Chapter Thirty-Six: Rebirth in Neon
The silence in Sara's dorm room was a different kind of quiet. It was the quiet of safety, of textbooks stacked haphazardly and fairy lights strung over a window, not the suffocating, elegant silence of the mansion. I sat cross-legged on her unmade bed, staring at a poster of a band I didn't know.
"So," Sara said, flopping down beside me with a bag of chips. "You gonna tell me why you look like someone just ran over your favorite plant and then backed over it again for fun?"
I chewed on my thumbnail. "I want to go to a club."
The bag of chips froze halfway to her mouth. She blinked, slowly, like a computer processing a fatal error. "Run that by me again. You. The girl who once had a mild existential crisis in a crowded elevator. You want to go to a club?"
"Yes." The word felt foreign and thrilling on my tongue.
She dropped the chips and put a hand to my forehead. "Who are you and what have you done with my best friend? Love turns you into a brooding poetry notebook, but heartbreak… heartbreak turns you into a party animal?"
I shoved her hand away, but a reluctant smile tugged at my lips. "It's not heartbreak. It's… energetic frustration." And a bone-deep ache. And the hollow echo of missing paws on marble. And the sting of being an afterthought. But I kept that part locked down.
She studied my face, the teasing fading from her eyes, replaced by a fierce, understanding light. "Okay," she said simply.
"Okay?"
"Okay, we're going to a club." She bounced up, energy instantly shifting from concerned to conspiratorial. "But there are rules. Rule one: I dress you. You are not facing your villain era looking like you're about to give a lecture on existentialism."
"My what era?"
"Your 'I-am-a-phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes-of-a-hot-mess' era. Now, hush." She began rifling through her closet, a whirlwind of glitter, denim, and questionable sequins.
As she tossed rejected outfits over her shoulder, chattering about bass drops and liquid courage, I felt the tight knot in my chest begin to loosen. This was Sara's magic. She didn't dissect the pain; she drowned it out with neon noise and unconditional solidarity. For now, it was exactly what I needed.
---
"No. Absolutely not. I'd rather wear a potato sack."
"You're being dramatic! This is metallic! It's empowering!"
"It's two handkerchiefs and a prayer!"
After a minor war, she prevailed. Not with sequins, but with sleek, tactical elegance. The outfit was black, head to toe—a high-necked top that clung, wide-legged trousers that flowed, and boots that meant business. It wasn't revealing, but it was armor of a different kind. It said look, but don't touch. It said I am here, but I am not yours.
She twisted my hair into a severe, elegant knot and smudged kohl around my eyes. When I looked in the mirror, a stranger stared back. Hollows under her cheekbones, yes. A lingering sadness in the depths of her eyes, absolutely. But there was a new sharpness there too. A cold, glittering defiance.
"Whoa," Sara breathed, appearing behind me. "You look… dangerous. In a 'might-poison-your-drink' kind of way. I love it."
I managed a faint, real smile. "Dangerous and healing?"
"Exactly. Now let's go be dangerously healed in public."
---
The Club: Loud Lights, Quiet Pain
The music wasn't sound; it was a physical force. It punched through the air, a relentless thump-thump-thump that vibrated in my teeth and made my ribs resonate. Bodies moved in a dark, sweaty sea, illuminated by strobing flashes of violet and electric blue. The smell was a cocktail of perfume, spilled alcohol, and human heat.
I stood just inside the threshold, momentarily paralyzed by the sensory onslaught. Sara grabbed my hand, her shout lost in the din, and pulled me into the current.
For the first hour, I let it happen. I let Sara twirl me, let the frantic rhythm hijack my nervous system, let the noise fill the cavernous silence he'd left inside me. I was just a body in motion, a spark in the chaos. I wasn't the kidnapped bride, the professor's secret, the cubs' heartbroken guardian. I was anonymous. I was free.
But the thoughts were tenacious. In a momentary lull between songs, the image of Leo nudging my hand for a treat would flash behind my eyes. The memory of Toro's weight on my feet as I read. And him. The way his gaze could feel like a touch. The way his silence could be a weapon.
Sara yelled something about drinks and vanished into the crowd. I stood catching my breath, the cool air from an AC vent doing little to quell the heat under my skin.
A shape materialized beside me—a guy with a friendly, uncomplicated smile. "Hey! You dance like you're trying to kill the beat. I like it." He had to lean close, his breath smelling of mint and cheap beer.
I hesitated. This wasn't me. Flirting with strangers in loud, dark rooms.
But she wasn't me either. The girl who belonged to a shadow. Maybe it was time to try on someone new.
I gave a small, non-committal smile and let him lead me back into the fray. It wasn't about him. It was about the act of choosing. Of moving for myself, not in reaction to him.
