Chapter 10: The Wrong Door

A little after midnight, Malcolm glanced from the clock to Cyrus, then to Owen, who was still sitting at the end of the bar with a half-finished ginger ale and the stiff posture of someone pretending he had not wandered into a room far above his experience level.

"You two should head out," Malcolm said, setting a clean glass onto the shelf. "Cyrus, you have been working since dinner. Owen, I am going to assume your family does not know you are sitting in a lounge after midnight."

Owen almost choked on his drink. "They know I went out."

"That is not the same thing," Malcolm said.

Owen looked guilty enough to make further questioning unnecessary.

Cyrus untied his apron and avoided the argument. He had already survived Rhea Maddox’s attention tonight. He did not need to watch Malcolm cross-examine a boy who had worn a suit to drink soda.

After changing in the back, Cyrus fixed his school disguise before stepping outside. His bangs fell forward again, lowering over his eyes and hiding most of the face that had kept customers staring all night. The earring became half-hidden. His posture dulled into the forgettable shape he used at St. Alder. The polished bartender stayed behind with the glasses, the shelf lights, and the women who tipped too much.

Owen noticed the difference immediately.

They walked away from The Full Moon Lounge together, the street narrow and damp under the weak yellow light. Owen had been quiet since Rhea left, probably sorting the night into whatever honest system he used to understand people. After a while, he finally spoke.

"I knew I could learn something from you."

Cyrus looked over. "Did you actually learn anything tonight?"

Owen gave a firm nod. "I learned that being too eager around women is a problem."

That was not the worst lesson he could have taken from the evening.

Owen continued with the grave tone of a person discovering a new branch of science. "Maybe that was what went wrong for me. I sent too many messages, answered too fast, and bought too much. Maybe I made myself look easy to ignore."

Cyrus did not have the heart to say Owen’s problem might have started earlier than texting frequency.

He also could not deny the general idea. If someone offered money, attention, and devotion while asking for nothing clear in return, certain women would accept all of it and call him sweet.

"Being less desperate is probably useful," Cyrus said.

Owen absorbed that like a sacred rule.

The summer night was not cold. Grayhaven kept the heat trapped in its pavement even after dark, and the sea only added dampness to the air. Still, Cyrus shivered once under his thin shirt, a quick involuntary tremor that ran through him before he could stop it.

Owen saw it. "Are you getting sick?"

"I am not sick."

"You just shivered."

"That does not mean anything."

Cyrus said it with enough confidence that Owen stopped pushing.

Besides, Cyrus had rejected the entire idea on principle. People liked to say only fools never got sick. If that were true, he should have been bedridden by now, because he had crossed half the country, lied his way into a new life, found work, stayed fed, and avoided being dragged back to the black room. A fool would still be locked up somewhere, waiting for someone else to decide his meals.

He was not a fool.

Therefore, illness had no good reason to bother him.

The logic felt perfectly acceptable after midnight.

At the corner, Owen pointed toward the street that split away from Cyrus’s route. "I go that way."

Cyrus gave him a small nod. "Get home safely."

Owen shifted his hands at his sides, suddenly awkward without the glass to hold. "Thanks for tonight. I mean that."

"You drank ginger ale and watched a woman flirt badly."

"I still learned a lot."

Cyrus let him keep that victory.

They parted at the corner, and Cyrus headed toward his apartment with his bag over one shoulder and a vague sense that he had forgotten something. He checked his pockets, touched the ring out of habit, and found everything important still on him.

If he could not remember the missing thing, then it could wait.

His stomach gave clearer instructions. He stopped at the convenience store on his route, bought two hot breakfast sandwiches from the warmer, and ate the first one before he made it halfway down the block. The bread was soft, the filling was salty, and the heat made his exhaustion a little easier to forgive.

Human food deserved several official holidays, preferably with discounts.

He finished the second sandwich while walking, then yawned so hard his eyes watered.

The forgotten thought finally surfaced.

His paycheck was coming.

That meant he could eat something better soon, maybe even something that involved real meat, dessert, and no financial regret until the morning.

That thought carried him home.

By noon on Saturday, a different kind of darkness ruled a bedroom across Grayhaven.

Outside, the sun burned bright enough to bleach the sidewalks. Inside Daphne Whitlock’s apartment, the curtains were pulled tight, the air conditioner hummed like it had been forced into unpaid labor, and the glow of her monitor lit a battlefield of empty iced coffee cups, crumpled snack bags, and essays she had sworn she would grade before Monday.

She had not graded them.

On the screen, a fantasy romance game waited at the end of a route. The current love interest was a silver-haired, delicate-looking prince with a soft voice, wounded pride, and the kind of tragic backstory that had clearly been engineered by professionals who understood exactly how to break a tired woman’s judgment at four in the morning.

Daphne sat cross-legged in her chair, wearing oversized pajamas and thick square glasses instead of the gold-rimmed pair she wore at school. Her hair was twisted into a messy bun that had started giving up hours ago. The polished teacher who stood in front of St. Alder’s English class would have denied knowing this woman.

At school, Daphne Whitlock was composed. Her dresses were neat, her voice was calm, and her students listened because she could make silence feel like a grade.

At home, with her curtains shut and a fictional prince asking whether anyone would ever choose him first, she was losing a private war.

"You are manipulating me," she told the screen. "You are also very good at it."

The final scene was close. One more correct choice, maybe two, and she would unlock the last illustration after an entire night of failed endings, strategy guides, and decisions she would never admit making in public.

Her phone rang on the desk.

