The air inside was warmer than the yard had been, but not softer. The living room seemed smaller now, the clutter from the night before less harmless than it had ten minutes ago. A glass on the side table. A blanket half-fallen off the couch. A bottle cap someone had left near the leg of a chair. Little signs of ordinary carelessness that should have made the space feel lived in and instead only made it feel like everyone had been here without really seeing where they were.
Katarin had disappeared back upstairs after insisting they were making it weird. The other guy had followed her without saying much. Noah moved into the kitchen like he needed his hands on something practical before his thoughts got too loud. Ymir stayed in the living room, but the restless energy in him had shifted; he was still standing, still moving, but not with his usual ease. He looked like someone trying not to let his discomfort settle into anything solid.
Madaline remained near the doorway a second longer than everyone else.
Not because she meant to.
Because her eyes kept going back to the glass in the door, to the pale reflection of the room behind her and the brightness beyond it. Morning had stripped the dark away from the yard, but somehow that made the emptiness feel stranger. Nothing hidden. Nothing obvious. Just space where someone should have been and wasn’t.
“Madaline?”
She turned.
Mira stood halfway down the stairs, one hand resting lightly on the banister. She looked more awake now than she had upstairs earlier, though there was still softness clinging to her from sleep. Her auburn hair fell messily over one shoulder, catching warm copper in the daylight from the hallway window, and her oversized sweater hung off one side just enough to make her seem smaller inside it. Her expression wasn’t frightened exactly.
Just searching.
“You okay?” Mira asked.
The question was quiet enough that it didn’t pull the whole room toward them.
Madaline let out a breath and nodded once. “Yeah.”
Mira tilted her head slightly, not quite buying it, then came the rest of the way down. The wood creaked softly under her steps. When she reached the bottom, she moved to Madaline without hesitation, close enough that their shoulders nearly brushed.
Across the room, Ymir dragged both hands through his curls and turned toward them. “Okay, I hate this.”
Madaline looked over.
He was standing near the coffee table, broad shoulders still a little hunched from sleep, hoodie wrinkled, bright blue eyes more alert now than they had been outside. The humor in him wasn’t gone, exactly, but it had been pushed farther under the surface. It showed up in flashes instead of living full-time on his face.
“Hate what?” Mira asked.
“This vibe.” He gestured vaguely around the room. “This whole—” another vague motion, “—everyone looking like we’re waiting for the house to say something.”
“The house is not going to say something,” Noah called from the kitchen.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“You sound too confident.”
“That’s because one of us has to.”
Ymir looked toward the kitchen with open offense. “Why are you like this before noon?”
“Why are you like this ever?”
That almost got a laugh out of Mira. Madaline heard it in the breath she let out, saw it in the slight bend at the corner of her mouth. The moment didn’t fully relieve anything, but it loosened the room just a little.
Ethan came downstairs then, quieter than everyone else had been. Madaline hadn’t heard him until he was already on the last few steps, one hand sliding briefly along the banister as he descended. He looked more put together than Ymir, though not by much. Dark hair still a little tousled, that subtle green tint only catching when the light shifted across it. His face was calm in the way it usually was, but his eyes moved over the room quickly enough that Madaline knew he’d already picked up on the mood.
His attention found Mira first.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“No one knows,” Ymir answered before she could.
Ethan’s gaze shifted to him. “That’s not really an answer.”
“Exactly.”
He stepped off the stairs and stopped near Mira, not crowding her, just landing naturally within her orbit the way he always did. “What happened?”
Mira glanced briefly at Madaline as she started, then back at him. “We checked outside. He wasn’t there.”
Ethan was quiet for a beat. “And?”
“And nothing,” Ymir said. “That’s the problem.”
The kitchen cabinet closed.
Noah reappeared in the doorway with a mug in one hand and that same steady expression he had when he was already three thoughts ahead of everyone else and didn’t feel like explaining any of them. His gaze moved between the four of them, taking in where they stood, how tense the room still felt.
