Chapter 6: The Morning Escape
The mansion’s heavy oak door clicked shut behind him with a finality that echoed in his bones. Leonid didn’t breathe until he was past the iron gates, the cool dawn air scraping his lungs raw. He ran.
His sneakers slapped against the wet pavement, a frantic, arrhythmic counterpoint to the memory of a steady, possessive hand. The city was a ghost town, bathed in the sodium-orange wash of dying streetlights. Shop windows reflected a distorted version of him: pale, hollow-eyed, a streak of shadow fleeing the light.
She doesn’t see you. I do.
The words looped in his skull, syncing with his footfalls. He ran until his chest burned and the taste of copper joined the phantom scent of jasmine and clean, clinical mint. He didn’t stop until the university’s brutalist dormitory complex loomed ahead, a concrete cliff face against a lightening sky.
The climb to the fourth-floor room felt endless. The hallway smelled of stale beer and microwaved noodles. He fumbled with his key, the metal loud in the silent corridor.
The door swung open to a wall of smell: cigarette smoke, cheap body spray, and the unmistakable, humid scent of sex. The single bulb was on, casting its sickly yellow glow.
The bunk bed shuddered with a relentless, grinding rhythm. A high, breathy giggle cut through the grunts. From his top bunk, Leonid had a perfect, unwanted view of Kai’s naked, pumping back, the muscles in his shoulders corded with effort. The girl beneath him was a blur of blonde hair and clutching hands on Kai’s ass.
Leonid stood frozen in the doorway, his own body a traitorous echo of theirs, throbbing with spent and confused energy.
“Oh shit, bro! You’re back!” Kai panted, not stopping. His head turned, a sheen of sweat on his temple. “Close the damn door, you’re letting the cold in.”
Leonid moved mechanically. He let his bag slump to the floor, kicked the door shut with his heel. The thud seemed to amplify the sounds, trapping them in the tiny, filthy room.
“Don’t mind us,” Kai grunted, picking up his pace. The bedframe screamed in protest. “Early bird gets the worm, right, babe?”
The girl giggled again, the sound brittle and performative.
Leonid climbed the ladder to his bunk, each rung a monumental effort. His mattress was a landfill of notes and discarded clothes. He didn’t bother clearing them. He face-planted into the pillow, which smelled of his own hair and, faintly, of her. He pulled it over his head, pressing hard against his ears.
It was no use. The sounds permeated the cotton. The wet slap of skin, the rhythmic creak of springs, Kai’s crescendoing groans. They were a vulgar, shouting mirror of the silent, precise possession he’d endured just hours before. One was transactional noise. The other had been a silent earthquake.
He felt split in two. One half was still in that canopy bed, electrified and ashamed. The other was here, buried in laundry, listening to his roommate finish.
After a final, shouted curse, the motion stopped. The springs sighed. Heavy breathing filled the room.
“Fuck, yeah,” Kai said, his voice saturated with satisfaction. “Grab me a smoke, will you, babe?”
Leonid heard the rustle of sheets, the lighter’s click, the familiar drag and exhale.
“So,” Kai said, his tone shifting to casual curiosity. The girl whispered something. “In a minute. Hey. Leonid. You alive up there?”
Leonid didn’t move.
“Come on, man. You bail on golden-girl Mina in the middle of the night? You get caught with your dick in someone else’s cookie jar?” Kai laughed, a short, sharp bark. “Actually, don’t answer that. I don’t wanna know. Mina’s sweet. Too sweet for you, you fuckin’ menace.”
The blonde giggled.
Leonid squeezed his eyes shut. Sweet. She was. She dreamed of market analytics. She trusted him. She was asleep while her sister’s hand…
“Speaking of,” Kai continued, and the bed creaked as he presumably sat up. Smoke drifted up to Leonid’s bunk. “I saw that sister of hers yesterday. At the library. Jennie, right? Fuck, man. I mean… fuck.”
A different tension, cold and sharp, wired Leonid’s spine.
“What about her?” His voice was muffled by the pillow, gravelly from disuse.
“Just looking,” Kai said, a defensive smirk in his words. “A man can look. She’s like a painting you wanna lick. All that black hair. Those crazy eyes. She was just sitting there, staring at a book about… I dunno, geometric patterns in ant colonies or some shit. Didn’t turn a page for an hour. It’s spooky. But in a hot way, you know?”
Leonid knew. He knew the precision of that stare. He knew it could feel like a physical touch, mapping the veins on your arm.
“She’s Mina’s sister,” Leonid said, the statement flat and pointless.
“And? That makes her even more interesting. The crazy, beautiful hermit of the Kim family. I heard she’s, like, a genius or something. And that she sometimes just… pees herself.” He said it with a fascinated revulsion. “That’s wild. I’d like to see that.”
“Shut up, Kai.”
“Whoa, touchy.” A pause. A long drag. “You’ve seen it, huh? Living in the mansion all weekend. You get a peek at the family freak?”
Leonid shot up. He swung his legs over the edge of the bunk and looked down.
Kai was sprawled on the ruined sheets, the blonde curled beside him, looking up with wide, startled eyes. Kai met his gaze, a challenge in his smug, handsome face.
“Don’t call her that,” Leonid said. His voice was low, quiet, and it carried a frequency that made the girl shrink back.
Kai raised his eyebrows, a slow, insolent smile spreading. “Okay.Okay. I see. You got a little fascination going too.” He stubbed his cigarette out on the side of the bedframe. “Good luck with that, brother. I like my girls compos mentis. Present and accounted for in the skull. That one’s a gorgeous, empty vase. Probably break if you held her too hard.”
Empty. The word was so profoundly wrong it made Leonid’s teeth ache. Jennie wasn’t empty. She was overfull, a pressurized container of obsession and intellect and need, cracking at the seams. She saw parts.
“You know nothing about her,” Leonid said, lying back down, turning his face to the mildewed wall.
“I know I want to fuck her,” Kai said simply, crudely. “The rest is decoration.”
The girl beside him swatted his chest, a weak protest.
Leonid stared at a water stain on the wall.
Beneath him, Kai started whispering to the girl again, his hands moving, the springs beginning their familiar complaint. Leonid pulled the pillow back over his head.