---
The drinks were a blur. A sweet, fruity thing Sara pushed into my hand. "One!" she'd yelled. Then another when the first did nothing but burn. The third made the lights soften at the edges. The fourth made the floor feel pleasantly unsteady. After that, I lost count.
A warm, fuzzy numbness spread through my limbs, muting the sharper edges of the pain. I giggled at nothing, leaning heavily on Sara.
"You're slurring, bestie," she laughed, herself swaying.
"I'm not slurring, I'm… enunciating with feeling!" I declared, my words tangling. "Do you think… do you think the babies miss me? The fuzzy ones? Not the… the other one." My laughter this time was too loud, too sharp, and it caught in my throat, threatening to turn into something else.
"I think," Sara said, patting my cheek with drunken solemnity, "that you need some air."
I stumbled toward a quieter corner near a fire exit, the world tilting on a pleasant axis. The cool metal of the wall felt good against my flushed cheek. My vision swam, the crowd melting into a colorful, noisy watercolor.
"Whoa, steady there." A different voice, a different arm, catching me as I listed sideways.
I blinked up. Another friendly face. Concerned. Normal. So utterly, boringly normal. No hidden depths, no dangerous promises. For a second, I envied him.
"M'fine," I mumbled, trying to straighten. "Just… the room is dancing without me."
He chuckled. "Let me get you some water."
But before he could move, the atmosphere changed.
It wasn't a sound. It was a pressure drop. The very air thickened, grew heavy, and chilled. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. My drunk, hazy senses recognized the shift before my mind could—the primal awareness of a predator entering the territory.
I turned, slowly, the world swimming.
He stood at the edge of the dance floor, a statue of wrath carved from the club's shadows. Kim Taehyun. He wasn't in professor mode. The black coat he wore was too severe, the look in his eyes too feral. He scanned the room and found me instantly, his gaze a laser cutting through the strobing lights and the bodies between us.
He began to move, people unconsciously parting for him, sensing the danger that radiated from him in waves.
He stopped before me. The friendly guy took an instinctive step back.
"I leave you alone for one night," Taehyun's voice was low, a blade wrapped in velvet, but it sliced through the bassline with terrifying clarity, "and this is what you become?"
The alcohol fueled my courage, melting it into recklessness. "You left them," I slurred, the pain rising fast, untempered by my usual control. "You took them and you didn't even… you didn't say goodbye. To them. To me." A hot tear escaped, tracing a path through the glitter on my cheek. "You just made them disappear."
His jaw tightened. His eyes did a quick, clinical inventory—the flushed skin, the glazed eyes, the vulnerability I was broadcasting to the entire room.
"We're leaving." Final. Immovable.
I shook my head, stumbling. "No. You don't get to pull me out of the fire when you're the one who lit it."
The guy next to me, emboldened by protective instinct (or ignorance), put a hand on my waist. "She said she doesn't want to go, man."
Taehyun's eyes flicked to the hand on my waist. The temperature around us seemed to drop another ten degrees. "Remove your hand," he said, the words so quiet they were almost inaudible, yet they carried a weight of pure, promised violence. "Now."
Sara, bless her drunk, fearless heart, wobbled between us, shoving at Taehyun's chest. "Back off, Professor Creepy! She's with me! You can't just… just manhandle students!" Her words were slurred, her recognition of him as our professor fuzzy and secondary to her loyalty.
The dam inside me broke. "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!" I screamed, the music swallowing some of the sound but not the raw agony in it. I shoved at Taehyun's chest, a futile gesture. "You make all the decisions! You lock things away! You take what I love without a word! I LOVED THEM!"
The admission, screamed in a public place, hung in the smoky air. I was sobbing now, drunk and devastated and beyond caring who saw. "You had no right…"
Taehyun didn't react to the shove. He didn't flinch at the shouting. He just stood there, absorbing my shattered state, and in his eyes, for a fleeting second, the fury was eclipsed by something far worse: a gutted, horrified recognition of the damage he'd caused.
But the sight of another man's hand on me was the final trigger. In one smooth, effortless motion, he scooped me up into his arms.
I erupted, a wild thing trapped—kicking, pounding my fists against his solid chest, my screams lost in the music. "PUT ME DOWN! TAEHYUN, I SWEAR TO GOD—"
"Scream all you want, little hellcat," he growled into my hair, his arms like steel bands. "You're coming home."
He carried me through the parting crowd, a dark prince claiming his unruly consort from the neon underworld. Sara's drunken protests faded behind us, swallowed by the beat. The last thing I saw was the strobe lights reflecting in his eyes—a storm of possession, guilt, and a terrifying, relentless love—before he shouldered his way out into the cold, silent night.