Chapter Text
Y/N hadn’t eaten a fortune cookie in weeks, but she cracked one open anyway.
It felt like a ritual now. A small thing that said “You’re still here.” She didn’t even like them, they were too sweet, too dry, like cardboard dipped in sugar. But the fortune inside? That was her evening reading. A little note from the past pretending it had an insight.
She sat cross-legged on the linoleum floor of the old Chinese takeaway, her back against the far wall, chewing mechanically as she unfolded the slip.
“A new journey is about to begin.”
“God, I hope not,” she muttered, dropping the wrapper into one of the plastic cups she’d labeled trash weeks ago. The fortune itself went in the tin by the counter, with all the others. There were hundreds now, maybe more. Three boxes of fortune cookies had been stacked in the storeroom when she found the place.
Leftovers from a world that had somewhere to be.
She didn’t.
The takeaway was small and mostly intact. Cinder block bones and a flat roof made it easy to defend. A strip of faded dragon decals still clung to the front window, peeking through the boards she’d nailed up herself. She’d memorized every creaking floorboard, every weak spot in the wall. The place smelled like dust and old grease. Sometimes garlic. She didn’t mind it.
Her supplies were scattered in what some might call chaos. She called it a system. An open toolbox on the counter. A pile of clean rags. Three tins of beans. A few tools and objects salvaged from a forgotten exhibit somewhere. A compass, a weather thermometer, a broken device that once measured wind speed. Junk, probably. But she liked having them. Gave her hands something to do. Gave her brain somewhere to go that wasn’t back.
Because back was the wrong direction.
Back was-
She didn’t go there.
Instead, she stretched out on her makeshift bed. It was just booth cushions layered with a blanket that still smelled vaguely of lavender dryer sheets. She kept a knife under her pillow. A bat by the door. Cans strung on fishing line guarded the windows. If anyone came in, living or dead, she’d hear it.
Not that anyone came anymore.
The worst part wasn’t the silence. It was the knowing that silence didn’t mean safe. She’d learned that the hard way.
Y/N rubbed a hand over her face. Her fingers smelled faintly of metal and soap.
Her wrist was sore again. It always got like that when the weather changed. It had turned dry that week, and the air had that weird stillness it got sometimes, when everything felt a little… off. Like the world was holding its breath.
She almost wrote that down. But her notebook was across the room, and she was already under the blanket. It could wait.
Her eyes closed without her meaning them to.
And then
Snap.
Wind through leaves.
The chirp of something alive.
A cough. No, a choke.
Blood.
Running.
Voices calling her name, wrong, distant.
A locked door.
Silence.
Silence.
Silence.
She sat up fast. Cold sweat. Knife in hand.
No cans rattled. No footsteps. Just her own shallow breathing and the hum of night insects through boarded cracks in the wall.
Y/N lowered the blade. Pressed the heel of her hand to her eyes.
“Get over it,” she whispered, but the words felt thin. Lighter than air.
She lay back down.
Didn’t close her eyes for a long time.
———————————
The sun was already up when Y/N left the takeaway, shouldering her pack and sliding out the back door like a ghost.
She moved quietly through the woods, keeping to old deer paths, checking the snares she’d strung days ago. Nothing. Not even a tuft of fur or a snapped line. The bait was untouched. No tracks. Not even birdsong. The world felt hollow.
She crouched by one of the traps, adjusting the tension on the wire. It didn’t really need fixing, but she did it anyway. Her hands liked having tasks. So did her mind.
After a while, she walked.
Not with purpose, not really. Just long enough for the trees to feel different. Long enough to breathe air that hadn’t touched the takeaway. She pulled out her notepad, flipped past yesterday’s page, and jotted something down.
Dry again. Wind stronger today. From the west.
She paused, looked up through the branches. The clouds were thin and fast. She watched them for a long moment, then drew a tiny symbol next to the words. It resembled a swirl, or maybe a spiral. It wouldn’t mean much to anyone else.
She kept walking.
By late afternoon, the light had gone sharp and gold, casting long shadows that made the trees look taller than they were. Her legs ached in the familiar way. Her stomach reminded her she hadn’t eaten lunch.
She approached the edge of the woods carefully, eyes scanning the stretch of broken pavement and overgrown lots. The takeaway sat ahead, low and quiet as ever, hunched between a shuttered laundromat and an abandoned liquor store. Nothing had moved.
But something was wrong.
She didn’t know what tipped her off first. A shift in the air, maybe, or the way the front door was almost, almost closed, but not quite. She always shut it tight. Always.
Y/N dropped low, eyes narrowing.
The cans hadn’t rattled. The warning lines were still in place. But she’d been gone for hours.
Someone was inside.