Chapter 4: The Midnight Confession
The silence in the Kim mansion wasn’t peaceful; it was a vacuum. It swallowed the tick of the grandfather clock three floors down, the hum of the central air, the distant city. Jennie lay on her back in the center of her vast canopy bed, the black silk sheets cool and slippery against her bare legs. The single framed photo on her nightstand was invisible in the dark, but she knew every pixel: Leonid at sixteen, his arm slung around her thinner shoulders, both of them squinting against a sun that felt like it belonged to another planet. His grin was a challenge. Her smile was already a secret.
Her phone was a rectangle of searing light against the absolute dark. Her thumb scrolled through her contacts, a list of寥寥数人. It stopped at Leonid Manoban. No heart emoji, no nickname. Just the name, solid and real. She’d had this number since they were kids. She’d never called it.
The garden played on a loop behind her eyes. The feel of his cotton shirt under her fingertips. The heat of his skin beneath. The way he’d looked at her when he woke—not just with annoyance, but with a new, sharp recognition. You are so fucking creepy. The words echoed, a mantra that warmed her from the inside out. He’d seen the real thing, and he’d named it.
Her thumb hovered. The rational part of her brain, the one that aced econometrics and could deconstruct corporate leverage in her sleep, screamed this was catastrophic. Social suicide. It provided data: probability of rejection, 99.8%. Probability of escalation to actionable harassment, high. She dismissed it with a blink.
She wanted to hear his voice in the dark. The one thick with sleep. The one that belonged only to this hour, to this private, vulnerable space between midnight and morning.
She pressed the button.
The ringtone was a lifeline thrown into the abyss. One.Two. Her lungs locked. She could see him in his small dorm bed, the sheets tangled, a textbook open on the floor where he’d kicked it.
He picked up on the third ring.
“Kim?” His voice was gravel wrapped in fog, deep and blurred at the edges. Annoyance was the first layer. “Do you know what time it is?”
She couldn’t speak. The sound of him, unfiltered, poured directly into her ear, traveled down her spine, pooled low in her stomach. She felt her body soften, a physical submission to the sound.
“Hello? This better be a fucking wrong number or you dying.”
“I’m not dying,” she whispered. The words scraped out. “I just wanted to hear your voice.”
Silence. It was a different quality than the mansion’s vacuum. This was charged, alive. She could hear his breathing, slightly uneven. She imagined the rise and fall of his chest.
A low sound came through the speaker. Not quite a laugh. A exhale of disbelief. “You’re insane, you know that? Certifiable. What are you doing?”
“Lying in bed.”
“Yeah, normal people are doing that. Sleeping. They’re not calling people they’ve been stalking in public.”
“You gave me your apple,” she said, as if it were a legal argument.
“Christ. An apple. You’re building a whole religion on a piece of fruit I didn’t want.” She heard rustling, the creak of a bedspring. He was sitting up. He hadn’t hung up. “And what was today? In the garden? That was some serial killer shit, Jennie.”
Her name. He almost never used her name. It felt like a hand closing around her heart, gentle and brutal all at once.
“You were exposed. You’d burn.”
“I’m a big boy. I can handle the sun.” Another pause. “Why are you really calling?”
She turned onto her side, curling around the phone. “I couldn’t sleep. I thought of you. I thought of the way your shirt rode up. The line of hair. The vein in your temple.” She spoke the words plainly, a clinical recitation of her devotion.
On his end, there was a sharp intake of breath. Then a soft, humorless chuckle. “Fuck me. You don’t hold back, do you?”
“Would you prefer I lied?”
“I’d prefer you got a hobby. A therapist. Several therapists.” He lit a cigarette. She heard the flick of the lighter, the slow drag. The sound was intimately familiar. “You’re top of the class, right? Business wunderkind. And this is what you do with your nights. Creepy phone calls to guys who mock you.”
“It’s what I want to do,” she corrected softly.
He smoked in silence for a moment. “You’re a puzzle, Kim. A really fucking disturbing puzzle. Most people, they’d have snapped by now. Or transferred. Or filed a complaint.”
“I’m not most people.”
“No shit.” He exhaled smoke. “You beat the hell out of Declan McCready last year. Broke his nose. Over what, a comment about your shoes?”
“He implied my devotion to you was a mental deficiency. It was an inaccurate assessment. I corrected it.”
Leonid laughed, a real one this time, rough and surprised. “You ‘corrected it.’ Jesus. He’s twice your size.”
“Size is irrelevant. Motivation is key.”
“And your motivation is, what, defending my honor? I don’t have any honor, Jennie. I’m an asshole. I make fun of you. My friends make fun of you. I let them.”
“I know.” The pleasure in her voice was unmistakable, a dark purr. “It’s how you communicate. It’s your language. I’m learning it.”
The line went quiet again. She could feel him wrestling with something, the easy mockery failing him. “You shouldn’t learn it. It’s a shit language. You should… I don’t know. Forget it. Forget this. Forget me.”
“Impossible,” she breathed. “You’re the only thing I can’t solve. The only variable that doesn’t fit. You’re my absolute.”
“God,” he muttered. He sounded tired. Not annoyed. Just weary, and something else. A strange, reluctant responsibility. “You need to go to sleep. It’s late.”
“Will you stay on the line?”
“No.”
“Just until I fall asleep.”
“That’s even creepier. No.”
But he didn’t hang up. He took another drag. “What are you wearing?” he asked, the question sudden, dripping with a deliberate, crude amusement.
She answered without hesitation. “Black silk panties. Nothing else. The silk is cool. It’s like water. I’m thinking of your hands. They’re big. I think they’d tear the silk. I think you’d like that.”
A choked sound from his end. The amusement was gone, stripped away. His voice dropped, lower. “You can’t say things like that.”
“Why not? It’s true.”
“Because it’s…” He trailed off. She heard him shift, a restless movement. “Go to sleep, Jennie.”
“Say my name again.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“Go to sleep. Freak.” The insult was there, but the bite was gone. It sounded almost fond. Exhausted.
“Okay,” she whispered.
She listened to his breathing, synchronizing hers to its rhythm. In, out. The faint crackle of the connection. The distant sound of a siren through his window. She committed it all to memory, a perfect, pristine recording for her archives.
After what felt like an eternity, he spoke again, his voice so quiet she almost missed it. “I’m hanging up now.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t call again.”
She smiled in the dark, her face a pale moon in the black sheets. “Okay.”
He disconnected. The dial tone was a flat, dead buzz. She held the phone to her ear until it stopped, then placed it carefully on the nightstand.
She lay back, her body humming, every nerve ending alive. The scent of cherry blossom and smoke clung to her sheets. He hadn’t hung up. He’d stayed. He’d asked what she was wearing. He’d told her to go to sleep. He’d called her a freak, but he’d said her name first.
In the gilded cage of her bedroom, Jennie Kim closed her eyes, the ghost of his sleep-rough voice cradling her. He was right. She was insane. And he was still on the other end of the line. For now, that was enough. It was everything.