blood loss and adrenaline crash and the sudden release of tension she’d been holding for months. The floor seemed very far away, and her legs weren’t entirely convinced they wanted to support her weight.

She stood anyway, keeping the towel clutched against her chest, and made her way toward the door. When she reached the threshold, she paused and looked back.

Monroe had already started scrubbing the grout, his movements efficient and focused. He didn’t look up.

"Thank you," she said.

The words felt inadequate. They didn’t cover the weight of what he’d done, the secret he was choosing to keep, the trust he was extending without asking for anything in return. But they were the only words she had.

He glanced up briefly, and something passed between them that Hikaru couldn’t name.

"Get some sleep, Tanaka. Friday’s going to be rough enough without you falling over from exhaustion."

Hikaru nodded and walked to her room.

The bed was exactly where she’d left it, sheets slightly rumpled from the morning’s poor sleep. She lowered herself onto the mattress and pulled the covers over her body, still wrapped in the towel because changing clothes felt like more effort than she could manage.

Through the wall, she could hear Monroe moving around the bathroom. Water running. The sound of scrubbing. Small, domestic noises that shouldn’t have been comforting but somehow were.

She’d spent three years building walls. Three years keeping everyone at arm’s length, maintaining the mask, playing the role of the Ice Prince who needed no one and wanted nothing. She’d convinced herself that isolation was safety, that distance was protection, that the only way to survive was to trust no one with the truth.

And now her roommate was cleaning her blood off the floor while her secret sat exposed in the space between them like a wound that couldn’t be healed.

Hikaru closed her eyes.

Friday was in two days. The gate run with Blair’s team. The combined operation that would either prove she belonged here or expose her as the fraud she sometimes felt herself to be.

She couldn’t afford to be weak. Couldn’t afford to let this moment of vulnerability change anything about how she operated or how others perceived her. Tomorrow she would bind her chest again, lower her voice, rebuild the walls that Monroe had somehow walked through without even trying.

But tonight, for just a few hours, she let herself be exactly what she was.

A girl far from home, hiding from people who wanted to drag her back to a life she’d rather die than return to, lying in a bed in California while a stranger who shouldn’t have cared cleaned up the evidence of her desperation.

The last thing she heard before sleep claimed her was Monroe’s voice, quiet through the wall.

"Goodnight, Hikaru."