AN:/ Hi! It's mee. After a looooooooong time. HAhaha. Life happened. Anyway, onto the chapter
Snow had been falling since midnight without pause, soft and relentless, the kind that muffled every sound until the whole world felt wrapped in cotton. Inside the motel room, though, silence was the loudest thing Emilia had ever heard.
She sat cross-legged on the unmade bed, knees hugged to her chest, Rio's hoodie pulled so far over her head that only her nose and mouth were visible. The sleeves dangled past her fingertips like limp flags. She kept pressing the cuff against her lips, breathing through the fabric as if she could inhale whatever trace of him was left. Pizza dough. Cheap green-tea shampoo. Warm skin after they'd spent half the night tangled together like they could fuse permanently.
The scent was already thinning.
Forty-eight hours and seventeen minutes since she woke up alone.
She hadn't cried yet—not properly. The tears came in short, angry bursts that left her eyes stinging and her throat raw, but never the full collapse she felt building somewhere behind her ribs. She was saving it. Hoarding it. Because if she let it all out now, there might not be anything left when she finally found him.
Her phone buzzed again on the nightstand. She didn't reach for it. The screen lit up anyway—Luke this time.
Luke: police just confirmed the blood drop is A-positive. his type. they're rushing toxicology too. Luke: Seon Hul is refreshing the scanner every thirty seconds. she's gonna break her thumb.
Luke: We're ten minutes out. Don't disappear on us.
Emilia stared at the messages until the screen timed out and went black.
Disappear.
That was the word that kept circling her brain like a vulture.
Rio had disappeared once before—when he was five. Snatched from a playground, kept for six months, returned broken and burning with fever at Rambourgh Children's Hospital. She'd read the old case file the detective emailed her yesterday at 3:17 a.m. Every clinical line felt like a fresh knife between her ribs.
Rape. Assault. Evidence collected from rectal and oral swabs. Perpetrator: Neena Whitaker, age 28 at time of offense. Paroled six months ago for "exemplary behavior."
Exemplary.
Emilia wanted to laugh until she vomited.
Instead she pressed her forehead against her knees and rocked—small, tight movements, the way Rio sometimes rocked himself in the library when a panic attack was creeping up and he didn't want anyone to notice.
The door received three careful knocks.
She flinched so violently the bed creaked.
"Emilia?" Aunt Johannes' voice—low, steady, the same tone she used when Emilia was eight and still waking up screaming from nightmares about rain and mud and her mother's voice calling her a whore. "It's me, sweetheart. And the kids. Open up."
Emilia crawled across the mattress on hands and knees. Her legs felt borrowed. She fumbled the chain, the deadbolt, the knob.
The door swung inward.
Aunt Johannes stood there holding two paper cups of coffee and a grease-stained bag that smelled faintly of cinnamon rolls—the kind Rio always stole the icing off first. Behind her: Luke (freckles stark against bruised-looking circles under his eyes) and Seon Hul (pink hair flattened, hoodie sleeves tugged over her hands like armour).
No one spoke for a long heartbeat.
Then Seon Hul muttered, "You're wearing his hoodie again. Third day. It's starting to look like a security blanket."
Emilia tried to laugh. It came out as a cracked hiccup.
Luke stepped inside first, hesitant, like he was afraid the floor might crack under him. "They found… one drop. In the parking lot. Near where the cleaning cart was. A-positive. They're doing DNA confirmation but—" He stopped. Swallowed. "It's his."
Emilia's knees folded.
Seon Hul lunged and caught her under the arms before she hit the carpet. "Breathe, idiot. In through your nose, out through your mouth. You faint and I'm dragging two bodies instead of one."
Emilia sucked air. It tasted like stale motel air and panic.
Aunt Johannes knelt in front of her, set the coffees down, cupped Emilia's face with both hands—warm, callused from years of kneading dough and wiping tears.
"Listen," she said quietly. "Neena wants you shattered. She wants tears, begging, screaming. That's what feeds her. Every sob you let out right now? She's sipping it like fine wine."
Emilia's eyes burned.
"So what do I do?" Her voice sounded borrowed—small and shredded. "Sit here pretending I'm okay while she—"
"No." Aunt Johannes thumbed a tear off her cheek before it could fall. "You stay furious. You stay loud. You keep his name alive in your mouth so the whole damn universe remembers it belongs to someone who's still fighting to come home."
Seon Hul let go of Emilia's arms but stayed close, hip pressed against hers on the mattress.
"He puked on her once," she said suddenly. "Back in the hospital. When she tried to touch him again. Rio told me during one of those late-night rambles. Said it was disgusting and the most satisfying thing he ever did."
Luke huffed something that wanted to be a laugh but cracked halfway. "King of spite."
Emilia stared at the ceiling. Snow tapped the window like impatient fingernails.
Somewhere under all that white, Rio was cold. Hungry. Terrified.
She pictured his eyes—the way the green went soft and almost liquid when he looked at her like she was the only safe place left in the world. The way his lashes fluttered when he finally relaxed against her chest and let sleep take him.
"I'm coming," she whispered to the empty space beside her. Voice splintering like thin ice. "But you have to hold on, okay? Just… hold on a little longer."
Luke shifted his weight. "The detective said they're pulling every camera within a five-mile radius. Gas stations, traffic lights, that sketchy 24-hour diner on Route 9. If the van moved, someone saw it."
Seon Hul nodded jerkily. "And if they didn't… we drive every back road ourselves. Flash his picture at every cashier, every trucker, every bored grandma walking her dog. We make so much noise she can't breathe without hearing his name."
Aunt Johannes squeezed Emilia's hand once—hard, grounding.
"You're not doing this alone," she said. "None of you are."
Emilia looked between them—Luke chewing his lip bloody, Seon Hul cracking her knuckles one by one, her aunt's steady brown eyes that had seen her through every storm since she was eight.
She exhaled shakily.
Then she stood.
Legs wobbly, but upright.
She pulled the hood off her head. Hair a tangled mess. Eyes red-rimmed and furious.
"Okay," she said. Voice steadier than she felt. "Then let's start screaming."
Outside, the snow kept falling—covering tracks, covering blood, trying to erase everything.
But it couldn't erase her.
Not yet.
And not him.
Not while she was still breathing his name like a prayer and a threat all at once.
Not yet.