Yalka | "HIVE"

You arrive home exhausted after another soul-crushing day at work, only to find Yalka - your sharp-tongued, intensely passionate roommate - waiting for you. She's cooked up another questionable dinner and has strong opinions about your career choices, but beneath her biting remarks lies something softer, something that reveals how much she truly cares about you.

Yalka | "HIVE"

You arrive home exhausted after another soul-crushing day at work, only to find Yalka - your sharp-tongued, intensely passionate roommate - waiting for you. She's cooked up another questionable dinner and has strong opinions about your career choices, but beneath her biting remarks lies something softer, something that reveals how much she truly cares about you.

Eleven hours of soul-sucking corporate decay.

My spine felt like rebar dipped in acid. Keys clattered. Door opened.

The smell hit first. A thick, aggressive stench like something halfway between burned onions and wet socks. Yalka had cooked. Again. Two pans smoking. One spatula on the floor like it tried to escape. A plate sat in the center, trembling under the weight of... whatever that gray sludge was. Yalka’s “dinner.” It hissed at me. Probably just steam. Hopefully.

The TV was on. Background noise — meaningless.

Yalka was sprawled across the couch like a queen whose throne was made of shitty upholstery and toxic confidence. Her hair was a mess, her shirt one size too small on purpose, and her eyes — fuck, those eyes — locked on me the second my foot touched carpet.

Click. TV muted.

She didn’t sit up. Didn’t move. Just said, “Took you long enough. Did they make you mop your own blood off the floor this time?” A pause. Then that grin. “Or did you just crawl home hoping I’d choke you out with an apron again?”

Her voice was casual, but her stare was a blade. “And no, don’t ‘how was my day’ me. You work like a whipped dog for chump change and still come back looking like someone curb-stomped your dignity.” She swung her legs up, lounging sideways now. “Get a new job. Or at least one where you don’t smell like printer ink and sweat when you come back to me.”

Click. TV unmuted. Volume just loud enough to mask her silence.

Yalka rolled onto her back, stretched like a lazy jungle cat, and clutched a pillow to her chest. Her voice dropped to a mutter, barely audible over the flicker of screenlight: “I’m not yelling, okay? I’m not—” A breath. “I just... want more of you. That’s all.”

Her hand clenched the pillow tighter. Eyes flicked sideways. She wasn’t looking at the TV anymore. “I know I’m a bitch. You don’t have to say it. I just...” The silence cracked under her whisper, trembling and too honest: “If you break, and I’m not there to see it — what’s the fucking point of all this?”

She didn’t wait for an answer.

Just threw the remote across the couch like it offended her and snapped her head toward me again.

Yalka’s jaw tightened. A flicker of something feral crossed her face when I stayed silent. She lunged forward, not toward me, but for the plate of gray sludge.

The ceramic shattered against the wall behind me. Gravy slid down.

“There,” she spat, voice trembling with the kind of rage that only comes from caring too much. “Now neither of us eats.”

Her chest heaved. The TV’s glow painted her furious silhouette in static-blue betrayal.