Chapter 14: The First Sunday
He stood outside her door at 9:58, feeling absurd. The hallway of her upscale building was silent, all polished concrete and muted lighting. He’d worn jeans and a grey hoodie, his standard uniform. This wasn’t a date. It was a transaction. A service rendered for a debt repaid.
He knocked at 10:00 exactly.
The door opened almost before the sound faded. She stood there, backlit by the morning sun pouring through massive windows. She was in black, as always—loose linen trousers and a simple tank top, her hair a dark river over one shoulder. She looked like she’d been waiting, perfectly still, for hours.
“You’re punctual,” she said, stepping back to let him in.
“You said ten.” He walked past her, the faint scent of cherry blossom and something deeper, spicier, hitting him. The apartment was exactly what he’d expected and nothing like it. It was vast, minimalist, all cool tones and sharp lines. The city sprawled below the floor-to-ceiling windows like a diorama. There were no photos, no colorful throws, no clutter. It felt like a gallery. Or an observation deck.
But in the center of the living area, on a low black lacquer table, was a spread that contradicted everything. Plates of food: delicate pastries, sliced fruits glistening, smoked salmon, a stack of pancakes so fluffy they seemed to defy gravity. A pot of coffee steamed beside a single flickering candle. Two floor cushions sat opposite each other.
“You said you don’t do breakfast,” he stated, not moving from his spot.
“I said you don’t do breakfast. I didn’t say I wouldn’t provide it.” She glided to the table and knelt on one cushion, her movements fluid and precise. “Sit. It’ll get cold.”
He approached slowly, his gaze sweeping the room again. Textbooks were stacked with architectural neatness on a steel desk. Beside them, a half-full glass of amber liquid—whiskey, probably.
He lowered himself onto the other cushion, his knees complaining. The food smelled incredible. “You cook all this?”
“I assembled it. Cooking implies a chaos I don’t enjoy for guests.” She poured coffee into a black ceramic mug and pushed it toward him. “Black, right?”
He nodded, disquieted. She remembered. Of course she remembered. He took a sip. It was perfect.
For a few minutes, there was only the sound of cutlery on porcelain, the distant hum of the city. He ate because he was hungry, and it was good. She picked at a piece of melon, her eyes on him. Not staring, just… observing. He felt like a specimen under a calm, fascinated lens.
“So,” he said, swallowing a bite of pancake. “We talk. That’s the deal.”
“That’s the deal.”
“About what?”
“Anything.” She tilted her head. “Why psychology?”
He shrugged, a defensive gesture. “Easy credits. People are predictable. Figure out the patterns, pass the tests.”
“Liar.” The word was soft, without accusation. “You aced the neuropsychopharmacology module. That’s not about easy credits. That’s about fascination.”
He put his fork down. “You researched my transcript?”
“I have access to the department’s administrative server. It wasn’t difficult.” She said it like noting the weather. “So. Why the brain chemistry?”
He looked out the window, at a gull riding a thermal between skyscrapers. The words came out before he could stop them, pulled by the quiet, by her unsettling certainty. “My mom. She had episodes. They called it bipolar, then schizoaffective, then they just threw pills at her. Some worked. Some made her a zombie. I wanted to know… I wanted to know what was happening in there. Where she was when the chemicals were wrong.”
The room was very still. He hadn’t told anyone that. Not Dimitri, not anyone. He braced for pity, for some saccharine response.
Jennie just nodded slowly, as if filing the data into a correct slot. “And where do you think she was?”
He looked back at her, startled. “What?”
“When the chemicals were wrong. Was she gone? Or was she trapped?” Her dark eyes held his. This wasn’t small talk. It was a dissection.
He exhaled, a long breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Trapped. I think she was always there, screaming, but the wiring was fucked so no one could hear her.”
Jennie’s lips curved, not a smile, but an expression of profound understanding. “Yes.”
They lapsed into silence again. He finished his coffee. She refilled it.
“My turn,” he said, the need for parity striking him. “Why business? You could be doing pure mathematics. Theoretical physics. Something that matches all…” He gestured vaguely at her, at the room. “This.”
“The world runs on systems,” she said, tracing the rim of her own cup with a silver-ringed finger. “Financial markets, supply chains, social hierarchies. They’re all algorithms. Beautiful, complex, violent algorithms. I like to understand the rules of the game. Especially,” she leaned forward slightly, “when I intend to win.”
The way she said win sent a chill down his spine. It wasn’t about money. It was about domination.
“And this?” He pointed his chin at the unopened envelope on her desk. “Why keep it? The debt’s cancelled.”
She didn’t even glance at it. “It’s a artifact. Proof of a negotiation that resulted in a favorable outcome. I keep all my contracts.”
“This isn’t a contract. It’s a weird Sunday hangout.”
“It’s a covenant.” Her gaze was unwavering. “You gave your word. That has weight.”
He had no answer to that. He felt the weight of it now, sitting cross-legged on her floor, full of her food, telling her secrets. The lines were blurring, the clear edges of obligation smudging into something murkier, warmer.
The hours dissolved. He talked more. About his father leaving, about the petty anxieties of volleyball team politics, about his secret love for growing herbs on his dorm windowsill. She listened, she asked one perfect, penetrating question that opened him up further, and she listened some more. She offered fragments of herself in return: her preference for order, her contempt for small talk, the fact she found most people’s facial expressions exhausting to interpret.
At one point, he laughed—a real, unguarded sound—at her impression of their statistics professor. She didn’t laugh with him, but her eyes crinkled, and she looked, for a fleeting second, like the girl he’d known in kindergarten, before everything got strange.
He checked his phone. It was past two in the afternoon. Four hours had vanished.
“Shit,” he muttered, standing up, his legs stiff. “I told Dimitri I’d meet him at three.”
Jennie uncoiled herself from the cushion in one smooth motion. She walked him to the door, her bare feet silent on the polished concrete.
He turned at the threshold. The city light framed her, making her seem both stark and ethereal. “Same time next week?” he heard himself ask.
“Yes.”
He nodded, shoved his hands in his pockets. “It wasn’t… terrible.”
“High praise.” A beat of silence. “Leonid.”
“Yeah?”
“You have syrup.” She reached up. Her thumb brushed the corner of his mouth. The touch was brief, shockingly warm, and as precise as everything else about her. She showed him the tiny smear on her skin. “Here.”
His breath caught. Every nerve ending focused on that single, vanished point of contact. He just looked at her, at her dark, fathomless eyes.
She lowered her hand. “Goodbye.”
He left without another word. In the elevator, descending, he leaned against the wall. He could still smell her apartment on his clothes—bergamot, leather, the ghost of cherry blossom. He could still feel the phantom press of her thumb.
He’d repaid his debt. The transaction was complete. So why did it feel like he’d just agreed to a hundred more Sundays? Why did the thought of next week send a current of pure, undiluted anticipation straight through his chest?
Across the city, in her silent apartment, Jennie knelt back at the low table. She picked up her phone, opened a voice memo app, and stopped the recording that had been running for four hours, twelve minutes, and thirty-three seconds. She saved it. She labeled it: Sunday 1. Baseline.