THE ONE WHO RAN AWAY

Théo's POV The first thing I felt was pain. Not the soft ache of a bad night's sleep. Not the dull throb of too much wine. This was deeper. Sharper. The kind of pain that lived in places I had never thought about before. My back. My hips. My legs. Everything hurt. I didn't open my eyes immediately. I just lay there — breathing slowly — waiting for my mind to catch up with my body. The mattress beneath me was too soft. Too expensive. The pillow smelled wrong — unfamiliar cologne mixed with something else I couldn't name but somehow already understood. My stomach turned. Where am I. I opened my eyes. The ceiling was not mine. A luxury hotel room stretched around me — dim, golden morning light bleeding through half-drawn curtains like it had no right being there. Large. Expensive. Silent in the way rooms are silent when they've witnessed too much and decided to say nothing. Then I saw the room properly. My shirt — torn at the collar — was lying near the door like it had been pulled off in a hurry and abandoned. My trousers were crumpled beside the bed. One shoe near the window. The other near the bathroom. And scattered between my things — someone else's jacket. Someone else's belt. Someone else's clothes thrown carelessly across the floor like the night had been too urgent to be careful. My breath stopped. No. With trembling hands I pulled back the bedsheet and looked at myself. I was completely bare. My eyes moved across my own body slowly. Purple bruises bloomed along my collarbone. Bite marks — dark, deliberate, almost possessive — curved along my shoulder, my neck, the edge of my chest. Like someone had wanted to leave proof. Like someone had decided I needed to carry this night on my skin even when my memory refused to. I stared at them for a long moment. Then my eyes fell to the corner of the sheet. Red. Small. Undeniable. Dark against white fabric. My throat closed. First time. The thought arrived quietly. Completely. Like a door shutting somewhere deep inside me that I hadn't even known was open. This was my first time. And I can't remember it. I remembered last night. Barely. I remembered walking into the club — the noise, the lights, the desperate need to just breathe after everything. After Camille. After the realization that had cracked something inside me that I didn't know how to name yet. I had ordered one drink. Just one. To quiet my thoughts. To survive the night. One sip. That was all I remembered. One sip and then — nothing. Darkness. And now this room. This pain. These marks on my skin that belonged to a night I couldn't reach. Then I heard it. Breathing. Low. Slow. Deep and even — the breathing of someone completely undisturbed by the world. Someone still asleep beside me. I turned my head slowly. A man. I didn't look at his face. I couldn't make myself. My eyes stopped at his shoulders — broad, relaxed — dark hair spread across the pillow, one arm stretched across the empty space between us like even in sleep he was reaching for something. His back was marked. Long scratches — red against golden skin — lines I didn't remember making but apparently had. Everything inside me went completely still. What did I do. What did I do. What did I— I moved before the thought could finish. Slowly. Carefully. Every shift of my body sent pain shooting down my legs — sharp enough to make me bite the inside of my cheek, quiet enough that I swallowed it completely. I was not going to wake him. I was not going to look at his face. I did not want a name. I did not want features I would recognize later on a street or in a mirror of someone else's memory. I wanted nothing that would make this more real than it already was. I found a shirt near the bathroom — not mine, too large, smelled like him — but it covered me and that was enough. I pulled on my trousers with shaking hands. Did not look at the bed. Did not look at him. Did not look at the red stain on the sheet that was already burning itself permanently into the back of my mind. I cleaned what I could. Quietly. Mechanically. Moving through that room like I was already a ghost. Then I took every note from my wallet and walked straight to the front desk downstairs. Calm face. Steady voice. Eyes that felt completely empty. "Last night's footage. The corridor outside room 412. Whatever the cameras inside the club caught between eleven and midnight. Delete it all." The staff member stared at me. I placed the money on the counter without blinking. He took it. I walked out into the pale Paris morning — cool air hitting my face, the city already moving and breathing around me like nothing had happened, like the world hadn't quietly shifted on its axis somewhere between one sip of whiskey and a hotel room I never should have been in — And I ran. Like I always do. The pavement blurred beneath my feet. Bangkok swallowed me whole — its noise, its heat, its beautiful indifference. And as I ran I thought about how I had ended up here at all. About the phone call. About Camille's flat voice saying it's over like she was cancelling a reservation. About sitting on my bathroom floor at 2AM not feeling anything — not grief, not anger, not even relief. Just that hollow silence. You already know why, Théo. You have always known. I had booked the first flight to Bangkok before the thought could finish destroying me. Because Élise was here — my sister. My only family. The one person who never needed explanations. The one who had told me years ago — "Bangkok is the kind of place where you can finally be who you are. No apologies. No explanations. Just yourself." I hadn't understood her then. I understood her now. I had come here to breathe. To think. To survive the quiet collapse of everything I thought I knew about myself. Instead I had run from a hotel room at dawn — marked, aching, carrying the weight of a night I couldn't remember with a man whose face I refused to see. I stopped running at the corner of a busy street. Hands on my knees. Breathing hard. Bangkok rushing past me in every direction — completely alive, completely unbothered. I straightened up slowly. Pulled his shirt tighter around myself. And made myself one promise right there on that pavement — No one will ever know this happened. Not Élise. Not Noah. Not anyone. It ends here. But some things don't end just because you decide they should. And some people don't stay gone just because you ran.