The clock was nearing ten when the front door clicked open again. Alina stepped inside, shoulders sagging from a long shift. She kicked the door shut with her heel and tossed her café apron onto the sofa without a second thought.
"Ughhh… finally." She flopped down beside it, sinking into the cushions, eyes closed for a brief moment of stolen rest.
But something felt… off. Her nose twitched first. The faint scent of citrus cleaner lingered in the air, sharp and fresh, nothing like the hurried chaos she'd left behind. Her eyes popped open. The living room was spotless.
Alina sat bolt upright, blinking rapidly. The rug was clean. The cushions fluffed. The table gleamed as though someone had bullied every crumb and hair tie off its surface. The floor reflected the soft yellow glow of the lights.
"What the..." she muttered, spinning slowly.
Her heart thumped in confusion. This wasn't the same house she'd abandoned in her morning rush. She remembered how she had left her clothes in the hallway, her brush somewhere near the sofa, and a glass with a lipstick stain on the table. Everything had been scattered, exactly how her mornings always ended.
But now? Not a trace. For a second, she panicked. Did Ryan hire a maid? Then another thought hit her. Wait—did he… did HE clean it?
Her brows furrowed, suspicion prickling her. She got up, padding toward the corridor, glancing nervously at the slightly open door. No way. Did he go through my room, too?
Alina's pulse quickened, and she ran into her room.
Meanwhile, Kai stepped out of his room, his phone pressed to his ear. "Yes, Director, I understand. No, there's no issue." His voice was calm, measured, and even as his eyes swept toward the dining table. The glass of water. He had forgotten it.
He crossed the living room with smooth strides, every inch the composed man on a late-night call—until his gaze snagged on the sofa. An apron. Kai froze mid-step.
His brows furrowed. He distinctly remembered the sofa being bare. He had cleaned every corner of this place until it obeyed him. Nothing was out of place. Nothing except He moved forward, his free hand lifting the fabric carefully. And then his eyes landed on it.
The badge. Pinned neatly to the apron strap, catching the light as he tilted it. Alina Carter
The name is printed in bold, sharp letters. His chest tightened. For a second, sound itself seemed to dull around him. The director's voice echoed faintly in his ear, numbers, instructions, irrelevant noise drowned beneath the thundering realization clawing at his mind.
Alina. Not just the whirlwind from the café. Not just the messy, loud girl Ryan had oh-so-casually mentioned. Everything he had mentioned about his roommate was a complete lie; he realised it in a day.
The weight of it settled into him like a stone sinking deep in water. He stared at the badge, unblinking, his grip tightening just slightly as if the letters might blur if he looked away.
"Kai? Kai, are you listening?" the director's voice barked through the line, sharp enough to cut the silence. Kai's mouth opened, but no words came. For the first time in a long while, his composure slipped. His pulse was loud in his ears, his thoughts racing too fast to catch. He drew in a breath, sharp and steady.
"…I'll call you back." His voice was lower than usual, rough at the edges. He didn't wait for a reply before cutting the call. The house sank into silence again. Kai looked down at the badge once more, his reflection faintly mirrored in the glossy plastic. Alina Carter.
The name seemed louder now, screaming in his head even though the room was quiet. His lips parted, disbelief flickering across his features, chased quickly by something unreadable, something between a bitter laugh and a silent curse.
Ryan's name formed silently in his mind, edged with venom. You bastard. You didn't tell me it was HER.
Kai exhaled, long and slow, the badge still pinched between his fingers. The universe, it seemed, wasn't done playing games with him yet. And somewhere down the hall, Alina Carter was in her room, seeing the mess that she had created.
Kai froze mid-step, the glass of water in his hand forgotten. Alina stood there, right in her room, trying to clean her room. Her hair was slightly messy and disturbing as well, and she kept pressing her hair to the back of her ears and trying not to get irritated with those hairs, her expression somewhere between exhaustion and mild irritation. And in that moment, the air around him seemed to shift, sharp and electric, though nothing had moved.
His heartbeat stuttered. Not in panic, not fear, but in disbelief. Alina. The name repeated in his mind like heavy, insistent, impossible to ignore. He had expected many things he could handle surprises, adapt to unexpected situations, even tolerate the chaos Ryan often threw his way, but this… this was beyond anything he had planned for.
Alina, the girl who dared to rattle his calm in a matter of minutes. She was now… his roommate. Under the same roof. For a moment, the world seemed too small, too tight, too suffocating.
