Two things were very evident about Weiyi incredibly quickly.  The first was that she was more introverted than Sehun’s sister before she got to know somebody, and the second was that she was very observant.  Her eyes followed Sehun’s facial expressions and his hands in a manner that he initially found disturbing, and while she barely spoke a word as they ate, her brief nods or other gestures indicated that she was more than aware of everything he was speaking about.

Eventually running out of things to say, Sehun ate dessert in silence.  Weiyi had looked at the cheesecake for a long moment before deciding she was full and that she didn’t want any, pushing the plate away from her.  She looked a little nervous as she did so, ducking her head and with her shoulders tense, as if expecting to be berated.

“There’s no need to eat if you don’t want to,” he told her, pulling the plate over to his side of the table.

She blinked and then her eyes flickered up towards his face before going back to the cheesecake that Sehun was now eating.

“But you’re paying,” she pointed out.  Her voice was still barely louder than a whisper, cracking every so often.  “It’s rude.”

Sehun paused with his mouth full, considering.  “And you’re unwell,” he pointed out.  She scowled and shrank back into her chair, but her shoulders were still tense.  Sehun continued eating, dropping his gaze from her so that she wouldn’t get unduly nervous.  “Why should I make you do something you don’t want to do?”

Initially, he didn’t think she would reply to that, because she seemed to have an aversion to saying more than half a dozen words without at least a ten minute interval, but her gaze fell to her lap.

“Everybody else does,” she mumbled.

Sehun wanted to ask her exactly what she meant by that, but decided it was best not to push her.  She was plainly still wary, and besides, the place they were in was hardly private.

As they returned in silence to Sehun’s room, he wasn’t sure if he was more freaked out by the fact that she looked so like Luhan, and the memories of being trapped in a dark room with only him and Byun Baekhyun for company, or the fact that she followed behind him so obediently, almost like a zoned-out robot.  Every time he looked back over his shoulder, she was exactly three paces behind him, no more and no less, even though it was clear physical exertion for her to keep up.  He regretted taking the stairs instead of the lift, and came to a halt on the landing of the second floor, turning around to beckon to her.  She remained rooted to the spot three paces away.

“Am I walking too quickly?” he asked, careful to keep his tone light and warm.  She avoided meeting his eye.

“Walk with me,” he requested, extending a hand towards her.  She ignored it, which he had expected, but slipped forward a couple of steps so that she was almost beside him.  Deciding it was good enough, Sehun continued on.  By the time they had reached the third floor, she was three paces behind again.  Shaking his head, Sehun retrieved his room key from his pocket and opened the door.

Somebody had been in to turn down the sheets while they were eating: the bed looked like Weiyi had never slept in it.  The towel Sehun had thrown over the chair was also now hanging on the bathroom door, and on the bed was a small pile of clean, folded and neatly pressed clothes.

“Those are yours,” he told Weiyi, pointing to them.  “I sent them away to be cleaned earlier.  They came with you, so I assume they’re the clothes you were originally taken to hospital… in…” he tailed off as she pounced on them, rifling quickly through them and turning out the pockets.

Which reminded him.  “Oh!”  He crossed to the cupboard, where the suit he’d worn earlier was now hanging, and went through the trouser pockets.  After a few seconds, he found what he was searching for.

“I discovered this in one of the pockets before I sent them to be cleaned,” he told her, holding out a small red memory stick that declared itself capable to containing sixty-four gigabytes.  “I thought it best for it not to go through the wash.”

Weiyi’s eyes zeroed in on the memory stick, ever so slightly open, and then she snatched it from him, her hand closing tightly around it.  Sehun tried to blink his shock away: for a moment, her expression had been feral, and it was far too close to how he remembered Luhan for comfort.  Scared, he stumbled back a couple of paces before remembering that this was not Luhan: he was the one in control here, no matter what the practically faded scars on his body wanted to tell him.  And the girl in front of him was just as scared as he had been on that occasion.

Embarrassed, Sehun scratched the back of his head and attempted to regain his composure.

“M-make sure you keep that somewhere safe,” he mumbled, gesturing vaguely at the memory stick.  “You don’t want to lose it.”

Weiyi’s hand tightened round it so strongly that her fingers went white.  Then she backed off a bit and picked up her clothes from the bed.  She looked around for a moment or two; then her expression went oddly blank and she started to take off the t-shirt she’d nicked.

Face flaming, Sehun bolted for the bathroom and locked himself in, fumbling for his phone.

Minseok picked up after the third ring.  “Is everything okay?” he asked, his voice hushed.

“I can’t do this.”  Sehun shook his head violently, his voice almost breathily inaudible.

“What’s happened?”  Though his voice didn’t rise, a note of urgency had appeared in Minseok’s tone.  Sehun took a deep breath to collect himself.

“She’s awake,” he reported.  “But I… I think Sangchu might have… I dunno, kept her as some kind of p-pl… sla— um….”

After a moment of silence, Minseok swore.  “Luhan’s going to absolutely flip a switch,” he grumbled, apparently catching the meaning.  “Are you sure?”

“I might be misreading it,” Sehun sank down into a sitting position, leaning against the bathroom door, “because she’s also very introverted – she barely speaks at all – but until she concluded I wasn’t a threat, she looked like she was going to attack me and run for it or something.  After she seemed