I stood there with the alloy bar in one hand and the wrapped key pressing against my ribs, and realized I’d been stalling for the last thirty seconds.

Zero was crouched by the silver shelf, inspecting a rolled tube of coins, pretending not to notice that I hadn’t moved. She was giving me space, which honestly made it worse. If she’d teased me, I could’ve deflected. Teasing was a dance I knew the steps to.

But this quiet patience? That was harder to dodge.

I took a breath, "Zero."

"Mm?"

"I need to tell you some things...about me."

She didn’t look up right away, just set the tube down, careful and deliberate. Then she stood, dusted her palms against her fishnets, and turned to face me, "Alright, darling. I’m listening."

I opened my mouth. Closed it and opened it again.

’God, why is this so hard. Just say the words, Lukas. You’ve written confession scenes like forty times. Your readers cry at them. Do the same thing.’

I took a deep breath and said, "Okay. So first of all, I’m from another world."

She blinked once.

"Not like, spiritually from another world, or philosophically from another world. Literally. A whole different planet, different timeline, probably different laws of physics for all I know. A place called Earth. It’s about a hundred and fifty years behind you guys, maybe two hundred. Nobody’s had an apocalypse yet, which is nice. We mostly just complain about rent and jobs." I explained calmly.

"Earth." She repeated the word slowly, tasting it.

I nodded and said, "I got this system thing a few days ago. It lets me hop between here and there with a wenty-four hour cooldown, and one cubic meter inventory. That’s how I have the noodles, the biscuits and also the cola. Also why I keep vanishing for like eight hours at a time. I’m not sneaking off to a secret girlfriend, I’m going home to sleep and write my novels."

"Novels, right." Her lips twitched. She was taking this better than I expected, which was a good thing. It relaxed me.

"Yeah, I’m a web novelist back on Earth. I write wish-fulfillment brainrot for guys who just wants read something with brain off. It pays okay. Decent survival tier, which is ironic considering my current survival tier is F."

She didn’t interrupt. Instead, she just watched me, her black eyes steady on mine, and I could feel myself rushing the words like if I slowed down I’d lose my nerve.

I say down and continued, "That’s why I need the gold and silver. On Earth, that stuff is still worth a fortune. I can bring it back and sell it, then I come back here with more food, better gear, medicine, anything you need. That’s the plan. That’s the whole plan really. I’m basically a smuggler with no competition because nobody else knows the second market exist."

She chuckled softly.

"There’s more, though. About me."

Her head tilted, just slightly.

"I didn’t tell you any of this before because... I don’t really tell anyone anything. Ever."

I looked down at the alloy bar in my hand because looking at her directly was suddenly hard.

"My parents didn’t have a good marriage. That’s a polite way of saying it. The real way is that they fought constantly, and I grew up watching two people who were supposed to love each other treat each other like enemies. Little lies. Big lies. Things said in anger, taken back the next day, said again a week later. I couldn’t tell what was real in my own house." I sighed, as I really didn’t want to remember those memories.

"Lukas—"

"Let me finish. Please. If I stop I won’t start again."

She closed her mouth and nodded.

"So I got paranoid. That’s the word my old therapist used, the one I saw for three sessions before I decided I didn’t want to pay someone to watch me lie to myself. I became paranoid of everyone. Friends, teachers, girls I liked. I’d hear something innocent and spend the whole night replaying it, looking for the knife in it. And eventually you do that to enough people and they stop calling. Not because they hate you. Just because it gets exhausting, being suspected of things you didn’t do."

I laughed, dry and short. It didn’t sound like a laugh.

"By the end of college, I didn’t have any friends left. Not really. People I waved to in hallways, sure. But nobody who’d notice if I dropped off the planet. Which I basically did, after graduation. I got the little apartment, I got the laptop, I got the writing gig, and I just... stopped going outside unless I had to. It was easier. In novels, the characters do what I tell them. They don’t have secret reasons for smiling at me."

"That sounds lonely, darling." Her voice was quieter than I’d ever heard it.

"It was. It is. I got good at pretending it wasn’t, but I think I was mostly lying to myself. You can only eat instant noodles alone for so many nights before you start noticing."

I finally looked up at her.

"And then I get dropped into an apocalypse and on day one I meet you. This dangerous, ridiculous, beautiful woman who points a gun at me and calls me her sugar boy, and I’m supposed to what? Not trust you? Keep my walls up? Run the old paranoia playbook while you’re literally keeping me alive?"

"You could’ve." She said it gently. "A lot of people would have."

"Yeah. Well. I’ve been doing the paranoia thing for most of my adult life and it hasn’t exactly given me a shining highlight reel. So I figured I’d try the other thing."

"The other thing?"

"Trust. Just once. See what happens." I shrugged, trying to make it sound lighter than it felt. "I saw your eyes when you kissed me after the D-rank kill. Whatever that was, it wasn’t fake. Nobody’s that good a liar, and if you are, then honestly, congratulations, I earned this."

Her mouth opened slightly.

"So yeah. Earth. World hopping. Broken kid with trust issues. That’s the full package. Sorry for not including a warranty."

I waited for her to laugh. Or tease. Or do literally any of the Zero things I was used to.

She didn’t.

She just walked across the vault and put both hands on either side of my face and rested her forehead against mine. Her skin was warm. Her breath was warm. Everything about her in that moment was warm in a way the rest of this grey dead city was not.

"You idiot," she whispered. "You beautiful, noodle-bringing idiot."

"That’s a very specific insult."

"Shut up. I’m having a moment."

I shut up.

She stayed there for a long second, just breathing against me, and when she pulled back her black eyes were shining in a glow that had nothing to do with mischief.

"Thank you, Lukas. For telling me." 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

"You’re not surprised." I said.

"About the Earth thing? A little." Her lips quirked. "About you being a mess? No. I figured that out on day one."

"Rude."

"Accurate."

"Is there a difference?"