Chapter 5
FIVE
LEIJA
I rushed to get dressed.
Nothing had holes or tears, and good quality hand-me-downs were a heck of a lot better than being naked and covered in goo.
Part of me wanted to just curl into a ball on the floor and sob.
The churning anxiety and stress from waking up in a veritable horror movie of a scenario, followed by my mad naked dash and brutal rescue, was threatening to crush me, to smash me down into the ground, to lie there like I was a dead rabbit, waiting for Eun to come back and decide what he was going to do with me.
But that wasn't the part of me that was in charge of survival.
I could deal with my trauma later.
Now I had to do what I had to do, and that meant not waiting around for someone else to figure everything else out for me.
The new clothes fit better, soft, baggy sweatpants, and a loose shirt that hung comfortably on my frame, even as I threw them on.
I hated how boring they were, but they were clothes, and if I got a hold of some tools, I could spruce them up.
But being fancy wasn't important right now.
The bandages on the bottom of my feet were still secure, and I left them there.
The sneakers were worn smooth and were so wide at the toes that I felt like I was wearing clown shoes, but they held together as I laced them up.
I wiggled my toes in them. My feet didn't hurt, which was strange.
With cuts like I had, they should be agony to walk on.
I didn't have time to peel off my bandages to check.
I slipped the key and folded papers that Eun had left for me into my pockets, then reached for the jacket.
The goo I'd left on it when I wore it last had dried and crumbled from the lining, falling away in gray flakes.
The fabric was warm from the room, the scent of it earthy and familiar now, threaded through with something that made my chest ache with the memory of home.
I shrugged it on, the comforting scent surrounding me, easing the edges of anxiety I'd pressed down in my mind, the sleeves brushing past my wrists, and pulled it close around me before stepping out into the hall.
Eun wasn’t in sight.
I used the key to lock the door behind me, then went down the stairs.
I paused at the front gate, not closing it behind me as I peered in either direction.
There was Eun, halfway down the street. I had a moment, so I pulled out the piece of paper in my pocket and looked at the keypad.
The keypad had the same symbols as the ones Eun had written on the piece of paper, but I took the time to double-check them.
All of them were on the keypad there, but even so, I practiced typing them in and watching the latch on the held-open gate click open.
Reassured, I let it shut behind me and dashed out to the sidewalk.
I saw Eun vanish around a corner down the long block to my left.
I broke into a jog, my steps awkward as I ran on the heels of my feet, keeping my toes lifted so I didn't trip over my oversized alien clown shoes as I chased after him.
I didn’t know what I was doing, only that I didn’t want to be alone.
He’d left me there with a key and a code, giving me the option to stay or go.
He hadn't trapped me there, but he also hadn't given me any way to ask for help.
I could leave, but the thought of wandering this city alone, with no words and no way to tell friend from predator, made my chest tighten as the panic threatened to wake back up and claw its way back into my mind.
He'd saved me. He'd shown me kindness. He’d protected me. Fed me. Given me warmth and space to breathe.
I had no way to tell if the next stranger would do the same… or drag me somewhere dark, hang me up on a hook, and butcher me alive.
I shuddered at the thought, my legs stretching longer.
But Eun, I knew, in some deep, instinctive way that was backed by practical evidence of his direct actions, Eun meant to help me.
At least, I hoped he did. To be sure, I needed to see what he was up to now that he had stashed me in his apartment.
Instinct and knowing and observing were all well and good, but I needed more than just a few moments of kindness.
I already knew that sometimes people could push aside the truth of a matter just because it was easier to feel safe than it was to question, and I didn't have the luxury of being that person.
If I messed up, I could get eaten, like that poor creature that was hung from a hook.
I couldn't just trust; I had to verify.
So I ran after Eun like a penguin in sweatpants, trying to jog on cement.
I rounded the corner and crashed into a familiar wall of muscle.
Eun's hands caught me, stopping me from bouncing off of him and falling to the ground, his tail curling tight around my waist in a gentle hug.
