Chapter 1374: Story 1374: Steam and Sorrow
The last bathhouse in the city still worked. Sohow.
Boilers rumbled below the cracked tile floors. Steam hissed from broken vents. Water ran hot through rusted pipes.
We found it by accident. Ava and I were chasing echoes—what sounded like a child’s cry down a fog-choked alley. But instead, we stumbled through shattered glass doors into this strange, ghostly warmth.
No infected. No bodies. Just steam.
And sorrow.
The place was surreal.
Silence except for the pipes breathing like lungs.
We sat in the smallest bath, fully clothed, boots in the water, steam curling around us like fingers from the grave. We hadn’t spoken since we lost Marco and Elene at the pharmacy two nights ago. Their screams had followed us through every broken street.
Ava stared at her reflection in the water. I watched the way it rippled, disturbed only by our presence.
She finally said, “This feels like cheating.”
“What?”
“Feeling clean again. Feeling warm.”
She looked at . “It’s like we forgot what world we’re in.”
We peeled off our gear. Our armor of sweat, dirt, and dried blood.
It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t seductive. It was human.
Our skin looked paler in the heat. Our scars more vivid. Her ribs were sharper than last week. My wrists trembled as I washed. I didn’t hide it.
Ava slid into the bath completely, her head tilted back, mouth slightly open, like she was waiting to drown but couldn’t quite let go.
I didn’t touch her. I just watched.
So things were too sacred to interrupt.
Later, she told about her brother. How he died in a boiler room like this. How she held his hand after the fever took him. How he ca back.
And how she stopped him.
I asked, “Was it quick?”
She shook her head. “It was kind.”
The steam got thicker. We couldn’t see past each other. It felt like we were inside soone’s dream—or nightmare.
That’s when we heard it.
Not a groan.
Not a scream.
But breathing.
From the other side of the fog.
We froze.
Sothing was in the bathhouse.
Sothing alive.
Ava reached for the small pistol on the tile behind her. My hand grabbed the rusted towel rod. We moved like wraiths through the fog, every drop of water echoing like a gunshot.
We never saw who—or what—it was.
Just a bloody handprint on the locker room mirror.
And a single word, written in steam: “Forgive.”
We left quickly. Quietly. But sothing followed us out in our minds.
We didn’t speak again that night.
Didn’t sleep either.
Just curled up on the floor of a forgotten subway station, the taste of tal and jasmine still in the air.
I think she cried while I pretended not to hear.
I think I cried when she fell asleep.
The bathhouse had taken sothing from us.
Or maybe… returned it.
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