Chapter 2 ：Would you like to come?
Clara'POV
An utterly mundane question, but it hit me like a teacher catching me daydreaming in class. My whole body jolted. My head snapped up, eyes wide as saucers.
That got a reaction out of him. Not a real laugh — just the faintest upward curve at the corner of his mouth, barely visible, but in that instant the cold screen across his face seemed to crack open a sliver. He gestured for me to sit, then lowered himself onto the far end of the sofa.
Where to sit. He'd taken the left end. I should sit on the right, as far away as possible — except the right was where I'd thrown the chip bag. I hesitated for two seconds and chose center-right, spine ramrod straight, both hands flat on my knees, as if I were in a job interview.
When he sat down, the temperature in the room seemed to drop another degree. Not the air conditioning — something radiating from him, a coolness subtly lower than any normal person's. Every time we shared a room, I noticed it: a vague, hard-to-articulate awareness that this man ran cold in every possible sense, from his presence to his actual body temperature.
Objectively speaking, Julian Mason was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. Not pop-star handsome — the kind that walks out of an Old Masters painting. Deep-set features, skin so pale it bordered on unreal, eyes a cold grey that seemed to look through you at something far more ancient. But layer that face with "youngest tenured professor at St. Jude's," layer on the authority that could silence an entire room with a single glance, layer on the absurdity of our contract — and what I felt wasn't attraction. It was fear. The student-dreading-the-strict-teacher kind. The mouse-spotting-the-cat kind.
He turned his head to look at me. His voice dropped a register, becoming something more… private.
"Clara."
"Here!"
The word rang out crisp and sharp in the empty living room.
I went rigid. Here. I'd said "here." Like roll call in elementary school. In front of my husband. In our living room. I could feel my face turning red in real time, the heat climbing from my neck all the way to the tips of my ears.
He blinked — a split second of genuine surprise — then laughed. More openly than before: low, quiet, edged with helpless amusement, as if to say, What on earth are you so afraid of?
"Shall I call your name again?" He paused two beats before asking.
I shook my head frantically, wanting nothing more than to disappear into a crack in the floor. To cover the embarrassment, I launched on reflex into a full status report: "I did go to school today. Showed up for morning attendance, confirmed my thesis progress with my advisor, then came back at noon." I even tacked on an explanation: "All my roommates are away on internships, so I was the only one left in the dorm. It felt kind of… so I came back."
What I didn't say was that compared to rattling around an empty dormitory alone, this enormous, slightly unnerving house at least offered the occasional sound of him coming home. The thought surfaced and I strangled it immediately.
Throughout all of this, I hadn't addressed him by anything. Julian — too intimate. Professor Mason — too distant. Sir — too formal. So I defaulted to nothing at all.
"Mm." His acknowledgment carried no additional information. Message received.
His phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen — a flicker of something crossed his brow. I couldn't see who it was. He stood and walked toward the balcony without a word: no "carry on," no "let me take this." He simply rose and went.
I sat on the sofa. I didn't move.
I knew I could move. Could go back to my room, resume the variety show, make myself a fresh cup of cocoa. He hadn't told me to wait. But he hadn't told me I could go, either. To any normal adult, that logic would sound absurd — but between me and Julian Mason, it operated with clockwork precision. Like answering a question in class: the teacher hasn't said "sit down" yet, so even if you do sit, you're only half-seated.
Seven or eight minutes passed. I held the same position, not absorbing a single word from the screen. From the balcony, a few low syllables drifted through the gap in the glass doors now and then — too muffled to make out.
My eyes wandered idly to the coffee table. His tablet sat there, screen unlocked, open to an academic journal page. A notification badge glowed in the upper-right corner. I wasn't looking on purpose, but my peripheral vision caught a name and half a sentence: Sebastian: Are you tonight…
I looked away at once. Not mine to see. But the name had already lodged itself in my memory.
He ended the call and turned back from the balcony — then stopped.
He saw me still sitting exactly where he'd left me, hands on knees, back straight, the variety show murmuring away beside me while my gaze was clearly fixed on nothing. He stood in the balcony doorway. The hand holding his phone seemed to tighten slightly, and his eyes lingered on me longer than usual.
"I have a gathering tonight," he said. Something barely detectable threaded through his tone.
He paused.
"Would you like to come?"
I looked up and met his eyes, then darted away just as quickly. What kind of gathering? With whom? Why invite me? Was it politeness or did he actually want me there? Would declining be rude? If I said yes, what would I even wear? That world of his — would it be full of his friends I'd never met, people who'd been alive for centuries?
Before I could answer, he'd already turned toward the spiral staircase.
"We leave at seven. Go change."
