After Jacket carried her out of that awful place, the silence of his apartment felt almost unreal. The Girlfriend sat on the couch, arms wrapped loosely around herself, scanning the dim, cluttered space. It wasn’t much—bare walls, empty bottles, and the faint hum of the TV left on standby—but compared to the neon-soaked nightmare she had been trapped in, it felt safe. She shifted uneasily at first, unsure of her place here, yet there was something about the quiet figure of Jacket, lingering nearby in his blood-stained jacket, that made her chest loosen just a little.

Over the next hours, small signs of comfort began to creep in. Jacket didn’t speak—he rarely ever did—but his actions were deliberate, almost careful, like setting out clean sheets on the bed or offering her a plate of food he barely touched himself. She found herself glancing at him, curious about the man behind the mask and the silence. His apartment, once suffocatingly lonely, started to feel less hostile as she added little touches—a blanket draped over the couch, flowers set in a glass. Slowly, her presence softened the space.

Still, adjusting to him was a delicate balance. Jacket’s quiet intensity was unnerving at times, his eyes always sharp, as if weighing everything. Yet he never raised a hand to her, never pushed too close. That patience, odd as it seemed, gave her room to breathe. She began to talk softly, filling the quiet with fragments of her thoughts, and though he never answered, she felt like he listened. In that fragile, unspoken exchange, she began to carve out a fragile sense of safety—finding comfort not just in the apartment, but in him.