“Katarin still saying he left?” Ethan asked.
“Basically,” Madaline said.
Ethan nodded once, but his face gave very little away. “Did he?”
Noah leaned one shoulder against the doorway. “I don’t know.”
“That’s helpful,” Ymir muttered.
“It’s honest.”
Mira finally laughed properly then, soft but unmistakable. It changed the room more than it should have. Madaline felt it immediately, the way tension eased a fraction just from hearing something warm that wasn’t trying too hard.
Ymir pointed at her. “Thank you. At least somebody appreciates me.”
“I appreciated you more when you were asleep,” Noah said.
“That’s so hateful.”
“No,” Noah replied, taking a sip from the mug. “That’s restful.”
Madaline shook her head, but the smile this time stayed a little longer. The conversation had shifted off the missing guy for all of thirty seconds, and even that felt like relief. Temporary, brittle relief, but relief all the same.
Then footsteps sounded overhead.
Katarin’s.
Madaline knew before she even appeared, something about the rhythm of them sharper than everyone else’s, quicker, more decisive when she was annoyed. Katarin came downstairs already dressed, dark short hair brushed into something more deliberate, expression set like she had decided in advance she wasn’t going to like whatever anyone said next. The remaining guy followed a few steps behind her with the sluggish, not-quite-there energy of someone who hadn’t fully chosen wakefulness yet.
Katarin stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked at all of them like they were the inconvenience.
“Why does everyone look like somebody died?” she asked.
The sentence landed wrong enough that the room seemed to still around it.
No one answered immediately.
Not because it was an accusation.
Because it was too close to something none of them wanted to name.
Katarin seemed to register the silence only as annoyance. “Oh my God. Seriously?”
“He’s still not back,” Ymir said.
She rolled her eyes like he’d told her the weather was inconvenient. “Then he’s still gone.”
“That’s not really the issue.”
“It literally is the issue,” she snapped. “You guys are acting like he vanished into another dimension.”
The other guy hovered behind her, eyes moving between faces, uncomfortable enough that it made him look younger than he probably was. Like even he knew this should’ve been landing differently than it was.
“No one said that,” Madaline said carefully.
Katarin turned toward her. “No, but everyone’s doing that thing where they stand around making it weird.”
“It is weird,” Noah said.
Katarin gave him a look sharp enough to cut. “To you.”
“No,” Ymir said. “To normal people.”
“You’re not normal.”
“Neither are you.”
“At least I’m not dramatic.”
That earned a short, humorless sound from Noah that wasn’t quite a laugh.
Mira shifted beside Madaline, just enough that the side of her sweater brushed against her arm. A tiny movement. Thoughtless, maybe. But grounding in a way Madaline needed more than she wanted to admit.
“Can we not start fighting?” Mira said.
Her voice was quiet, but it pulled attention all the same. Not because she demanded it. Because she never did.
Katarin let out a breath through her nose and looked away first. “I’m not fighting. I’m saying he probably left. That’s it.”
“Without his phone?” Noah asked.
Katarin’s head snapped back toward him.
Just for a second, something uncertain flickered through her face.
Then it hardened again.
“Maybe he took it,” she said.
“You don’t know if he did?”
“Why would I know that?”
“Because apparently everyone else is supposed to know he left,” Ymir muttered.
The guy behind Katarin finally spoke, voice rough with sleep. “He didn’t say anything to me.”
That quieted the room more effectively than anything else had.
Katarin turned toward him with visible irritation. “Thanks. Super helpful.”
He lifted one shoulder. “Just saying.”
Madaline watched all of it without speaking, the old room holding them in a shape that no longer fit. Everyone seemed a little off from themselves. Ymir too tense. Noah too still. Katarin too sharp. The other guy too detached. Ethan too unreadable. Even Mira, for all her softness, seemed to be listening harder than usual, attention moving quietly from one person to the next.
