"There's a still a little bit of you laced with my doubt,

It's still a little hard to say what's going on."

Two years ago

Richmond, British Columbia

They bring his body down two days after Yoona strips her room at University of Alaska Anchorage without leaving anything that resembles a goodbye. Her friends catch word somehow, though, and through the weeks their hushed whispers among themselves resolve into things like, "We're so sorry, Yoona," and "We're here for you," but Yoona loses it all somewhere between the shores of whisky and straight vodka. Eventually, the voices fade, then disappear altogether.

And the silence is worse.

It's a Sunday, a day of rest, when his casket is swathed in flowers and white sashes of silk, as if to hide the fact that the coffin stays closed the whole time. During the ceremony, Yoona thinks for the briefest of moments that if she can't see him, then she can also pretend that he's not even there. But then the starless black, the blinding flashes of white come back, and pretending is not an option.

"You made a good choice. A brave choice," her mother adds, muted tones in the church. "Maybe a break from Alaska is what you need."

Yoona nods, staring straight ahead, the words ringing in her head alongside the pounding of rum. To most people, the word 'break' promises a return, but the last time her mother said she needed a break was when the two of them packed a basket for a picnic in the park.

"I need a break from your father today," her mother had said as they drove past the park.

And 'today' became every day for the next fifteen years.

***

Now

Anchorage, Alaska

A gradient of gold ripples in his vision, circling, flitting back and forth; his hands feel around blindly, recognising his bed sheets, the peaks of cloth familiar between his fingers. Slowly, the blurred curves focus between his blinks, gathering into a single image—

Luhan gives a start when he sees the woman standing over him. The shock transcends to disbelief, and unconsciously, his hand drift upwards, towards her face. She doesn't move. His eyes stray over her features, wandering aimlessly, and he wonders if he's dead.

"Who are you?" His fingers tremble, so close to her face. He hasn't seen her since...

She stiffens. "Why should I tell you? You were prepared to gun me down just a few minutes ago."

The voice is husky, distant, unfamiliar. Luhan has no memory of this voice, nor of the event it speaks of. He retracts his hand, eyes narrowing.

"Who are you?" he asks again, but his tone is guarded, and so are his eyes, searching her face. "And how did you get into my house?"

"Your house?" Her voice is a frown in itself. "This is my... friend's house."

"Oh." Luhan finds he can't look at her anymore. "They told me the last owner of this house died."

A pause. Her chin rises a fraction, but there's something raw about her front of pride. "He did."

"Look, I'm sorry, but—"

"I'll be staying here," she interrupts, all the rawness in her face gone, replaced by a hard shell. "I'm going to get my bags."

Luhan sits up in alarm, but she's already leaving the room. "What?" he yells after her.

***

The first thing she does is shut the door.

It's all she can do, after all, to fabricate the barest sense of privacy, of the kind of solitude that is enjoyed simply because being alone is what you need sometimes. Sometimes.

Yoona takes a deep breath, stowing her bags beneath the bed. Her eyes don't rest on anything for too long, so it's a little late when she realises that all the furniture in the room is the same as it was two years ago. The observation almost brings her to her knees, so she beats her body to it, and kneels on the floor.

For a moment, Yoona kneels on the ground, staring around her. On the bed, her suitcase lies open, and when her eyes drift away, she notices that there are shadows on the wall where once there had been photos (she can't remember what happened to those). And all the while, the room seems to get both smaller and larger, all at once. It's overwhelming.

Overwhelming.

Heaving in a breath, Yoona gets to her feet and makes her way out of the room without a backwards glance. The sound of a shower running reaches her ears the second she steps out of the door, but this guarantee of temporary solitude does not stop her from keeping her steps light.

She opens the first door she comes across, recalling a storage room. What she finds instead is what appears to be an office.

