Chapter 60: Always Just Short

At five thirty in the afternoon, the door to apartment 203 opened by a careful inch.

A white head peeked through the gap.

Cyrus looked left, then right, checking the hallway before slipping out. The building was quiet at this hour. No neighbor dragging trash toward the stairs, no delivery driver reading apartment numbers, no old tenant pretending not to listen while absolutely listening.

The new hallway camera near the stairwell was still there, hidden badly under its little plastic dome. Cyrus had already decided it was someone else’s problem. If anyone checked the footage, they would see a small white-haired kid crossing from one apartment to the next, not Cyrus Calder leaving his own place. That was not perfect, but perfection was expensive, and he had spent the afternoon buying Frostborn suppressants.

His wallet was still grieving.

In his child form, dressed in clothes meant for a kid his apparent size, Cyrus padded over to Daphne Whitlock’s door and stopped in front of apartment 202.

Prepared leftovers were fine. A lunchbox handed over at the door was fine too.

Fresh food, though, was the true victory.

Food that came hot from a pan, landed straight on a plate, and did not cost him money had a holiness no book had properly explained.

Besides, there was a serious moral mission involved here. Someone had to pull Daphne Whitlock back toward the path of law, ethics, and basic human decency. If she ever crossed a line badly enough to end up arrested, his dinner supply would collapse on the spot.

People could ask why he cared so much about a teacher’s future.

Cyrus would bravely admit that he cared because he could not bear losing a reliable meal ticket.

He lifted his hand and knocked lightly.

The door opened not long after.

Daphne stood behind it.

The instant she saw him, her entire face changed.

For a woman who taught high school students with a polished, controlled smile, she had an alarming talent for looking delighted in ways that should have required supervision. Her eyes brightened. Her fingers tightened on the door edge. For half a breath, the air between them became thick with the exact kind of attention Cyrus had come here to study, provoke, and eventually cure through fear.

He raised his face with the harmless innocence of a child who had never lied in his life.

"Good afternoon, Miss Daphne."

Daphne inhaled a little too quickly.

The white-haired child outside her door looked up at her with a clean, trusting expression. His voice was soft. His face carried that strange, delicate prettiness that made him seem breakable even when he was not. Every part of him seemed designed to press on the worst corner of her mind.

Cute.

Too cute.

Wrongly, painfully cute.

She forced her hand to stay on the door instead of reaching for him.

"I came to play again," Cyrus said. "Would I bother you if I came in?"

Daphne cleared her throat.

It took more self-control than she wanted to admit to keep her voice normal. Even then, it came out a little thin.

"Come in first, okay?"

Cyrus gave her a bright little smile.

"Okay, I’ll come in."

He stepped past her with perfect trust.

Daphne closed the door behind him, then noticed the first place his attention went.

The kitchen.

More precisely, the stovetop.

Her kitchen was spotless, quiet, and completely empty. No pan heating on the burner. No ingredients laid out on the counter. No soup warming in a pot. No evidence that dinner had even begun.

Daphne’s fingers tightened against the door.

He had looked there first.

She should have started cooking earlier.

The problem was that Cory always came without warning. She never knew when the small child with white hair would appear at her door and turn the apartment into something brighter and more dangerous than it had any right to be.

Cyrus, meanwhile, stared at the empty kitchen with deep internal disappointment.

No food.

She had not started dinner.

Then what exactly was he supposed to eat later?

Changing forms and coming over here had not been for entertainment alone. He carried a heavy responsibility. A civic burden. A noble effort to make sure Daphne did not become the kind of adult who deserved prison time.

He climbed onto the small sofa and sat there obediently, hands folded in his lap.

"Miss Daphne, have you already eaten dinner?"

"Not yet."

"Then will I get in the way if you need to cook?"

"No, not at all."

The answer came too fast.

Daphne moved as if she needed to prove it, grabbing the apron hanging near the kitchen and slipping it over her clothes.

Then she paused, turned back toward him, and asked with careful gentleness, "Cory, do you want to stay for dinner today?"

Cyrus lifted his face at once.

"Can I really stay? I really appreciate it, Miss Daphne."

"You can stay," she said quickly. "You are not bothering me."

Her heart nearly betrayed her again when he smiled.

"What do you want to eat?" Daphne asked. "I can make something for you."

"Can it really be anything?"

Daphne nodded immediately.

"Anything I can make."

Cyrus lowered his head as if thinking hard, then brightened with the pure joy of a child making a sacred request.

"I want KFC."

Daphne froze.

For a second, her apron strings hung loose in her hands.

"KFC?" she repeated.

Cyrus nodded.

"That kind of food is not good for your body if you eat too much of it," she said, trying to sound responsible.

The change on his face was visible at once.

The brightness faded. His small shoulders dipped. He lowered his lashes and stared at his knees like he had been prepared to accept disappointment, which was much worse than complaining.

Daphne’s chest tightened.

Food that filled him should have come from her hands.

A meal chosen by her, made by her, watched by her, and remembered by him would have been better. It would have sat between them like proof that he had come here because she could give him something no one else did.

Fried chicken in a cardboard bucket did not have that meaning.

Still, that little disappointed face was almost unbearable.

"Is my cooking not good?" she asked before she could stop herself.

Cyrus looked up quickly.

"It’s really good," he said. "I’ve just never had KFC before."

Daphne went silent.