And Kane—
Madaline’s eyes shifted almost automatically toward the hallway just as he stepped into view.
She didn’t know where he’d been. Not far, probably. The kitchen maybe. Somewhere just outside the center of things, the way he always was. He crossed into the room with the same contained, effortless calm he carried like it belonged to him, expression giving nothing up. His jacket was gone now, replaced by a dark shirt that made the pale blue of his eyes look colder than they were. He took in the room with one glance, the mood of it, the argument half-formed and sitting ugly between all of them.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Katarin said immediately.
“Something,” Ymir said at the same time.
For one brief second, Kane looked between them.
Then his gaze settled on Noah instead.
Not asking. Measuring.
Noah took another sip from his mug and said, “He’s still not back.”
Kane was quiet for a beat. “Then we wait.”
The answer should have irritated Madaline more than it did.
Maybe because it sounded practical.
Maybe because everyone in the room was already doing exactly that, whether they liked it or not.
Katarin folded her arms. “Thank you.”
Ymir looked at Kane. “That’s it?”
Kane met his stare without any visible reaction. “What do you want it to be?”
Ymir opened his mouth, then closed it again.
No answer came.
Because there wasn’t one.
Not yet.
The room held in that quiet, uncomfortable place for another second before Mira turned slightly toward Madaline and said, softly enough that only she would really hear it, “I hate this.”
Madaline looked at her.
Mira’s face had gone still in that particular way it did when she was trying to keep everyone else comfortable first and herself second. Not panicked. Not fragile. Just… tired of the tension that wouldn’t settle into anything clear.
“I know,” Madaline said.
Mira exhaled and gave the smallest nod.
And around them, the house stayed bright and quiet and deceptively ordinary, as if what it was holding had not started to slip just slightly out of place.
until something small tipped it.
It wasn’t loud.
Just the soft buzz of a phone.
Everyone paused, not all at once, but close enough that the shift was noticeable. The sound came again from somewhere in the living room, faint and persistent, vibrating against wood.
Ymir frowned. “Whose—”
He didn’t finish.
Madaline’s eyes had already moved to the couch.
A jacket lay half-folded over the armrest, one sleeve hanging down toward the floor. The sound came from inside it, muffled slightly, buzzing again in short, uneven bursts.
No one moved at first.
Then Noah crossed the room.
He didn’t rush. Didn’t hesitate either. Just reached into the pocket and pulled the phone out, the screen lighting briefly against his hand before dimming again.
He looked down at it.
Then up.
“It’s his.”
The words landed harder than anything else had that morning.
Ymir let out a quiet, disbelieving breath. “Okay, no—”
“He wouldn’t leave without that,” Ethan said, voice low but certain.
Katarin’s expression tightened. “He has other ways to—”
“To what?” Noah cut in, not sharp, but firm enough to stop her. “Disappear without telling anyone?”
She didn’t answer right away.
Madaline felt something settle in her chest.
Not panic.
Something quieter.
He didn’t just leave.
“Maybe he dropped it,” Katarin said finally, but it didn’t sound like she believed it.
“Inside?” Ymir asked.
“I don’t know,” she snapped. “People do stupid things.”
“Not that stupid.”
The room shifted again, the air tightening in a way that made everything feel just a little too still.
Noah turned the phone over once in his hand, like he was expecting it to explain itself.
It didn’t.
Mira moved slightly closer to Madaline without thinking, her sleeve brushing against her arm again, the contact grounding but different now—less casual, more instinctive.
“Okay,” Ymir said, running a hand over the back of his neck. “So… that’s weird.”
No one argued.
No one spoke for a second after that.
The phone sat in Noah’s hand like it had weight to it, more than it should have. The screen flickered once, dimming fully now, leaving only the reflection of the room faintly caught in the glass.
Madaline became aware of how still everyone had gone.
