Her oven was on.
She could see straight into the kitchen from the door, and in the dimness the oven light was the only real illumination. It was for this reason that she went in, and only this reason, even though she knew the invader could be hiding in the washroom. It was the only other room in the place, and the only space large enough for another human being. She didn’t even have a proper closet, or proper cabinet, just an old luggage cart with clothes hanging on it. So if someone were still there, they were in that room.
She stepped through the door. One step. Two. Three. Turned right. The washroom door was shut.
She pretended the room belonged to Joel, and checked all the corners and behind the door. No one. She crossed into the kitchen and found her good vegetable knife out on the counter. It was under the shattered remains of an antique lacquered bento box Rusty had given her. Odd, that no one had taken the knife. She gripped it hard, blade facing up, so the muscles engaged in the stabbing would be her stronger underhand ones, not her overhand ones.
She kicked in the door of the washroom.
A reek of shit and piss hit her in a slow, awful wave. The room smelled like hot roadkill. They’d shit in her sink. In the shower. Piss was everywhere, dried and yellow. Her garbage was strewn across it. They’d pissed on that, too. Her toothbrush was in the toilet, stuck in a pile of her tights and rash guards. There was cum on her hairbrush. At least, that’s what it looked like. Hwa dropped that in the toilet, too, and then realized she’d just have to fish it out again and walked away.
LOOKING FORWARD TO RAPING YOU, her mirror said, in dried toothpaste.
In the oven were two baking sheets. Both were full of melted plastic and fibreglass. A thin film of gold and silver coated each thick puddle of goo.
They’d melted her brother’s trophies.
She turned the oven off. Sank to the floor. Felt its heat on her back. Smelled the molten metal and alloy and whatever else it was that they made those things out of. It was probably toxic. It was probably giving her cancer, right this very minute. Somewhere in her body the assembly line was going all wrong and the cells were dividing toward her doom.
She didn’t care.
Outside, someone shuffled past her door, and then shuffled back. The old homeless guy. He was a skinny white man who wore a tattered yellow slicker and boots with no socks. “Are you all right, Miss?”
Hwa wiped her eyes with the ball of her hand. “Not really, no.”
“You had a break-in?”
She nodded.
“You gonna call the cops?”
It occurred to her that she didn’t really have to call them. Not if she didn’t want to. That was the other thing she always told other women: Call the police. Start a paper trail. Establish a pattern. Now she understood why some of them never did. Because it felt so useless. So stupid. What would she tell them? I broke some guy’s finger and he called his buddies and they fucked up my place and they say they’re going to rape me. Yeah, you’re right, Officer. I probably shouldn’t have broken his finger. This is all my fault. Sorry for bothering you.
It wasn’t like those trophies would ever come back together. It wasn’t like the cops would help her clean up. It wasn’t like she’d ever really feel safe here, ever again.
“You know, if you don’t call them, and the super finds damage later, you lose the deposit,” the old man said.
“That so?”
He nodded. “Happened to me, once.”
Hwa stood up. She grabbed some clothes off the rack. “You know what? You stay here tonight. I’ll be back later. Maybe.”
*
Nail led her down to the subspace alone, which meant she didn’t hear about her backpack or her groceries until she was inside the door, where Rusty stood waiting to take her coat.
“My goodness,” he said. “Look at all that.”
“Sorry.” Hwa set her things down in a pile. “Rusty. I’m really sorry.”
“Whatever for, Miss Go?”
Hwa swallowed hard. “Just dropping in like this. I haven’t been around much, and I know that, and I couldn’t make it to Layne’s funeral, and … I’ve been a bad friend.”
Rusty frowned. On him, it looked like just a gentle pinch of his lips and a quirk of his pale eyebrows. Like a curious Corgi, almost. “I believe you can tell my mistress that yourself, Miss Go.”
“Aye.” Hwa smoothed her hair and tugged her shirt into place. “Is she in?”
“Yes. Let me show you through.”
Mistress Séverine sat in her office, contemplating a massive display of spreadsheets. It looked like a register of complaints. “Hello, Hwa,” she said, without turning around.
“Hi.”
“How’s the new job?”