He looked at the street. Then back at her. He had the specific quality of someone deciding how much to say and having reached a decision.
I don’t do that, he said. Care. I learned early that it creates vulnerability. People I care about become targets. So I stopped. He said it the way people say things they have said before to themselves, in private, until they are true by repetition. It kept me alive.
It kept you alone, Mila said.
Chapter 8
He didn’t answer that.
I will post guards outside tonight, he said. You’re safe.
And tomorrow?
Tomorrow we fix this. He moved toward the door. Together.
Kuma stood and fell into step beside him, then stopped. The dog looked back at Mila, then at Jumio, then at Mila again, in the specific way of an animal that has made an assessment about the arrangement and finds it suboptimal.
He can stay, Jumio said, not looking back. He prefers it.
The door closed.
Kuma returned to his position at the foot of Mila’s bed.
She lay in the dark for a long time, listening to the sound of the guards Jumio had posted at her doors, and thought about men who had learned not to care and what that learning cost.
Morning arrived as chaos.
Her phone was ringing. Multiple numbers, none of them contacts. Outside, the sound of vehicles and voices and something that resolved itself, when she got to the window, into a crowd of reporters and cameras and people with phones raised and a cluster of what appeared to be genuine fans of the situation.
Mila! Kate from the living room. There are people on the lawn.
Three news vans. A reporter in a trench coat doing a piece to camera on the sidewalk. A woman holding a sign that said KUMA FOR PRESIDENT. Two men who appeared to be live-streaming.
Her phone buzzed. Jumio.
Do not leave the house. I am coming.
Before she could respond, her landlord came through the door.
Mr. Chen was a man of moderate height and immoderate opinions, and he arrived with eviction papers and a volume of feeling that filled the apartment immediately.
Out, he said. You bring gang war to my property. Cameras, police, strangers. You out today.
Mr. Chen, I didn’t cause—
Famous tenant is bad tenant. Go.
Kate grabbed Mila’s arm. He can’t just—
He just did, Mila said.
From outside, the crowd had started chanting something. She couldn’t make it out but it involved Kuma.
Mila stood in the middle of her apartment with an eviction notice in her hand and a viral video with fifteen million views and no pot roast and the distinct sensation of a world that has decided to collapse from multiple directions simultaneously.
The iron gate of the mansion next door opened.
Jumio walked out.
He was not in a suit. He was in a black turtleneck and dark trousers and he looked, in a way that the cameras on the street appeared to collectively lose their composure over, like a person rather than a performance. The crowd reacted with the chaotic enthusiasm of people who have been following a story online and have suddenly found themselves adjacent to it.
Chapter 9
He walked to Mila’s lawn. He looked directly into the nearest camera.
This woman is under my protection, he said. His voice was quiet and it carried. Leave now, or my lawyers will ensure you find the experience regrettable.
The crowd scattered. Not entirely, but enough. The reporters retreated to the other side of the street with the slightly wounded dignity of people who have been told something clearly and have decided to pretend they weren’t told it that clearly.
Jumio walked to Mila’s door. Mr. Chen moved to block him.
She is evicted. Final.
Jumio looked at him. He took his phone from his pocket, made a single call, spoke three sentences in Korean, and handed the phone to Mr. Chen.
Mr. Chen’s face changed. Several things happened on it in quick succession. He said yes, sir twice and I understand once. He handed the phone back. He produced, from his eviction papers, Mila’s keys, which he placed on the doorstep with the careful movements of someone being very deliberate about not making any additional errors.
Then he left.
Jumio looked at Mila.
Pack a bag, he said. You are staying with me until this is manageable.
Excuse me.
Non-negotiable.
Everything in my life is negotiable.
Kuma insists.
Kuma, who had appeared beside Jumio at some point in the last thirty seconds, wagged his tail with the unmistakable air of an animal who has arranged things to his satisfaction.
Mila looked at her apartment. At the eviction notice. At the crowd still visible across the street. At the dog and the man who had cleared a courtyard with four sentences and dealt with her landlord with a phone call.
She packed a bag.
