Chapter 8: The Breaking
The metallic taste in Lia’s mouth wouldn’t go away. It had been hours since the loading bay, since Yeji, since the change that had left her mind feeling like a scrambled radio station. She’d stumbled home through back alleys, her oversized hoodie and sweatpants barely containing her still-swollen, nine-foot frame, which had reluctantly receded to a shaky, muscle-heavy seven. Every inch of her ached, deep in the bone.
Her apartment door felt flimsy under her hand. The lock clicked. She pushed inside, into the dark, familiar silence, hoping for the scent of Lewis’s cheap coffee, for the sound of his video games.
The lights were on in the living room.
And the sounds were all wrong.
A low gasp. A soft, rhythmic creak of her own sofa. A male groan she knew intimately.
Lia stood frozen in the doorway, her duffel bag slipping from numb fingers. It thudded on the floor.
The movement on the couch stopped. Lewis’s head appeared over the back, his face flushed, his hair mussed. Behind him, rising with a languid, unconcerned grace, was Yeji.
But not the Yeji Lia knew.
This Yeji was small. Human-sized. Naked, her skin pale and unmarked, her dark hair cascading over her shoulders. She looked at Lia with wide, convincingly startled eyes, pulling a crumpled throw blanket over herself.
“Lia?” Lewis’s voice was thick, equal parts guilt and confusion. “Shit. You’re back early.”
Lia couldn’t speak. Her eyes darted from Lewis’s guilty face to Yeji’s performative shock. Her brain stuttered, trying to reconcile the ten-foot emerald monster from the warehouse with this delicate, cowering woman on her couch.
“I… I texted you,” Lewis said, running a hand through his hair. He looked genuinely distressed. “Like, five times. We need to talk. This… us… it’s not working.”
A text. Lia fumbled in her hoodie pocket. Her phone was dead, shattered from the earlier fight. She hadn’t charged it.
“You texted me,” she repeated, her voice a hollow rasp. “So you brought her here? To my apartment?”
Yeji made a small, frightened sound, shrinking closer to Lewis. “Lee, who is this? She’s scaring me.”
Lee. She called him Lee. Lia’s pet name for him.
“It’s okay,” Lewis said to Yeji, protectively. He looked back at Lia, his expression hardening into defensive anger. “Look, Lia, you’ve been gone for days with no word. You come back looking… like you’ve been in a fight. And you’re screaming about me cheating? You need to calm down.”
The logic of it, the perfect, mundane cruelty, was a knife twisting in Lia’s gut. Yeji had planned this. The timing. The texts she’d never receive. The human disguise.
“She’s not what she looks like, Lewis,” Lia blurted, the words tumbling out in a desperate, shaky torrent. “She’s a monster. She’s green and she’s ten feet tall and she… she hurts people. She hurt me. She made me—”
She gestured helplessly at her own body, still throbbing with the memory of forced growth.
Lewis stared at her. His expression shifted from guilt to concern to outright disbelief. Yeji buried her face in his shoulder, her body trembling with fake sobs.
“See?” Lewis said, his voice low. “This is what I mean. You’ve been off. Talking about pressure at work, then disappearing, and now… green monsters? Lia, you need help.”
“It’s true!” Lia’s voice cracked, rising in pitch. She took a step forward. “Look at her! Look at her eyes!”
Yeji peeked out from behind Lewis. Her eyes were perfectly normal, brown, and brimming with terrified tears. There was a ghost of a smile in them, for only Lia to see.
Something in Lia’s chest, already cracked from the warehouse, finally snapped. It wasn’t the analytical, calculating anger Yeji had provoked before. This was hotter, dumber, a primal reaction to betrayal that bypassed thought entirely.
The familiar heat erupted in her core. A wave of nausea, then power.
Her spine crackled. Lewis’s eyes widened in real horror this time as Lia’s frame ballooned, shredding the hoodie and sweats. Her skin blazed a fierce, chlorophyll green. Her muscles knitted and expanded, not with the controlled fury of before, but with a ragged, uncontrolled violence. Seven feet. Eight. The ceiling fixture brushed her head.
She was the She-Hulk again, but different. The confident, sensual charge was gone, replaced by a raw, trembling rage. Tears of frustration mixed with the emerald glow in her eyes.
“What the FUCK?” Lewis screamed, scrambling off the couch, dragging the blanket and a shrieking Yeji with him. He backed against the far wall, his face ashen. “Lia! What did you do?”
Yeji clung to him, the picture of terror. “Oh my god, Lee, what is she? She’s a demon!”
“You see?” Lia roared, her voice a guttural echo in the small room. She gestured at her own massive, green form. “This is her! This is what she is!”
But the evidence was irrefutable. To Lewis, he saw his girlfriend of three years transform into a roaring giantess. He saw a terrified, normal woman hiding behind him. The narrative was cemented.
“Stay away!” Lewis yelled, fumbling for his phone on the coffee table. “I’m calling the police! Stay the hell away from us!”
Us. The word was a final blow.
Lia looked at Yeji, who was now peeking over Lewis’s shoulder. The naked fear on Yeji’s face was a masterpiece of acting. But her eyes, for a microsecond, met Lia’s. The smirk was there, deep down. A victory smirk.
The rage crested, pure and blinding. Lia took a thunderous step forward, her fist clenching, aimed at the mocking, delicate face.
“Lia, don’t!” Lewis screamed, throwing himself in front of Yeji.
He was protecting her. He was choosing her.
Lia’s punch halted, trembling in the air inches from Lewis’s head. The love she’d felt, the shared history, curdled into something toxic and sickening. She looked at his defiant, terrified face, then at Yeji’s cowering performance.
With a sound that was half-roar, half-sob, Lia turned and stormed from the living room. She couldn’t be there. She’d break everything, including him.
She slammed into the bathroom, the flimsy door splintering off its hinges as her shoulder hit it. She locked what remained of it and collapsed against the sink, her great weight making the porcelain shriek in protest.
In the mirror, a monster stared back. A giant, green, loveless monster. Lewis’s words echoed. You need help.
From the living room, she heard Lewis’s frantic, whispered voice to a 911 operator. “My girlfriend… she’s having a psychotic break. She’s violent. She thinks she’s turned into some… some green thing…”
And Yeji’s voice, soft, comforting, manipulative. “It’s okay, Lee. You’re safe now. I’ve got you.”
Lia slid down the wall, the tiles cracking under her weight. She hugged her knees, making herself small in the tiny room. The sobs that came were deep, seismic, and utterly silent. She was trapped. Not by straps or chairs, but by a story. Yeji’s story. And she had just become the villain in it.
The only sound was the distant wail of approaching sirens, and the gentle, satisfied hum of her enemy comforting her man in the next room.