Chapter 111: Numbness, Plans, and Forgetting

Chapter 111: Chapter 111: Numbness, Plans, and Forgetting

Chapter 111: Numbness, Plans, and Forgetting

At Faye’s house, Miles and Lena rushed to the door the moment they heard their sister come home.

"Faye, you are back!"

Lena reached her first, throwing both arms around Faye’s waist. Miles followed half a step behind with the guilty enthusiasm of a child who had spent the day making a mess and had only remembered consequences after the front door opened.

The state of the house explained everything.

Toys had migrated from the living room to the hallway. A blanket lay half folded over the couch, though it looked more like someone had dragged it there while fleeing a losing battle. Several game cases were scattered near the TV stand, and a plastic dinosaur rested facedown beside one of Lena’s hair clips as though both had fallen in combat.

Faye stood in the entryway and took it in without surprise.

Her shoulders dipped in a way Cyrus understood too easily.

Two children alone at home for most of the day did not require much explanation. Miles and Lena had not destroyed the place, but they had filled it with every sign of having missed their sister and entertained themselves badly in her absence.

Cyrus remained outside the door.

From the front step, he could see enough of the living room to understand that Faye would not be resting anytime soon. The mess itself was not severe, but the work behind it would be slow. Toys needed sorting, the living room needed cleaning, dinner still needed to be made, and the two children were already talking over each other as they tried to tell Faye about their day.

"Do you need help cleaning up?" Cyrus asked.

Faye turned back at once and shook her head.

"No, you do not have to help. I can handle this."

Her refusal was gentle, but practiced.

That was what made it sit poorly with him.

Faye did not say it like someone politely declining a guest. She said it like someone who had learned long ago that this was her responsibility, that the shape of her day could bend around it without anyone else needing to notice.

The first few times Cyrus visited, he had learned enough about her family routine to understand the outline. Her parents worked outside the home often, leaving Faye to look after Miles and Lena. She never complained about it, and the children clearly loved her, but love did not make the work lighter.

Faye stood in the doorway with Lena clinging to one side and Miles already reaching for one of the drinks.

"I am sorry," Faye said. "It looks like tonight is not a good night for dinner."

"That is all right," Cyrus said.

He waved a hand lightly, trying to make the refusal feel like nothing.

He had half expected to eat here tonight. Because of that, he had bought three small cakes on the way from school, one for Faye, one for Miles, and one for Lena. He had also brought the two untouched drinks from the haunted-house table.

Dinner could wait for another visit.

He separated two of the cakes from the bag and held them out with the drinks.

"I can come another time and eat your cooking properly," he said. "Please give these to Miles and Lena."

Faye accepted the cakes and drinks.

The cakes were from the bakery she had once said tasted good.

She noticed immediately.

"Thank you," she said, her voice softer than before.

Miles leaned around her arm.

"Is one mine?"

"One is yours if you help clean up before dinner," Faye said.

Miles straightened with the seriousness of someone facing a difficult contract.

Lena looked at the drink in Faye’s hand, then at Cyrus.

"Will you come play next time?"

"I can come another time," Cyrus said. "You should help your sister tonight."

Lena nodded, though she looked disappointed.

Cyrus did not linger. Staying at the door only made Faye feel worse for not inviting him in, and he did not want that. He lifted a hand in farewell, then turned down the front path.

On the way back, he glanced once at the lit windows of Faye’s house.

By now, Faye was probably collecting toys, setting aside the cakes, checking whether the children had eaten anything strange during the afternoon, and preparing dinner before she could think about herself. Only after everything was finished would Miles and Lena get the full version of the sister they had been waiting for all day.

Cyrus had seen another small piece of Faye’s life.

It made him feel sorry for her.

Ordinary school already took enough effort. Adding two younger siblings to care for every day would make the smallest free moment hard to protect.

He could not do much about it.

That was the part he disliked.

Night settled over Grayhaven while the last festival fireworks faded behind him. The sky returned to its usual darkness, with only the city lights and a few pale stars showing above the rooftops.

When Cyrus reached his apartment, he stood alone on the small balcony and ate the remaining cake.

The frosting was sweet, the sponge soft, and the cold air around him made the dessert taste better than it had any right to. He leaned against the railing with the plate in one hand and looked out over the quiet street.

Whether he celebrated or not, the day would pass the same way.

Still, one hundred days outside captivity deserved some kind of mark. He had bought a cake, eaten what he wanted, walked where he wanted, and returned to a room that belonged to him.

That counted.

If every day let him choose food, sleep, work, school, and the temperature of his own room, then every day was already a celebration. Cyrus considered that a healthy way to think.

Daphne had messaged earlier.

Teachers had to stay late after the public festival ended, she said, so she would not be able to prepare dinner for him tonight.

Cyrus did not mind.

After several days of Daphne arranging meals, eating instant ramen felt oddly nostalgic. He boiled water, added the seasoning, and ate directly from the pot while sitting near the kitchen counter. The meal was cheap, salty, and hot enough that he had to cool each bite before eating.

It was not worse than being fed by someone who kept asking him to become Cory.