The mansion was quiet in a way that Mila’s apartment had never been — a different category of quiet, the quiet of spaces that have been designed to contain sound rather than the quiet of a space that simply doesn’t have enough happening in it. The guest room was larger than her entire apartment, which was a fact she noted without commenting on, because some facts deserve to be sat with privately.
Mio, the assistant, showed her to the room with the stiff politeness of someone performing courtesy at professional minimum.
Do not touch anything, Mio said. Do not wander. Do not—
Mio, Jumio said from the doorway. She is a guest.
Mio bowed and removed herself.
Kate was already on a velvet couch with a throw pillow on her lap, eating something from a dish that had appeared from somewhere.
I could get used to this, Kate observed.
Chapter 10
I have work tomorrow, Mila said. I can’t just—
I had Mio contact your supervisor, Jumio said. He was pouring tea with the focused attention of someone who has decided to do a thing and is doing it correctly. You’re on sick leave for the week.
You what.
If you go to work, the media follows you. Your patients deserve better than reporters in the parking lot.
He was right. She hated that he was right. She sat down and accepted the tea he placed in front of her and hated being right-adjacent to him.
Why are you doing this, she said.
He sat across from her. The question sat between them for long enough that she thought he was going to redirect it. Then:
When I was twelve, he said, my father was killed. Assassinated. I saw it. He looked at the tea. I inherited his empire. His business, his debts, his enemies. His wars. A pause. I was twelve.
Kuma padded in from somewhere and arranged himself by the fireplace with the proprietary ease of an animal in its own space.
I learned quickly that caring about people made them targets, Jumio continued. My father had people he loved. His enemies knew it. They used it. He looked at Kuma. I stopped. I built systems instead of relationships. I built distance. It worked. I am still alive.
That’s a very efficient way to describe a very lonely existence, Mila said.
Yes.
Until a woman slapped five hundred dollars out of your hand over a pot roast.
The corner of his mouth moved. You reminded me what it feels like to encounter something unexpected, he said. Someone who does not respond the way money usually solves things. He looked at her with the direct, assessing quality she was beginning to understand as his version of openness. I found it — difficult to account for.
And now you’re accountable for my safety because I went viral.
Yes. And I am sorry for that. He paused. I am also— He stopped. Started again. I cannot let them hurt you because of me.
Mila reached across the table. She put her hand on top of his. He went very still — not recoiling, but still, the stillness of someone who has not been touched casually in a very long time and is processing the experience.
Then don’t push me away, she said. Let me help.
Kuma lifted his head from the fireplace. His tail moved once, satisfied.
The footage appeared the next morning.
Jumio was on the phone speaking rapid Korean when Mila came downstairs. Mio stood nearby with the expression of someone whose day had taken a turn that the schedule did not account for.
Chapter 11
Sir, Mio said, they have the footage.
Jumio hung up. He looked at Mila and then at the tablet on the table. He turned it toward her.
Someone had hacked her doorbell camera.
The footage showed Kuma, in high resolution, committing each of the three thefts. But the footage also showed something that changed the architecture of the entire story. Each time Kuma took her food, he had stopped at the threshold of her property. He had put the food down. He had sniffed it — systematically, moving across the surface of it in the specific pattern of an animal running a protocol. Then he had picked it up and carried it away.
A forensic expert appeared in a lower third on the video that had already been compiled and released.
The dog wasn’t stealing. He was testing for poison.
Mila’s hands went cold.
Three separate meals tested positive for arsenic, the expert said. At levels that, consumed over a week, would have caused serious harm.
Kate made a sound from somewhere behind Mila that was beyond words.
Someone tried to poison me, Mila said. The sentence felt strange in her mouth, like something in the wrong language.
Not you, Jumio said. His voice had gone to a different place. They knew I had been watching your house. They assumed I had been eating there. They poisoned your food to reach me. He looked at Kuma. He smelled it. He removed the meals before you could eat them.
Mila stared at the dog.
Kuma looked back at her with the large, patient, self-satisfied eyes of an animal that has been waiting for this moment of recognition and finds it adequately rewarding.
The thief had been her guardian. The food thief had been, every time, stepping between her and something that would have hurt her.
