Only a tiny portion of this chapter (under 200 words) has been removed.

It proved quite easy to avoid Xiumin for most of the rest of the day.  The apartment was large, and the very first thing they both did after taking off their shoes at the door was to explore it.  Xiumin vanished left into what looked like the kitchen and Semi immediately went in the opposite direction, found herself in what was evidently the living room, and was reminded of her jetlag at the sight of the large and extremely comfortable-looking sofa in front of the flat-screen TV.  Without a second thought, she sprawled out on it and fell asleep.

It was dark outside when she woke up with her stomach rumbling.  A quick glance at her watch told her it was ten to five, and a second glance informed her that her watch had stopped.  Groaning, she rubbed sleep out of her eyes and sat up.

Xiumin’s jacket slipped off her with a faint swoosh as she did so, and she paused, surprised, as it ended up on the carpet.  She was fairly sure she’d been wearing it and had her arms through the sleeves when she’d fallen asleep, not that it had been covering her.  Somebody must have rearranged it for her, and a shudder rippled through her when she came to the inevitable conclusion it was Xiumin himself.  Sehun hadn’t said very much about the gangster, but she did remember something to do with ion from the news when he’d been caught, and that made her feel uneasy.  His innocent face hid far too much.

Yawning, she stretched and got off the sofa, deciding it would be a good idea to see if there was any food around.  She wondered what would happen when it came to things like mealtimes.  Was he going to expect her to cook for him?  Would they be eating together?  Would she be able to handle eating at the same table as him?

Fortunately, she didn’t have to worry about any of that for the time being, because on entering the kitchen, the dim lighting from over the work surfaces revealed a bowl of noodle soup that was still steaming, and she saw an empty one above what was presumably the dishwasher.  For a moment, she looked hungrily at the full bowl, but Xiumin was nowhere in sight, so she reckoned it had been left for her.

She felt oddly touched.

Pulling out one of the wooden chairs, she sat down at the kitchen table and started shovelling noodles into with the chopsticks that had also been left out.  It wasn’t until she was nearly done with the meal that she was awake enough to register writing on the back of her left hand, and she paused, tilting it to see what it was.  Semi had had a habit of writing things she needed to remember on her hands back at school, and while she still did it from time to time, she couldn’t remember doing it at any point over the past few days.

And besides, the handwriting wasn’t hers.  It was far too neat.

Thoroughly put out, she stared at it.

This apartment has no post-its or paper.  Noodle soup’s on the kitchen table.

Well, at least she wasn’t eating a convicted killer’s food.  Would he have reacted well to that?  Semi didn’t know.  She turned her hand over, trying to erase the feeling of being violated in her sleep.  Even though it wasn’t anything particularly bad, she just didn’t really like the thought of Xiumin touching her without her knowing about it.

She shrieked and nearly knocked the bowl of soup over when she saw that he’d written on her palm, too.  And the sentence there genuinely did scare her.

I’m human too.

What was he trying to say with that?

Thoroughly shaken, she the fingers of her free hand and scrubbed vigorously at the pen markings, trying to erase them physically as well as mentally.  Her stomach, which had been like a yawning cave earlier, twisted, and she felt sickened.  Once all the ink was gone, she got shakily to her feet and took the bowl over to the sink, tipping the remainder of the soup out, and then put both bowls into the dishwasher.

Then she paused and listened carefully.  Was Xiumin still around?  He seemed to be happy leaving her to her own devices, which Semi was happy about, but had he left the apartment?  She didn’t particularly want to run into him right now.  She didn’t think she’d be able to handle it.

She couldn’t hear anything at all, though, and come to think of it, the apartment had remained otherwise silent even when she’d screamed.  Wasn’t it a normal human reaction to go and see what the matter was when somebody screamed?  He had written that he was human too.

Concluding that Xiumin must be out for some reason – was he even allowed to do that?  She didn’t know – Semi mustered up her courage and decided to explore the rest of the apartment before he returned.

She went back to the living room first, because she hadn’t really got a proper look at it before falling asleep.  There was a fireplace beside the TV that looked like it could actually be lit rather than just having an