Comfort
Chapter 18
*That evening.*
After nearly facing death, the group made it back to the hotel, still shaken by what they'd just been through. The first thing any of them did was shower — the smell of death had soaked into their skin, their hair, their clothes, and no amount of scrubbing felt like quite enough to get it out.
*We made it,* they all thought, in their own way. *Is this what it's going to be like from now on?* Some of them felt like the world really was ending for good this time. No police. No military. No one above them who was going to swoop in and fix any of this.
Just as the weight of that started to properly sink in, their stomachs started grumbling. None of them had eaten since they'd split off from Chase's group.
Luckily, Amy — one of the ten — had been a chef before all this. The smell of her cooking crept through the hotel floor by floor, slipping under doors, impossible to ignore. Boiled stew, beef rich enough to be worth crying over, all of it topped with something cheesy that had the whole group salivating before they'd even reached the room. Nobody needed telling twice that dinner was ready.
They gathered in the ballroom two floors up, and the sight alone was enough to stop a few of them in the doorway — a carefully set table, food plated like it belonged somewhere with a dress code. Amy's talent clearly hadn't gone anywhere just because the world had ended. A couple of them actually teared up. Even the water in the glasses somehow looked expensive.
"Wow, this is amazing. I never thought I'd end up dining in a five-star hotel," Laura said. Blonde, warm, the kind of presence that made you assume old money just from how she carried herself — though the truth was simpler than that. Oldest of five siblings, she'd spent her whole life putting everyone else's needs ahead of her own, even back when her youngest sister got married at twenty while Laura was heading into her late twenties, unmarried, and freshly divorced not long after.
She'd never put much thought into men, honestly — as long as she was happy and breathing, she figured the rest would sort itself out eventually. Her one real nemesis in life was the microwave. No matter how much she trained, for whatever reason, she could never quite manage to lift the thing on her own, which had sparked an ongoing, deeply petty cold war between her and every microwave she'd ever owned.
For one night, all of them felt like guests instead of survivors. Amy's spread made it easy to forget, at least for a few hours, everything waiting for them outside these walls. All anyone wanted to do was smile, eat, and drink until the day stopped mattering.
Still, Amy noticed two empty seats.
Jane, she understood — with her leg injured, she couldn't move around freely, so Amy made it her own personal mission to deliver food to her directly and check on her while she recovered.
"Here you go. Sorry about the toppings, I had to work with whatever I could find," Amy said, setting a tray down and handing it over.
"Thank you, that's really kind of you — you didn't have to." Jane accepted it gently, balancing the tray across her thighs as she shifted into a more upright sitting position. She took one bite of the meat, closed her eyes, and let out a small, involuntary moan.
"Wow. This is actually incredible." She started eating in earnest, then paused, a little embarrassed at herself. Amy just laughed.
"It makes me happy you're enjoying it. Eat as much as you want — it's just the two of us in here." She leaned in with a grin. "I won't tell anybody," she whispered, before slipping back out with a smile still on her face.
The last person left was Kaito. He hadn't shown his face since they'd gotten back, and the longer that went on, the more it started gnawing at her. *What if he... no. He wouldn't. Would he?*
The thought took hold hard enough that when she reached his door, her usual gentle knock turned into something closer to pounding.
No answer. Her worry climbed with every second — she kept knocking for a full three minutes, her expression sliding steadily into something closer to panic. Part of her wanted to just break the door down and check on him herself; she'd lost people close to her before, to things that started exactly like this kind of silence — overdoses, mental breaks that ended in the worst way — and she knew better than most how quickly that kind of quiet could turn into something unrecoverable.
She took a slow breath and told herself, *it's fine, everything is fine,* before knocking one final time, gentler now, and calling out, "Dinner's ready," in the softest, calmest voice she could manage.
A long pause. Then the lock turned.
The door opened to reveal Kaito — completely naked, barely covered at all below the waist — and Amy went bright red, slapped both hands over her face, and bolted.
"Thanks for the meal!" he called after her, as she was already halfway down the stairs.