After filling his stomach, Cyrus washed up and went to bed early.

The festival had drained more energy than he expected. Walking around campus, handling visitors, carrying food, talking to people, hiding from people, and avoiding women with complicated motives all counted as work, whether the school admitted it or not.

If the weather had still been hot, he would not have lasted half as long.

By midnight, apartment 203 was silent.

Next door, Daphne opened her own door without turning on the hallway light.

She stepped into the corridor already dressed for the task, her hair tied back, her phone silenced, and the spare key ring held tightly in one hand. She moved quickly because she had rehearsed the route in her head. Her footsteps made almost no sound against the old floor.

At Cyrus’s door, she selected the key for 203.

It slid into the lock perfectly.

Daphne turned it slowly.

The click was faint.

Her heartbeat quickened anyway.

The act itself felt like theft, though she was the landlord and technically possessed the spare key for maintenance and emergency access. That explanation might help on paper. It did nothing for the heat rising in her chest as she eased the door open.

Cold air slipped through the crack.

Then metal caught.

A small chain rattled once.

Daphne froze.

Inside, Cyrus slept without stirring.

The chain lock stretched between the door and the frame, stopping the door after only a narrow opening. The sound had not been loud enough to wake him, but it was more than enough to destroy Daphne’s plan.

Her fingers tightened around the edge of the door.

He had fastened the chain.

Locking the door was understandable. Fastening the chain too felt personal.

Did he distrust the building that much?

Daphne reached in with one finger and touched the small metal links. With the strength in her giant-blooded body, she could snap the chain or force the door open if she wanted. The lock was not built to stop someone like her.

Breaking it would wake Cyrus.

That defeated the point.

If he woke before she could control the situation, everything became meaningless. He might reach for the personal safety alarm. He might shout. He might change back and forth at the worst possible time. A neighbor could open a door, and once people started asking questions, every advantage she held would become a liability.

Daphne withdrew her hand.

She closed the door as quietly as she could and locked it again.

The food she wanted was sleeping inside the room, close enough that she had seen him through the gap, yet she was stuck outside like a child locked out of her own home.

The frustration was almost humiliating.

Back in apartment 202, Daphne opened her laptop.

She deleted the footage from her own hallway camera that showed her approach and the failed attempt. Then she opened another folder, one hidden behind several layers of harmless labels.

Screenshots filled the screen.

Cory sat on her bed in oversized clothes. Cory stood with the personal safety alarm in his hand. Cory looked at her with that small, wicked expression that made her want to both scold him and hold him until he stopped looking so pleased with himself.

Daphne stared at the images until her chest felt tight.

This was maddening.

"You had better remember that chain every night," she muttered.

If he forgot once, she would know.

Starting tonight, she would try his door every day.

Eventually, a habit broke.

People got tired. People became careless. People forgot.

Cyrus was no exception.

In his sleep, Cyrus walked through a place he knew too well.

The scenery around him should have been familiar. A path stretched beneath his feet. Buildings or trees stood somewhere beyond the dark edges of the dream. He understood that he had seen this place before, lived with it, breathed in its air for years.

Yet the details refused to settle.

He kept walking.

After a while, he sensed something behind him and turned.

A white figure stood in the distance.

From head to foot, the person was pale. Clothes, hair, outline, everything blended into a shape that did not belong to the dark around it. Cyrus could not see the face clearly.

A name appeared in his mind anyway.

The moment it did, his body moved.

He ran.

The landscape rushed backward. The path, the walls, the shadows, the half-known outlines all slipped behind him as he pushed forward without looking back.

He did not see the color draining from everything he passed.

He only knew that he had to keep moving.

No matter how long he ran, the distance did not change.

When Cyrus finally looked behind him, the white figure remained not far away. Too distant to reach him, too close to forget. It stood exactly where it had always been, as if unable to close the gap and yet somehow already close enough.

A hollow feeling opened in his chest.

It was not fear.

Fear would have been easier.

This was loss, sudden and weightless, like stepping off a ledge before realizing the ground had ended. Panic rose with it, but beneath the panic lay a dull sadness that spread too evenly to fight.

It felt as though he was losing something every second.

It felt as though he had been losing it for a long time.

Cyrus opened his eyes.

For an instant, cold ran through him.

The feeling vanished almost immediately, leaving only the awareness that it had come from the ring on his finger. The metal looked ordinary in the gray light before dawn.

The interruption broke the dream apart.

What had seemed clear while he slept became harder to hold with every breath. He tried to remember the path, the figure, the place around him, but the images blurred whenever he reached for them.

Only one vague impression remained.

A place where he had once grown up.

Outside the window, morning had barely begun. The sky was dim, and a faint echo from the waking street came irregularly through the glass.

Cyrus sat up and pressed a hand to his forehead.

He tried again to recall the scenery from the dream.

Nothing came.

Then his expression changed.

A slow chill that did not come from the room spread through his chest.

He could not remember the scenery from before either.

Not only the dream.

The real places from his past, the rooms, paths, windows, and landscapes he should still know, had become difficult to picture.

Cyrus sat motionless in the gray dawn, suddenly wide awake.