He was there, waiting, as if he’d known I’d follow.
His long ears gave a flick as he looked down at me, head tilting slightly as he released my arms to grab his tail and pull it off of me.
His hair lifted up from where he had tied it back in a ponytail, as if it could creep up over his shoulder to reach for me.
He reached back, pushing his hair behind his shoulder with a frown.
His ears flicked back against his skull, then back up again, and then he turned away from me, abruptly walking away.
I jogged to catch up with him, but before I made it to him, he slowed his pace with such an abruptness that it was clear it was deliberate.
Another point in his favor. I made it next to him, and he kept his long-legged steps slow so that I was able to walk instead of run, glancing down at me out of the corner of his eye.
"I didn't want to be alone," I told him, even though I knew he couldn't understand me. "I need to see my environment, not collapse in on myself. If I stay in that room, I'm going to freak the fuck out so bad I don't know if I'll ever be able to leave it."
Not that collapsing in on myself wasn't a perfectly reasonable option at this point.
I had been proud of myself for how well I handled the night before, but that didn't mean that was the entirety of how I had to handle everything.
I remembered something I'd read once, that the ability to dissociate was an ability that dramatically improved survival.
Instead of feeling it all, of sinking into the trauma, I was packing it up and away to deal with later so that my mind could remain calm, clear, and ready to handle whatever it was I needed to do.
When I eventually unpacked it, the feelings would still be there, screaming in terror and crying on the floor, and when I decided to do that, it would be perfectly alright.
For right now, I could take a stroll through an alien city, looking around, absorbing my surroundings, and figuring out how to survive in it.
I could cry on the floor of my future therapist's office, as long as it was a clean floor. Maybe I'd just sob into a tissue.
Eun answered my statement in a low rumble, the sound rolling softly, and his voice seemed to sand down the sharp edges of the box. My emotions rattled inside.
We rounded a corner onto a street that was much busier than the one we left behind, and my ability to focus on him was torn away by my need to make sense of the world around me.
The alien world filled with aliens.
There was no question that I wasn't on Earth anymore, especially now that it was light enough to see everything around me.
There were some similarities to things I knew, but I realized that most of those were my mind's attempt to categorize things into already-known quantities so that I could understand what was going on and how to integrate with it.
I let my mind settle on those categories, creating images of familiarity out of the chaos of newness.
Everyone was different, and I labeled them with names I knew.
Some of the people walking down the sidewalks resembled the four-eyed hyenas, but looked more like walking four-eyed cats or wolves.
Even among the hyena species, no two looked alike, with different fur patterns, heights, and facial structures.
There were other aliens that were dramatically different.
Towering, broad-shouldered figures fifteen feet high thudded along the sidewalks, the ground shivering beneath their steps, their skin wrinkled like they were made out of dripping mud.
They would fit through those tall, weirdly shaped warehouse doors, I realized.
One of the big guys was even carrying an entire stack of crates similar to the ones I'd seen before.
Eun would shift aside to let them pass, giving them plenty of room even as he held his arm out in front of me to draw me with him without touching me.
At least not with his arm. Anytime I got close to him, that glowing tail would reach out and brush against me, like it wanted to grab onto me, but before it could wrap around my wrist or waist, Eun was tugging it back again.
The third time we moved out of the way of a larger, lumbering alien, I reached out my hand and met the touch of Eun's tail with my fingers.
It was soft, supple, warm. Eun's entire body stiffened as I stroked it, the tip intertwining with my fingers and wrapping itself all around them.
When we began to walk again, I held onto it, and it slid up my wrist, wrapping me up in its grip.
It was amazing how gentle the touch was.
I'd seen it crush that alien's ankle the night before, but when Eun had me pinned against the alley wall, and I put the knife against his throat, the touch had been just as gentle as it was now.
Holding onto his tail and tucking myself in close to his side made me feel more confident to look up and around, to really try to see the details of everything around me rather than just focus on where we were walking.