Ever since that encounter, things have shifted itself into the fitting setting – how an employer should treat his employee, how he keeps his business to himself and how I keep myself to mine.

He only talks to greet, to ask and to command me, just like how it's all supposed to be.

However, as much as it eased every rational part of me, it bothered the other illogical and unpredictable part – the dark side of the coin I can't rein in very well.

One week.

Two weeks.

Three weeks.

Had it been that long?

It barely felt like that much time had passed by.

And today would mean that it'd be two more days before I turn 21.

I could care less about me earning another year off from my lifeline.

I felt a heavy feeling come upon me as I eyed the calendar on my phone.

A few more days to go before I leave this place and be a homeless, jobless person once more. Oh well, it's not like I'm not used to having to compromise all the time. I released a burdened sigh as I sat down the chair in my quarters.

Recently, I have been up and about, everytime I get to rest and do nothing or whenever I finish shopping for food and groceries, only to look for places and jobs I could shift into the moment the terms of agreement aren't functional and valid anymore.

I am a woman of pride after all. I just down turn against my own words.

Which, in the first place, got in me this mess I'm in right now. On the contrary, as an adult with a sound mind, I am in no position to whine, seeing how I myself had agreed to his proposition in exchange for a room and a job.

All I have to do for these few days more is only to do my job well.

That and nothing else Yoo InHyeong. You should know your place by now and keep yourself there as it is.

I urged myself to keep this in mind, shaking off all the other thoughts that hinder me from thinking as clearly as I had originally wanted to.

Flashbacks of the past, secret moments suddenly invaded my train of thoughts.

Almost every night, ever since I first stayed in this house, I could hear him shouting and crying in his sleep, calling for help.

Hopelessly letting my body move by itself, by impulse, I found myself walking towards the forbidden blue room.

I felt so stupid, acting unusually disobedient and rebellious all because of an urge to cease the painful noises that echoed all over the huge, lonely castle of a house at night.

It didn't make me sleep a wink.

It didn't even give me enough time to think of wanting to sleep.

The only thought that was clear each and every moment it repeated itself was only one and the same – it was irrational, irrelevant and incomprehensible – to my rational side that is.

And it was that alarming, enough to have me double up my defenses and reinforce my programmed thoughts – I had to make him stop haunting my mind . . . to make his voice shake my dormant feelings.

There I was again, finding myself tiptoeing, making baby, feather-like steps as I entered the forbidden boundaries of his room – which of course, only stayed forbidden when the sun was up and when he was awake.

As soon as I reached the side of his bed, I would kneel down, my skin landing softly on the carpeted floor and I'd reach over to pat his head, as if I was watching over an orphaned baby that needed a home, a family and an identity.

As weird and stupid and as uncharacteristically as I find it, I was actually concluding one thing the very first time I landed in that predicament.

This boy hides behind the mask of a man, the armor of a king and the aura of a snake . . .

. . . But he can't fool me, not when I know how he is after this, after seeing who he really is when the lights go off.

He's just keeping up that front to protect himself – the guise of The Ice King.

I knew how I could stop him from weakening the power of my walls – and that'd be to strengthen his.

To keep myself in the shadows while I keep the nightmares away.

I despised the amount of involvement I am committing myself into.

It wasn't a part of the deal.

It wasn't a part of what I had originally came and stayed here for.

But here I am, finding myself coming back every night to appease the wild things that possessed this person's dreams and turned them as nightmares everytime sleep overcame those eyes of his.

I even notice how I end occasionally end up humming and singing softly at times while waiti