SERAPHINAThe smell of food reached me before I was fully awake.Eggs, specifically, and something with bread, the kind of breakfast smell that was so aggressively normal it felt slightly surreal against the texture of the previous day.I got up, found the bathroom, looked at myself briefly in the mirror and made a decision not to look further than necessary, and went downstairs.Deon was at the stove.He was in a different shirt from last night, his hair pushed back, entirely at home in a kitchen that wasn’t technically his, moving between the hob and the counter with the focused ease of someone who found cooking genuinely useful rather than performative.He looked over his shoulder when I came in. “Morning. Sit down.”“You don’t have to—”“I’ve been here five days with nothing to do,” he said. “Cooking something is the most productive I’ve felt since I got here. Sit down and let me have this.”I sat down.Nadia appeared minutes later, then Shane, and Deon served eggs and toast and a
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