He inhaled slowly, letting his gaze sweep over her, taking in the familiar face he had only ever known from distance or from irritation, judgment, and fleeting moments he'd tried to suppress. Her hair fell in soft waves across her shoulders.
His lips curved into a slow, deliberate smirk. It wasn't a smirk of mockery at least, not entirely. It was amusement, recognition, and something unspoken that flickered dangerously beneath the surface. Because he knew something she didn't.
She didn't know her roommate was Kai Arden, the man she would likely never forgive if she truly knew him, who was sitting in the same house, sharing the same living space, cleaning up after her messes without complaint.
If she had known, she would have imagined huffing, glaring, perhaps stomping her foot, or fleeing. She hated him enough that even a glimpse of his face for a single minute could set her pulse racing with frustration and disbelief. And here they were, trapped by circumstance, pushed together by the strange machinery of fate.
Kai tilted his head, still smirking. He felt the absurdity of it all settle in his chest, a weight both heavy and thrilling. The universe has a twisted sense of humor, he thought. It throws at us the very things we claim to despise, over and over, until we either learn or break.
And what made it worse or better, depending on the angle he chose to see it from, was how utterly incompatible they were.
Everything about Alina was loud. Chaotic. Vibrant in ways that clashed with his carefully measured, precise, orderly existence. She left trails of disorder like shooting stars, fleeting yet undeniable, scattering energy and noise in all directions.
And he… was the opposite. Calculated, meticulous, controlled. Every motion is intentional. Every thought is compartmentalized. Every corner of his life was arranged so that nothing unexpected could disrupt the delicate balance he had cultivated over the years.
Their lifestyles were opposed. Their habits were irreconcilable. Their thoughts… their worldviews… they had never once intersected in a meaningful way. Not a single shared rhythm. Not a single overlap of priorities or even mundane habits.
And yet, here they were. Sharing space. Sharing air. Breathing under the same roof, in the same house that now, bizarrely, held traces of both of them.
His gaze flicked to the living room again, the space he had painstakingly restored to perfection. He noticed, almost instinctively, the faint disturbance of the cushions where her apron had landed, the subtle misalignment of the rug's edge, the way the light caught the scattered crumbs he had already cleaned. She had invaded his world unknowingly, and yet, paradoxically, he found a strange satisfaction in noticing it.
A chuckle threatened to escape, but he swallowed it. It would have been cruel to laugh aloud now. Not at her, at fate.
How do two people from completely different worlds, two people who could never possibly coexist without friction, suddenly find themselves tethered together by circumstance? he wondered.
He stepped closer to the dining table, placing the glass of water down carefully. His mind replayed the events of the evening, her mess in the morning, the cleaning, the shower, the cooking. Every meticulous step he had taken now collided in his thoughts with her sudden presence, her casual intrusion into a space he had painstakingly controlled.
He could feel the tension coiling in his chest, sharp and electric, because he wanted to see her react. Not to mock her but to observe, silently, the way she would adapt to his version of order. To see the small shock that must be flickering behind those wide brown eyes.
Kai went back to his room and leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms, the smirk still tugging at his lips. He felt like a predator, in a sense, watching the ripple of surprise and confusion in her movements. But it wasn't cruelty, it was fascination. She had always been chaos, and now he was seeing her through the lens of control, through the lens of his world.
Kai allowed himself a long, deliberate exhale. He could see it clearly now: they were opposites in every conceivable way. She thrived in disorder, spontaneity, and emotion. He thrived in structure, precision, and silence. Their very natures demanded collision.
Yet here they were, forced together. Fates intertwined like the chaotic threads of a tapestry he didn't choose but could not escape. How are they going to survive this? he wondered, more to himself than anyone else.
And beneath the calculated calm, beneath the smirk, beneath the layers of observation, there was a flutter he hadn't felt before. The thought that perhaps, in the impossible tension between them, something unexpected could arise, something that might disrupt even the rigid boundaries of his meticulously ordered world.
He shook his head, silent laughter threatening again. No, he told himself firmly. Not yet. Not now. Alina was still blissfully unaware. Still, a storm he had not yet had to endure fully. Still… just Alina.
He didn't move. He didn't speak. He simply allowed himself to marvel, quietly, at the absurdity of it all: the way the universe seemed to delight in irony, the way fate had conspired to toss together two people who should never, under any circumstances, coexist.
The clock ticked on. The house remained still, save for the faint rustle of Alina moving around, exploring, realizing, reacting.
Kai smirked again, privately, savoring the tension. The game had begun. And deep down, he knew he was going to enjoy every minute of it.