A curious frown dimples her brow as she closes the door behind her. Yoona meanders around the space, picking up things or staring at things (sometimes both). A passport; order forms for Tolstoy, Fitzgerald, even a Keats collection; employee of the month at Title Wave Books. Eventually, the papers connect, and she strings the corroborations together to get a name. Lu Han.

At some point, Yoona begins to notice the silence a little too much. Her ears prick; the shower has stopped.

She finds him in the kitchen, his shirt stiffly buttoned, pouring some coffee into a flask. He doesn't look up.

Yoona bristles, irritated that he hasn't even noticed her. "I'm Yoona," she says.

Slowly, his eyes travel upwards. "You're still here," he notes dully.

She rolls her eyes, her hands itching for the glass of a Smirnoff. "I told you I'd be staying." Yoona's eyebrow quirks, challenging. "I thought that was a fair enough warning."

"But I didn't say you could. And this is my house." His eyes meet hers evenly, almost bored. "I could call the cops, you know."

"You could." Yoona shrugs, and it says, But you won't.

***

"I've got a girl at my house."

At this, Junmyeon drops Anna Karenina, narrowly missing his toe. "A girl?"

"It's not like that," Luhan says immediately, grimacing as he remembers his first glimpse of her. Yoona, was it? For a moment, it seemed as if... "It's not like that," he repeats.

"Like what?" Junmyeon presses. "Like—"

"Don't." Luhan closes his eyes, turning so Junmyeon can't see him. "Don't say what I think you're going to say.

Junmyeon purses his lips, crouching down to pick up the book he'd dropped. "So what's the deal, then?"

"There's no deal," Luhan says. "I don't even know what's happening. She just turned up at my house and said she's here to stay. She's probably still there, unpacking."

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know," Luhan says quietly, staring at the book in Junmyeon's hand; remembering a line from it:

He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.

***

Luhan doesn't know why or when he decided to wait (or if that's even what he's doing), but after the first hour, 'waiting' is the only word that can describe what he's doing sitting on the couch, alone and in front of a dead television.

He'd come home from work to find no sign of Yoona and, thinking she'd left, he'd set about cleaning the house, only to find that the spare room still housed her luggage and the smell of a stranger. The hours after that were a blur, but somewhere between then and now, he had turned the television off, but had made no move to go to bed.

It's almost midnight now and she still isn't back.

This is a waste of time, Luhan mutters over and over in his head, wondering what the best thing to do when she comes back would be. He's tossing between stuffing her belongings back in her bags and calling a taxi for her, or just calling someone who could arrange for her to be removed on the grounds of trespassing. Neither option sounds like him, he's just thinking, when there is a ruckus, sounds that can only be an engine and one (or three) too many drinks.

Luhan gets to his feet, legs stiff, and walks with trepidation towards the front door. A voice dances in the air, high and low in its dips of husky tones; despite it being louder and more robust then he's heard it, he recognises it immediately as Yoona's. He opens the door to see what's going on, just as Yoona presses her body against it.

The door swings faster with her weight on it, and Luhan skitters backwards, Yoona falling into him in the heat of her momentum. His arms, at rigid angles, are the only thing holding her up.

After a moment of held breath, Luhan looks up to find that someone else is at the door. A man—probably taller than him if they stood side by side. He stares at the two of them, and even Luhan can tell that the set of his features is the kind that is always open, always hungry. There's a light in his eyes that Luhan doesn't like.

"I'll call you... later," the man lingers on the last word, addressing Yoona, who by this point is beyond reach. Luhan expects him to say more, but in a few seconds, the man is gone, his car sliding out of the driveway.

Luhan's arms go slack, and Yoona slumps onto the ground, letting out moans that eventually turn into hiccups and coughs. She is snoring by the time Luhan has closed and locked the front door. With a sense of helplessness usually experienced only by pilots of a plane whose turbines have failed, he stares at her and wishes he could just leave her there.