Ymir’s hand hovered at the back of his neck, unmoving. Ethan’s posture had shifted just slightly, his attention sharpening without him saying anything. Mira stayed close, her presence quiet but steady beside her. Even Kane, who rarely seemed unsettled by anything, had gone more focused than before, his gaze resting not on the phone but on the space around it—on the reactions, the silences, the way the room had tightened.
Katarin broke first.
“Okay,” she said, sharper than necessary. “So what? He forgot it. That doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means he didn’t plan on leaving,” Noah said.
“Or he didn’t think about it.”
“People think about their phone.”
“Not everyone is as obsessive as you.”
Noah didn’t react to that. He just looked at her, steady. “He left his jacket. His phone. Didn’t tell anyone. That’s not normal.”
“You don’t know him,” she snapped.
“Neither do you, apparently,” Ymir muttered.
Katarin turned on him. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means if he does this all the time, maybe give us a little more than ‘he just disappears’ and then get mad when we question it.”
“I’m not mad—”
“You are,” Ethan said quietly.
That stopped her.
Not completely—but enough.
For a second, something flickered across her face that didn’t match the irritation she’d been holding onto. Something tighter. Less certain.
Then it snapped back into place.
“I’m annoyed,” she corrected. “Because you’re all acting like something happened when nothing happened.”
“We don’t know that,” Madaline said before she could stop herself.
Katarin’s eyes cut to her. “Exactly. We don’t know anything.”
The words landed, but not the way she meant them to.
Madaline felt it settle again—that same quiet shift, deeper now. Not panic. Not fear. Just the growing sense that the space between what they knew and what they didn’t was getting harder to ignore.
Ymir let out a breath, pacing once across the edge of the living room before turning back. “Okay, but like—what are we actually saying here?” he asked. “Because I’m not jumping to—” He gestured vaguely, like the thought itself was too much to shape. “That. But this is weird.”
“We already established that,” Noah said.
“Right, but what do we do about it?”
No one answered.
That was the problem.
Mira shifted beside Madaline, her voice quieter when she spoke. “We don’t have to decide anything right this second.”
It wasn’t dismissive.
It wasn’t minimizing.
Just… easing.
Ymir looked at her, tension still sitting heavy in his shoulders. “So we just… wait?”
“For a bit,” she said. “See if he shows up. If he doesn’t, then we figure it out.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Ethan added.
Noah didn’t say anything, but his expression didn’t fully agree either.
Katarin seized on it immediately. “Exactly. Thank you. That’s all I’ve been saying.”
“That’s not all you’ve been saying,” Ymir muttered.
“It is now.”
The room hovered there again, caught between action and inaction, logic and denial. Everyone standing in slightly different places, none of them quite lining up.
Madaline glanced at Noah.
He was still holding the phone, thumb resting along the edge like he’d forgotten it was there. His gaze had drifted—not to the door this time, but to the floor near the entrance. Like he was replaying what he’d seen outside. The uneven gravel. The not-quite footprints.
He didn’t look convinced.
Across the room, Kane leaned back against the wall, arms loose at his sides, watching everything without inserting himself into it. His expression hadn’t changed much, but his attention had sharpened in that quiet, deliberate way Madaline was starting to notice more. He wasn’t focused on the problem.
He was focused on the people reacting to it.
“We can’t just stand here all day,” Katarin said suddenly.
And there it was.
The shift.
Her voice carried something different now—not just irritation, but something closer to refusal. Like she had decided already that she wasn’t going to let this turn into something bigger, whether it should or not.
Ymir frowned. “No one said we were—”
“No, but that’s what this is turning into,” she cut in. “Everyone standing around, overthinking, making it into a whole thing when it doesn’t have to be.”
“It might be a whole thing,” Noah said.
“Or it might not,” she shot back. “And I’m not ruining the entire day over a maybe.”
The words settled hard.
Not because they were right.
Because they were easy.
Madaline felt the pull of that ease immediately. The option to not escalate. To not turn the morning into something heavier than it already felt. To let the unknown stay unknown a little longer.
