Chapter 82 Hostile.

Chapter 82: 82 Hostile.

As for the cooking experiment, Elsa attempted to contribute by making grilled cheese — a simple enough task, right? Bread, butter, cheese, heat, four variables — but she managed to burn the first attempt so thoroughly that the smoke alarm went off and Ayra started howling.

The second attempt was somehow worse. I stepped in and walked her through the third attempt step by step, standing behind her at the stove, guiding her hands on the spatula, and when we flipped it and the bread came out golden and the cheese was actually melted, she held the plate aloft like she’d just forged a legendary weapon.

"I have manifested sustenance!" she declared to the room. "Ba ha ha ha! Bow before my golden creation!"

"It’s a grilled cheese," Clementine said from the couch. "I used to make those for myself when I was like, eight."

Elsa gasped. "Eight years old? But you were so freshly emerged from the womb! Could you even crawl yet?"

Clementine kept mostly to herself through the day, drifting between the living room, her bedroom, and the back porch.

At one point Juniper slithered through the living room trailing her full twenty-something feet of copper-and-black tail behind her, and Clementine just closed her eyes and whispered, "I’m in a fucking fever dream."

Same, girl.

She’d brought almost nothing with her when she showed up at my door — just the clothes on her back and her phone — so most of her time was spent in my borrowed clothes looking restless, and every time she caught her reflection in a window her ears would flatten and her tail would go still. But then she’d do a little posing if she thought I wasn’t looking. So that was kind of cute.

She did, in any case, take over dinner without being asked. Sometime around five she wandered into the kitchen, opened the fridge, stared at the contents for thirty seconds, and started pulling things out.

I watched from the doorway as she moved through the room, chopping, seasoning, and adjusting heat by instinct rather than following any recipe.

She made a simple stir-fry with whatever we had on hand, and it was honestly better than anything I’d produced all week.

"This is fucking amazing," I said.

"My halmoni taught me," she said when she caught me watching. "Don’t look at me like that, fuckface."

"Like what?" I stayed in the doorway, hands in my pockets.

She turned back to the pan and gave it a shake. "Like I just did something impressive." She adjusted the heat without looking at me. "It’s stir-fry, not rocket surgery." But her ears had rotated forward, and the tail did a little, involuntary swish.

When her TV window rolled around, she claimed the couch and put on some Korean drama that none of the other girls understood but all of them watched from various hiding spots.

Elsa stationed herself at the kitchen counter, pretending to read a magazine while obviously watching the screen.

Ayra crouched behind the armchair with just her ears and eyes visible over the top.

Juniper didn’t even bother pretending — she coiled up at the far end of the couch and watched openly, occasionally asking Clementine questions about the plot that Clementine answered with increasing detail and decreasing hostility.

"Why is the tall man crying?" Juniper asked during what appeared to be an emotional confrontation.

"Because she just found out he’s been protecting her this whole time, but he can’t tell her the truth because of the promise he made to her dead mother." Clementine didn’t look away from the screen.

Juniper considered this, her tail coiling slowly. "That seems needlessly complicated—Oh, shit! Did he just get shot out of nowhere?!"

"That’s Korean dramas for you. Awesome, right?"

"In Antheria, he could simply challenge her mother’s ghost to a riddle battle and win the right to speak freely."

Clementine turned to look at her for a full second. "That’s metal as fuck," she said. "I respect it."

During that tepid peace, I kept my mouth shut and made sure no one remembered I existed for the duration.

After that, Juniper retreated to the guest room to study the encyclopedias she’d been working through, and Ayra followed me around the house offering to help with chores, which was worse than useless. Elsa had parked herself on the couch after Clementine’s TV time ended and discovered a reality show about people building elaborate cakes, which riveted her completely.

"This is barbarism," she breathed, watching a contestant stack fondant layers at a precarious angle. "Magnificent, reckless barbarism. I need this level of chaos in my baked goods." She glanced over at me. "Sir Grey. Come sit with me. I want to hold your arm while I watch."

"I’m cleaning up the kitchen."

"The kitchen will be there afterwards." She held out one hand expectantly, chin lifted, expression arranged into its most severe configuration, and then after a beat she dropped the chin an inch and said more quietly: "Please, my love?"

Frankly, the ’please’ cost her something. I could tell by how carefully she said it.

Sooo I went and sat with her.

"Simp," Clementine coughed into her hand.

I deserved that one, probably.

By the time the sun went down, I’d installed the lock on Clementine’s door, reorganized the fridge to accommodate her shelf, and drawn up a bathroom schedule that I taped to the wall. I did so with the quiet resolution of a man who knew nobody would follow it.

The house had survived one full day with five occupants — nobody had been stabbed, kicked, or set on fire. Elsa had made grilled cheese and said please without internally bleeding. Ayra had only had to be spanked once, and Juniper was not at all a problem in any way. At least I had her.

As for Clementine, she was still kinda bitchy, but she was growing on me. A part of me wondered why I didn’t follow up with her more after our hookup. She was really cute, and her attitude sure made her memorable at the very least.

As the evening sank into the later hours, I took a minute alone in the kitchen and pulled up the System interface. I’d been sitting on a question since last night — the bond scaling on Clementine’s stat block — and with everyone occupied, now seemed like a good time to dig in.

I focused on her entry in the party roster and the details expanded:

[ CLEMENTINE KIM — GREATER STEED ↓↓↓

Level: 1

• STR: 14

• DEX: 14

• CON: 14

• INT: 9

• WIS: 8

•CHA: 7

[Bond Scaling] — All physical stats increase as bond strengthens. ]

Her locked abilities told the story of the road ahead. Shared Senses unlocked at "Wary," meaning she just had to tolerate me. Spirit Charge required "Amicable," and Transcendent Gallop needed "Devoted," which I wasn’t going to think too hard about for now. The Steed’s Resilience passive also sat behind "Amicable," taunting me with its promise of enhanced durability I couldn’t access yet. Her numbers were strong, her potential was massive, and every bit of it was gated behind a relationship that currently registered as HOSTILE in bright red letters.

Sooner rather than later I would need to address that.