The guilt arrived immediately.

Never had it before.

Only once, then.

If it was only once, surely it was not that bad.

She untied the apron she had barely put on, came over to the sofa, and crouched in front of him so their eyes were level.

Her voice softened into something coaxing.

"I can order it for you," she said. "But you cannot tell your parents, okay?"

Cyrus’s smile returned in full.

"Okay. Miss Daphne is the best."

Daphne went still.

That smile was too much.

It was the kind of smile that made some quiet, hidden thing in her want to step over a line just to see whether he would still smile afterward. She swallowed the thought down hard enough that it almost hurt.

Instead, she stood, took out her phone, and opened a delivery app.

The wait for the food should have been simple.

Daphne made it complicated.

First came snacks, pulled from a cabinet as if she had prepared a children’s party for one guest. Small bags of chips, fruit gummies, chocolate, cookies, crackers, little packaged sweets. Then, with a look of secret pride, she brought out two handheld game consoles.

Cyrus’s eyes locked onto them.

A familiar layout of buttons. A screen set between controls. Something close to the device Miles Larkin had let him play with, but different enough to feel like a new branch of treasure.

This human world had too many expensive toys.

He needed all of them.

"Do you want to play together?" Daphne asked.

Cyrus accepted the console with both hands, his face full of serious concentration.

"I want to try this."

Daphne sat beside him.

The child next to her disappeared into the game almost immediately.

His attention narrowed. His fingers learned the buttons faster than she expected. Whenever something moved on the screen, his body leaned slightly with it, as though turning the console might help. When he lost, his mouth pressed into a small, stubborn line. When he improved, the concentration on his face grew almost severe.

Daphne watched him instead of her own screen.

The delivery order ticked along on her phone.

The apartment stayed quiet except for game sounds and the occasional rustle of snack bags.

Daphne opened a box of chocolate-dipped biscuit sticks. She lifted one between her fingers and slowly brought it toward his mouth.

"Cory," she said. "Have a snack."

Cyrus did not look away from the screen.

He opened his mouth and took the end of the biscuit stick with tiny bites, working through it bit by bit while his fingers kept moving over the buttons. He looked, in that moment, like a small animal too absorbed in food and play to understand the hand feeding him.

Daphne’s pulse crept higher.

The biscuit grew shorter.

Her fingers came closer to his lips.

A little more.

Only a little more.

The last bite neared her fingertips, and the distance became so narrow that she could almost feel the warmth of his breath.

Then Cyrus suddenly turned toward her with a burst of excitement.

"Miss Daphne, look at this."

His whole small body shifted with the movement.

On his screen, a racing game flashed with a first-place finish.

Daphne’s hand stopped in empty air.

She smiled.

She praised him.

"You are really good at this."

Inside, she nearly collapsed from frustration.

So close. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

She had missed by almost nothing.

The edge of that near-contact stayed in her fingers like an itch. If she had touched him, even briefly, the memory might have lasted all night. Her hand would have had proof. Her skin would have carried something private.

Instead, all she had was a biscuit stick and regret.

Cyrus accepted her praise with innocent pleasure and returned to the game.

A moment later, he took another biscuit stick for himself.

Then he seemed to remember something. He pulled out a second one, imitated the way Daphne had fed him, and held it up toward her.

"Here, Miss Daphne. You can have one too."

Daphne stared at his hand.

The biscuit was there, yes.

So were his fingers.

Small, pale, and close.

She leaned in and bit the biscuit much faster than Cyrus expected.

Cyrus almost failed to pull back in time.

His smile did not change, but his heart made a very calm note in the ledger.

This woman was not eating the chocolate.

This woman was hunting his hand.

To make the retreat look natural, he immediately focused on the console again, leaning into the game as if he had not noticed a thing.

Daphne, unfortunately, noticed his attention returning to the screen.

The longer he played, the more annoyed she became.

She had taken the consoles out to share something with him. Somehow, she had created a rival. Cory barely looked at her now. His eyes stayed on the game. His little hands stayed wrapped around the device. Even when she shifted closer, his attention did not move the way she wanted.

The console had stolen him.

Daphne regretted every decision that had led to this.

She should have brought out a picture book. Or a puzzle. Or something that required him to lean against her for help. Anything would have been better than giving him a device that swallowed his attention whole.

After a few minutes, she set her own console down.

"Do you want to play with me instead?" she asked.

Cyrus paused.

"What do you want to play?"

"Something against each other," Daphne said, her smile returning. "A match. You and me. Let’s see who is better."

The way she said it carried a little too much weight.

Cyrus, performing the role of an innocent child, ignored every trace of it.

"That sounds fun. I want to play."

Daphne brightened.

She leaned in, selected a two-player mode, and began explaining the controls while sitting close enough that her shoulder nearly brushed his.

Cyrus listened with perfect obedience.

Inside, he reviewed the situation.

This woman was probably one bad decision away from getting dragged into legal trouble. The timing was hard to predict, but the direction was obvious.

That meant the responsibility fell to him.

First, he would tease carefully. Not enough to truly endanger himself. Only enough to make her anxious, eager, impatient.

Then, if she actually tried something she should not, he would choose the right moment and scare the problem out of her all at once.

A direct shock worked better than lectures. He had learned that much from the world.

After a shock like that, surely she would stop thinking this hobby was worth pursuing.