“We can check again later,” Katarin went on, pushing forward now that no one had stopped her. “If he’s not back, then fine, we deal with it. But right now? There’s nothing to deal with.”
Ymir hesitated.
Ethan glanced briefly at Noah.
Mira stayed quiet.
And in the space where someone should have pushed back harder—
no one did.
Not yet.
The room held in that space a second longer—balanced on the edge of doing something or pretending there was nothing to do.
Katarin broke it.
“I’m going to the lake,” she said, already turning toward the stairs like the decision had been made long before she said it out loud. “You guys can keep standing here if you want, but I’m not.”
Her footsteps hit the first step without waiting for a response.
Ymir blinked after her. “That’s… now?”
“Yes, now,” she called over her shoulder. “It’s morning. That’s when people do things.”
“People also look for their missing friend,” Noah said.
She stopped halfway up, turning just enough to look back down at him. “We did look. He’s not here. There’s nothing else to do right this second.”
“There’s plenty to do,” Noah replied evenly. “You just don’t want to do it.”
Katarin’s jaw tightened. “No, I don’t want to waste the entire day over something we don’t even understand yet.”
“That’s exactly why—”
“Oh my God,” she cut in, sharper now. “If he’s not back in a few hours, fine. We can freak out then. Happy?”
The question hung there, pointed and impatient.
No one answered it.
Because it wasn’t really a question.
It was a line she’d drawn.
Ymir shifted his weight, looking between her and Noah. “I mean…” he started, then stopped, scrubbing a hand over his face again. “We could just… go for a bit. Clear our heads or whatever.”
Noah’s gaze flicked to him. “You’re serious?”
“I’m saying standing here isn’t helping,” Ymir said. “We already checked outside. He’s not there. So either we keep pacing and get nowhere, or we—” he gestured vaguely, “—do something and come back.”
It wasn’t a strong argument.
But it wasn’t wrong either.
Ethan exhaled quietly. “We don’t have enough to go on yet,” he said. “If he’s not back later, we take it seriously. For now…” He glanced toward the windows, the bright stretch of morning beyond them. “We don’t have much else.”
Noah didn’t look convinced.
But he didn’t immediately shut it down either.
Madaline felt the shift happening in real time—the slow, collective lean toward the easier option. Not because it was right, but because it required less from them in this exact moment.
Beside her, Mira spoke quietly.
“Maybe just for a little while,” she said. “We stay close. We don’t go far.”
Her tone didn’t push.
It didn’t dismiss.
It just… softened the edges of the decision enough that it didn’t feel like one.
Madaline looked at her.
Mira met her gaze for a second, something unreadable flickering there—uncertainty, maybe. Or just the same quiet unease everyone else was trying not to name.
“We’ll come back,” Mira added, softer still.
That did it.
Not logically.
Emotionally.
Ymir nodded once, like he’d been waiting for someone to make it feel okay. “Yeah. Okay. Fine. We go, we come back, we check again. Easy.”
“It’s not easy,” Noah said.
“It’s easier,” Ymir corrected.
Katarin, still halfway up the stairs, let out a short, satisfied breath. “Thank you.”
She turned and continued up without another word, like the conversation had already been settled in her favor.
The other guy lingered a second longer at the bottom, glancing between them. “I might just stay here for a bit,” he said, voice uncertain. “I don’t really feel like—” He gestured vaguely. “Swimming.”
“Suit yourself,” Ymir said, a little too quickly.
Noah’s attention sharpened at that. “You sure?”
The guy shrugged. “Yeah. I’ll come out later or something.”
No one argued.
Because it made sense.
Because it didn’t feel like a big enough decision to question.
And because all of them, in some quiet, unspoken way, were already choosing not to push things any further than they had to.
Madaline felt it settle then.
The choice.
Not loud. Not dramatic.
Just… made.
They were going to leave.
They were going to come back.