But all of him knows that it's not the right thing to do, and as much as he hates what the right thing to do is, he knows it's what she would have done. Steeling himself, he bends down and picks her up delicately, holding her as far from him as possible without causing harm to either of them. It doesn't help at all, doesn't help the way his hands start going slick with sweat, and black dots start to appear in his vision. His heart skips ahead of the rest of his body, and a voice, far away, calls him to stop playing games and come down to dinner.

It seems like a whole winter has passed when Luhan reaches the spare room and drops Yoona onto the bed. The covers creases into the shape of her body, and Luhan turns away, chills creeping all down his body.

He runs into his room, lying on his bed wide awake without changing or brushing his teeth. "You were a good person," Luhan mutters, again and again, and once more, someone calls him to dinner. "You were good to me, you were good to me, you were good to me."

He continues saying it until it's a chant, continues saying it even when the sobs rack his body, continues saying it even though he knows it's a lie.

That night, Yoona wails her lungs out, tossing fitfully in her sleep and screaming for someone who isn't there, but Luhan doesn't hear her over his own cries.

***

The next morning, blue breaks the sky like a smile that gives way to laughter, but Yoona feels like death. When she sees that Luhan, all but washing his throat with coffee, looks as bad as she feels, she knows he had seen all of it. Which means he had been up; waiting or not, he had been up.

"I was drunk," she says to no one in particular.

Luhan's eyes are a glare over the rim of his mug. He sets it down, and Yoona notices bruises on his forearms. "Do you remember what happened?"

"Not really."

"Mmm. Well," Luhan takes a sip, finds that his mug is empty, and says with a decisive frown, "from this moment onwards, alcohol is banned in this house."

Yoona feels a livid rush of blood in her face. She stares at him hard, feeling a cruel expression settle into her features. And she smiles; slowly, restraining it just to the corners of , leaving her eyes untouched and wide open. The urge to snatch that mug out of his grip and throw it at him grips her, but all she says is, "Okay."

(Luhan has a feeling right then that he hasn't made a difference at all).

***

The next night, Luhan doesn't stay up waiting. In fact, he's holed up under his covers with a pillow over his head. It's the only thing that keeps the thoughts out, the voices and the blur of familiar faces he never really sees.

At 'I've almost blocked all the noise out of my head' o'clock, there's a clatter at the front door, yelling, the thumps of stumbling heels and a hastily closed door. Luhan squeezes his eyes shut, presses the pillow closer to his temples.

The clacks and thuds and rattles echo down the hall, louder because they're getting closer, and Luhan has almost mastered the art of ignoring it when suddenly, all is silent in the house. And the silence is worse.

He finds himself crawling out of bed reluctantly, shuffling out of his room and cursing himself. All the lights in the house are off except for the one over the dining table, where Yoona sits, staring at the wood, one arm splayed over the table top, her finger tracing a dent in the oak.

"What are you doing?" Luhan spouts, bewildered.

Yoona turns, and he sees with a sinking stomach that she is drunk. He had been right this morning. "He tried to get a bit too much from me," she says, laughing, and it's then that Luhan notices two things. One, her dress is ripped, slashed down the front, dangerously close to revealing too much.

The second thing is that her voice betrays the fact that she is sober enough to be aware of what is happening. Unlike the night before. Luhan flinches at her laugh; it's too high pitched, too delirious, for it to have any warmth. He knows that lack of warmth well.

"It's okay," Yoona chuckles, noticing him staring. "He'll come around—"

"He doesn't actually care about you," Luhan says, before he makes the decision to say it in the first place. "That man, he probably doesn't even know your last name."

Yoona's shoulders stiffen, a gesture that's strangely familiar. When she looks at him, Luhan realises that it's familiar because she had done the same thing yesterday, when his hand had come so close to touching her face. Her face, which right now, is baring that sharp edge of malice he had seen just this morning. "Do you?"

Luhan wants to look away from her, but finds that he can't. "...No."

"That's right." She smiles that slow, cruel smile. "You don't know anything."

***