Daphne stared at it in betrayal.

The screen showed her mother’s name.

She removed one side of her headphones and answered. "Hi, Mom, is everything okay over there?"

Wind and traffic crackled through the call. Somewhere in the background, a woman was shouting about luggage.

"Daphne, honey, are you busy right now?"

Daphne looked at the glowing prince, the ungraded essays, and the coffee cups gathered around her like evidence.

"I have time."

"Good. Do you remember that little apartment building your father keeps calling an investment and I keep having to manage?"

"I remember the building."

"One tenant has not answered since yesterday. I sent a rent reminder, then called, and nobody picked up. I am not saying they skipped, but I do not like guessing. Your father is useless with his phone, and I am out of town, so can you stop by and check?"

Daphne leaned back in her chair. "Do you mean right now?"

"Yes, right now would be wonderful. The unit number is 202. Just knock, ask whether everything is fine, and remind them to answer messages like a civilized person."

"You want me to handle a rent check because you are on vacation?"

"I am not on vacation. I am traveling with your aunt, which is much worse."

"That does sound worse."

"I have to get in the car. Please go look, and call me afterward."

"Mom, wait a second."

The call dissolved into muffled shouting, a car door, and then silence.

Daphne lowered the phone.

On the monitor, the silver-haired prince waited with patient digital suffering.

Daphne looked at him and saved the game.

"I hope you appreciate the sacrifice," she said.

The mood was already ruined. Once her mother interrupted a route, the magic never came back properly. Daphne shut off the monitor, stood, and changed into something that made her look less like a woman who had spent the night making romance choices for a fictional man.

The school version of Daphne required effort. The Saturday errand version only required plausible humanity. She pulled on a loose gray hoodie that swallowed her figure, tied her hair into a quick bun, and put on a mask because Grayhaven did not deserve her whole face after an all-night game session.

The drive was short.

The small apartment building sat back from a quiet street lined with older houses and trimmed hedges. It had two stories, weathered side stairs, and a front entry that looked like someone had been meaning to repaint it for several years. The noon heat pressed against Daphne as soon as she stepped out of the car.

By the time she reached the second floor, she had already decided her mother owed her lunch.

Unit 202 was on her left.

Unit 203 was ahead.

Daphne stopped between them.

Her mother had said 202. She was almost certain of that. Unfortunately, she had also been awake all night, had caffeine instead of judgment in her bloodstream, and had spent the drive replaying game dialogue in her head.

The number blurred in her memory.

She looked at Unit 203, then Unit 202, then sighed through the mask. She would knock, apologize if she was wrong, and ask the neighbor if needed. Property management by exhausted daughter was not an exact science.

She pressed the doorbell for Unit 203.

The chime sounded inside.

No one came to the door.

She waited in the hot hallway while sweat gathered under the edge of her mask. She rang once more, then listened. There were no footsteps, no irritated voice, and no sign of movement behind the door.

Daphne was already turning away, ready to try the other unit and then buy lunch with her mother’s credit card in revenge, when the lock clicked.

The door opened.

Cold air spilled out.

It was not normal apartment coolness. It struck the heat on Daphne’s skin like a door opening into a walk-in freezer, clean and sharp enough to make her shoulders tighten under the hoodie.

Then she saw the person behind the door.

A small-framed young man stood there barefoot, white hair loose around a sleep-flushed face, an oversized shirt hanging from one shoulder. His eyes were unfocused, and his cheeks carried the red, unhealthy color of someone who had been dragged upright before his body fully agreed to wake. Behind him, the apartment sat dim and cold, curtains drawn tight against the noon sun.

Daphne forgot the rent.

For one awful second, her brain reached for the game she had just left at home. The white hair, delicate face, oversized clothes, drowsy eyes, and voice she had not heard yet all landed with humiliating precision.

Real life was not supposed to do this.

Daphne had always insisted that she liked fictional designs, not actual problems. Fictional delicate male leads were safe because they stayed behind glass. They came with age ratings, route labels, and no tenant rights. Real people came with laws, illness, paperwork, school policies, and the immediate need for Daphne Whitlock to behave like a responsible adult.

The white-haired young man blinked at her. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

That helped, because the flush on his face was not cute once she focused. It was feverish.

The teacher in her finally shoved the sleep-deprived gamer aside.

"Can I help you?" he asked.

His voice was low, hoarse from sleep, and much calmer than she expected from someone whose apartment felt cold enough to store meat.

Daphne gripped the strap of her bag and tried to remember why she existed.

The rent check, the unanswered calls, her mother’s errand, and the apartment unit she might have gotten wrong all returned at once.

"I came to ask whether the rent for this unit has been handled," she said.

The young man stared at her for a moment.

"It has been paid."

His answer was brief, clear, and tired enough to make her feel ridiculous.

Daphne was suddenly grateful for the mask hiding most of her face. "Then I am sorry for bothering you."

He gave a faint nod and started to close the door.

Daphne’s hand moved before she fully thought it through.

She caught the edge of the door.

The young man paused. His sleepy gaze dropped to her fingers, then lifted to her face. The air between them cooled another degree, or maybe the apartment was simply that cold.

"Is there something else?" he asked.

The guarded edge in his voice brought Daphne back to herself completely.

He looked sick. He was alone. The room was freezing. The flush on his face had not faded. Whatever strange impression he had made in the first second did not matter as much as the fact that he looked like he might drop if he kept standing there.

"You do not look well," Daphne said, keeping her voice steady. "Is there anyone home with you right now?"