And whatever was wrong with the morning—
would still be here waiting for them.
The house didn’t move after the decision.
It didn’t react.
It just stayed the same—quiet, bright, holding the shape of something none of them had fully named yet.
Madaline followed Mira upstairs.
Not because anyone told her to.
Because it felt easier than staying in the room downstairs, where everything had started to press too close together. Voices, tension, the sense that if they all stood there any longer, someone would say something that changed everything.
The hallway was warmer than the rest of the house, sunlight stretching thin across the floorboards from the window at the far end. The quiet up here felt different. Not empty—just removed. Like the tension hadn’t climbed the stairs with them yet.
Mira pushed their bedroom door open with her shoulder and stepped inside, exhaling softly as she crossed toward the bed.
“I hate when things feel like that,” she said, almost to herself.
Madaline leaned against the doorframe for a second before closing it behind them. “Like what?”
Mira sat on the edge of the bed, reaching for a pair of socks she’d left tangled in the blankets earlier. “Like everyone’s waiting for something to happen but no one wants to say it.”
She pulled one on, then the other, movements slower than usual. Not distracted—just… thoughtful.
“It’s probably nothing,” she added after a second, quieter now. “Right?”
Madaline didn’t answer immediately.
She moved further into the room instead, her gaze drifting—over the unmade bed, the soft mess of Mira’s hair catching the light, the way the morning settled into the space like it hadn’t been touched by anything outside of it.
It looked normal.
Too normal.
“Yeah,” she said finally. “Probably.”
Mira glanced up at her then, searching her face just briefly before something softer returned to her expression.
“You’re bad at lying,” she said.
“I’m not lying.”
“You’re not convincing either.”
Madaline huffed a quiet breath, crossing her arms loosely. “You asked me what I thought.”
“I asked if we were overthinking it.”
“Same thing.”
“Not really.”
Mira smiled faintly at that, just enough to take the edge off the conversation. Then she reached up, dragging her fingers loosely through her hair in an attempt to tame it.
It didn’t work.
Madaline stepped closer without thinking.
“Hold on,” she said, gently catching a strand that had fallen forward again. She brushed it back behind Mira’s ear, fingers lingering just a second longer than necessary before pulling away.
Mira stilled slightly at the contact.
Then relaxed again.
“Better?” Madaline asked.
“Debatable.”
“Rude.”
“Honest.”
“That’s twice today.”
“You’re welcome.”
Madaline smiled, the tension in her chest easing just enough to breathe around. Moments like this felt… normal. Simple. Easy in a way the rest of the house hadn’t been since they’d woken up.
Mira reached for her hand without really looking, fingers brushing against hers for a second before curling lightly.
“We’ll come back,” she said quietly. “It’s not like we’re leaving.”
Madaline nodded, though something in her chest didn’t fully settle.
“Yeah.”
“And if he’s not back, then we figure it out.”
“Yeah.”
Mira squeezed her hand once, gentle, reassuring, before letting go and standing.
“Come on,” she said, softer now. “Before Ymir starts yelling again.”
As if on cue, his voice echoed faintly from downstairs.
“I’m not yelling—I’m projecting!”
Mira laughed under her breath, shaking her head. “See?”
Madaline followed her toward the door, the sound of him grounding in a strange, familiar way.
For a second, it almost felt like everything was back where it should be.
Almost.
They stepped into the hallway together.
The sunlight hadn’t changed.
The house hadn’t changed.
But as Madaline moved toward the stairs, she hesitated.
Just for a second.
Her gaze drifted back toward the room they’d just left. Then past it. Down the hallway. Toward the closed doors, the quiet spaces, the parts of the house that hadn’t been touched since the night before.
Nothing moved.
Nothing felt different enough to explain.
And still—
it felt wrong to leave.
“Madaline?” Mira called softly from the stairs.
She blinked and turned.
“Yeah,” she said, stepping forward again.
She followed Mira down.
And didn’t look back a second time.