Ficorpio
Chapter 1
The woman sharing my apartment was gorgeous.
She was showering in the bathroom while I ate dinner in the living room and caught up on a show. The only thing between us was a broken door that wouldn’t even lock.
“Ah—!”
A scream tore through the apartment. Claire Hayes burst out of the bathroom in a panic.
Completely naked.
Honestly, my brain short-circuited. I stood frozen for three full seconds.
“The water heater…” she stammered. “It shocked me…”
“Okay, whatever’s leaking electricity can wait. Maybe put some clothes on first?”
I worked as an independent online content creator. I’d only recently started, and my income was barely enough to keep me fed.
That meant cutting costs wherever I could, especially on basic living expenses.
So I’d rented the cheapest apartment I could find.
It was on the sixth floor of an aging residential complex with no elevator. As for the apartment itself… how could I put this?
Calling it four bare walls would’ve been an insult to bare walls. Calling it a dump would’ve sounded like a compliment.
Technically, it had everything a person needed. Unfortunately, most of it was either broken or barely usable.
Still, I wasn’t picky. I was a guy. As long as I had a roof over my head and four walls to keep out the wind and rain, I could manage.
The rent was only a thousand dollars a month for a two-bedroom apartment—practically a steal.
Claire had chosen the place because it was cheap too. There was another reason: her office was only a five-minute walk away.
But from the day she moved in and became my roommate, my life turned into a living hell.
When the rental agent first told me a woman wanted to move in and share the apartment, every instinct I had screamed no.
We were both adults. I’d long since stopped believing in those ridiculous movie plots where two strangers became roommates and somehow stumbled into romance. The cliché was so worn out even cheap web novels wouldn’t touch it anymore.
Another person meant trouble. It meant losing my privacy. It meant finding a thousand stupid new reasons to get annoyed.
So why did I agree?
Two WeChat messages.
The first was a payment notification from the rental agent. From that month on, Claire and I would split the rent evenly, and he’d transferred five hundred dollars back to me.
The second was a photo of Claire Hayes.
Okay, she was gorgeous.
I tried to resist. Honestly, I did. I exercised restraint, then more restraint, then every last scrap of restraint I possessed.
It didn’t work.
For perhaps one ten-thousandth of a second, a thought slipped into my head: maybe having a beautiful woman around wouldn’t be so bad.
On the day she moved in, I decided to be a gentleman and help with her luggage.
Chapter 2
“Let me get that suitcase for you.”
“Did you wash your hands?”
My hand froze in midair, looking less like a gentlemanly offer and more like a criminal reaching straight for a cop’s badge. I couldn’t extend it any farther, but pulling it back felt equally awkward.
In the end, I stepped aside and watched her small frame wrestle an enormous suitcase through the door.
I forgot to introduce myself.
She apparently had no intention of introducing herself either. The moment she entered, her brows drew together and stayed that way.
I knew what bothered her. The apartment smelled faintly of decay, like most lives that hadn’t turned out the way people hoped.
It had taken me a long time to get used to it too.
“You have a key, right? I’m heading out.”
“Mm.”
The sound barely made it past her nose.
I couldn’t be bothered to worry about her, so I strode out the door.
I was meeting a friend for dinner that night, and it was after ten when I finally got home. Half asleep, I stumbled into my bedroom—then stopped dead.
“What the hell? Is this even my room?”
The floor was spotless. The reference materials I used every day had been arranged into neat stacks. Aside from the bed, which looked exactly as I’d left it, everything had been tidied.
I had to admit, there were benefits to living with a woman who liked things clean.
I climbed into bed and slept beautifully.
The next morning, I got up ready to work and discovered that the manuscripts on my desk were gone.
More importantly, so was my USB flash drive.
That drive was my life. It held years of ideas—every scrap of inspiration I’d managed to save.
“Uh… Claire? Did you clean my room yesterday?”
“No need to thank me.”
She stood there brushing her teeth, head lowered, her words muffled around the toothbrush.
“That’s not what I meant. There were a few sheets of printer paper on my desk. Did you see them?”
“I threw them away.”
Are you kidding me?
I’d never met anyone who could mess with someone else’s belongings and sound so completely justified about it.
“Claire, why didn’t you ask before throwing them out?”
“They were covered in drawings of ghosts and gods and creepy things. They scared me.”
“I’m a paranormal content creator. What am I supposed to draw—portraits of you?”
She turned around and wiped the toothpaste from the corner of her mouth.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Forget it. The drawings aren’t important. Did you see the USB drive on my desk?”
“No.”
“You were the only person who went into my room yesterday. If you didn’t see it, who did?”
She shoved past me and hurriedly gathered her things.
“I’m going to work. It’s just a stupid USB drive. I’ll buy you another one.”
“That’s not the point! I had dozens of gigs on there.”
“Porn?”
“Porn, my ass. Inspiration.”
Chapter 3
“I don’t know where it is. I didn’t touch it. Now stop blocking me.”
The front door slammed shut hard enough to shake loose a few wisps of dust.
As they drifted through the air, so did the shattered remains of my heart.
A little after eight that evening, Claire came home from work and tossed a brand-new external hard drive at me.
“This has more storage, and it’s bigger, so it won’t be as easy to lose.”
“That’s not the point.” I casually set the drive aside. “I think we need to talk.”
Claire dropped her bag in her bedroom without even taking off her coat, then sank onto the couch. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
“Go ahead.”
“I’m letting the USB thing go, but not because it wasn’t important. I’m letting it go because arguing about it won’t accomplish anything.
“From now on, we need to establish which parts of the apartment are shared and which are private.”
She nodded.
In the end, we agreed that the living room, bathroom, and kitchen were common areas. Our bedrooms were private.
The balcony, however, would be hers.
She needed somewhere to hang her underwear and other personal laundry. My bedroom got plenty of sun, so I could dry my clothes inside, but hers faced the shady side of the building, where nothing dried easily.
In exchange, she offered to cover the apartment’s water and electricity bills.
Once our three house rules were settled, she hurried back to her room and burst into tears.
Her sobbing grew louder and louder. I stood outside her door, rubbing my nose awkwardly.
I couldn’t help thinking, It’s not like I bullied you. I barely use any water or electricity anyway. You’re not paying that much extra.
Saturday morning, I was right in the middle of an extremely pleasant erotic dream when—
Bang!
My bedroom door flew open.
I shot upright in bed, startled wide awake, and found Claire staring back at me with a slightly panicked expression.
“Claire, do you think you could knock next time?”
“I did knock.”
I glanced at the fresh dent the doorknob had slammed into the wall, then looked back at her.
“Burglars don’t knock that hard.”
“Why didn’t you lock the door?”
“Look at this piece of junk. Does it seem like it has a working lock?”
She waved a hand as though she were graciously forgiving me.
“Whatever. I just came to borrow a couple of hangers. I didn’t realize I’d forgotten to buy any until after I finished the laundry.”
“Help yourself.” I curled into the smallest possible ball and buried myself under the covers. “I’m not exactly in a convenient position right now.”
The corner of her mouth twitched upward before she quickly forced it back down.
“What? Were you taking care of some private business?”