Abi In Wonderland

Longness

Morning came grey and quiet, and Zev's side of the bed was still empty.

Abi lay there a long while before she made herself get up, turning the night over and over until it had worn smooth in her mind, softened into something she could almost make sense of. He'd been embarrassed. Startled. Protective, maybe, in the worst possible way—the kind of protective that came out looking like anger because he didn't have better words for fear.

She wanted to fix it. Whatever it even was.

She spent the morning rehearsing what she might say, discarding one version after another—too much, too little, too much like an apology for something she wasn't sure was her fault. Maybe she'd start with tea, the way he liked it, waiting on his desk when he finally walked back through the door. Maybe she'd just say his name the way he'd said hers last night, quiet, and let him decide what happened next.

She didn't know what time he'd come home, or if he would at all before evening. But she found herself listening for the sound of the front door anyway, all morning, the same way she used to listen for it before she'd learned to stop hoping quite so hard.

I'll make it right, she told herself, though she still wasn't entirely sure what right looked like anymore, only that the quiet of an empty house felt worse now than it ever had before she'd had something to lose in it.

---

The girls arrived a little past noon, and their noise was almost a relief—something to fill the hours until Zev came home, something to keep her from replaying his face on a loop.

The girls started trickling back that week—first Melba and Matilda again, then, finally, Karen and Pyonghwa together, both of them full of apologies Abi waved off within seconds of them walking through the door.

"You didn't have to explain anything," Abi told Pyonghwa, pulling her into a hug that surprised them both with how tight it was. "I just missed you. That's all."

"We missed you too," Pyonghwa said, and something in her voice sounded more relieved than the moment probably called for, like she'd been carrying something heavier than a busy week.

The five of them fell back into their rhythm easily—snacks scattered across the bed, someone's playlist filling the room, Karen narrating a story about a stranger on the street that had nothing to do with anything and everything to do with just being normal, being young, being together. Abi hadn't realized how much she'd missed the specific chaos of five voices overlapping until it filled the room again, loud enough to almost drown out the part of her still listening for the front door.

It was during a lull—Matilda scrolling through something on her phone, Melba half-asleep against the headboard—that Abi leaned over toward Pyonghwa, voice casual, easy.

"Can I borrow your phone for a sec? I want to take a picture. Feels weird not having a single photo from today."

"Of course." Pyonghwa unlocked it and passed it over without a second thought.

Abi held it up, framing a shot of the room—Karen upside down on the bed, Matilda mid-laugh, the chaos of snack wrappers and tangled charging cables that made the afternoon feel real. She took two, then three, scrolling back to check them, thumb lingering.

Then, almost before she'd decided to, she opened the notes app instead.

Her hands felt strange around the phone, foreign, the weight of an actual working device unfamiliar after two years of nothing but borrowed glimpses of the world through other people. She typed slowly, carefully, like the words mattered more than they probably should have:

I want to go out for a day with you please.

She stared at it for a second, heart thudding harder than the sentence probably warranted, then closed the app, opened the photos she'd taken back up on the screen for cover, and handed the phone back.

"Cute pictures," she said, casual, like her pulse wasn't racing. "Thanks."

Pyonghwa glanced at the screen briefly, smiled, and slipped the phone into her pocket without checking anything further.

"No problem," she said, and the conversation around them swallowed the moment whole, nobody else the wiser.

But Abi felt it sitting there the rest of the afternoon, a small, reckless thing she'd set into motion without fully deciding to—half hope, half fear, waiting to see what Pyonghwa would do with three sentences hidden behind a handful of ordinary photos.

---

They left a little after four, the room emptying out the way it always did—slow at first, then all at once, snacks gathered, speaker unplugged, hugs traded at the door.

"Wait, I forgot my charger upstairs," Pyonghwa said, already turning back toward the staircase. "Go on without me, I'll catch up."

Nobody questioned it. Karen was already halfway out the gate, phone in hand, and Matilda and Melba trailed after her, still arguing about something from earlier that had long since stopped making sense to anyone but them.

Pyonghwa came back up alone, and when she reached Abi's door, she didn't knock so much as ease it open, slipping inside and closing it softly behind her.

"You saw it," Abi said. It wasn't a question.

"I saw it." Pyonghwa's voice was quieter than usual, careful in a way Abi hadn't heard from her before. She sat down on the edge of the bed, close but not too close, like she was still deciding how much of this conversation she actually wanted to have. "Abi, that's not something I can just—"

"I know it's a lot to ask."

"It's not just a lot. It's dangerous. For both of us." Pyonghwa's fingers twisted together in her lap. "If Master finds out I took you somewhere without telling him—"

"Please." The word came out cracked, more desperate than Abi meant it to sound, but she didn't take it back. "I'm not asking you to break me out or anything huge. Just—one day. A few hours. I just want to know what it feels like to walk somewhere I chose, that's all. Please, Pyonghwa."

Pyonghwa was quiet for a long moment, and Abi watched something shift behind her eyes—fear, still there, but softening under something heavier. Sadness, maybe. Or recognition of something Abi couldn't quite name.

"You really haven't been anywhere in two years," Pyonghwa said finally, not a question either.

"Not once."

The silence stretched, taut, before Pyonghwa exhaled and some of the tension went out of her shoulders.

"Okay." She said it so simply that for a second Abi didn't fully register it. "Not now. Not this week—too risky with everything going on. But someday soon. When I find the right window, I'll take you. Just us. I'll figure it out."

Abi's breath caught, something bright and disbelieving blooming in her chest all at once. "You mean it?"

"I mean it. But you have to actually listen to me when I say it's not safe yet, okay? No pushing, no rushing it."

"I promise. I swear, I promise." Abi was already half-laughing, half-crying, pulling Pyonghwa into a hug so sudden it nearly knocked them both sideways on the bed. "Thank you. Thank you, thank you—"

"Okay, okay." Pyonghwa laughed too, a little unsteady, hugging her back just as tightly. "Don't make me regret this."

"You won't. I promise you won't."

Pyonghwa pulled back eventually, straightening, some of her usual composure sliding back into place like armor. "I have to go before they wonder where I am."

"Go, go." Abi was still smiling, couldn't stop even if she tried. "Thank you. Really."

Pyonghwa paused at the door, glancing back with an expression Abi couldn't quite place—warm, but with something else underneath it, something careful and a little sad. "You deserve more than one day, you know. I hope you know that."

She was gone before Abi could figure out what to say to that.

---

Abi spent the next hour on herself, the way she used to spend hours on nothing at all, except this time it felt like it mattered.

She washed her hair slowly, working the cherry-scented shampoo through it twice, and braided it back the way she'd seen in a video Matilda had shown her days ago—neat, deliberate, a few soft strands left loose to frame her face. She picked through her closet longer than she'd admit to anyone, finally settling on the pale blue dress she'd never actually worn out of the room, the one that made her feel like someone worth looking twice at. She stood in front of the mirror longer than necessary, smoothing the fabric, telling herself this wasn't about looking pretty for him, even as some quieter part of her admitted it was, at least a little.

Then she went to his room instead of hers, and waited.

---

She heard him arrive before she saw him—heard his footsteps pause outside her own door first, heard it creak open, heard the small, confused silence of him finding the room empty. A beat later his footsteps moved again, faster this time, toward his own door.

He stopped in the doorway when he saw her sitting on the edge of his bed, and for a moment something crossed his face that she couldn't quite name—surprise, maybe, or the particular relief of a held breath finally let go.

"You weren't in your room," he said, like an accusation and a confession at once.

"I wanted to see you first."

He came in slowly, closing the door behind him, and sat down beside her, close enough that she could feel the day still clinging to him—exhaustion, tension, something unresolved.

"I need to say something," Abi started, before she lost her nerve. "About the other night. What I said—about the cage, about the lighting. I didn't mean it to sound like an accusation. I know you're not trying to punish me. I was just—upset, and I said it in the worst way possible."

"Abi."

"I'm sorry," she said again, quieter this time. "For pushing like that. Really sorry."

He was quiet for a moment, looking at her with something heavy behind his eyes, something that looked almost like sadness more than anger.

"I'm sorry, baby," he said finally, simply, and the words landed differently than she expected—not defensive, not clipped, just tired and honest.

Neither of them said anything for a moment after that, the apology sitting between them, doing its quiet work.

"I missed you today," she said eventually, needing to fill the silence with something softer.

"You saw me this morning."

"For like two minutes, grumpy and half-asleep. Doesn't count."

That pulled something like a real smile out of him, small but genuine. "I missed you too. Don't let it go to your head."

"Too late."

"There's something I wanted to ask you," he said, after a moment, some of the weight easing out of his voice. "Havier's mother—distant family, but still family—there's a small gathering, a friend's funeral, next week. Nothing like Saturday's. Smaller. Would you want to come, if I asked?"

Abi's breath caught, and right behind the excitement came a sudden, sharp stab of guilt—Pyonghwa's promise still warm in her chest from just an hour ago, the secret plan already tucked away before this one had even been offered. She kept her face carefully easy, swallowing the guilt down before it could show.

"I'd love that," she said, and it wasn't a lie—she was excited, genuinely, achingly excited to go anywhere with him after so long. It just sat strangely next to the other excitement she wasn't telling him about yet.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." She reached for his hand, needing the anchor of it. "Thank you for asking me."

He studied her for a moment, like he was trying to read something underneath her answer, but whatever he saw seemed to satisfy him, because he squeezed her hand back and let it go.

Abi leaned in for a hug then, instinctive, but he held up a hand, stopping her gently.

"I haven't showered since this morning," he said, wincing slightly. "It's been a day. Give me twenty minutes."

“Can I come with?”

Abi murmured, her innocent eyes following him as he stood.

His brows lifted slightly, and a barely noticeable smirk tugged at his lips.

“Naughty, naughty girl,” he whispered, a quiet chuckle escaping him.

His pearly white teeth flashed as he smiled.

“I mean...” Abi said, glancing around deliberately, pretending to inspect every inch of him just to tease him.

His eyes lit up, and his expression softened.

“Oh, Lord. You are beautiful.”

He paused midway through unbuttoning his shirt and looked at her, his expression shifting with every passing second, as though he were seeing her all over again.

Abi felt warmth creep into her cheeks.

She stared at him, at the familiar face she never seemed to grow tired of, even after all this time.

A dozen thoughts raced through her mind, accompanied by a little rush of adrenaline.

Before she could overthink it, she stood and crossed the small distance between them, pressing a soft kiss to his lips.

For a brief moment, the rest of the room seemed to fade away.