It didn't surprise Karen that the Lunar Room was on as she passed by it to get to her office. It had been in use every single time she'd passed it for about two days now. It was almost annoying. Did the man not sleep? She shook her head, taking a sip from her seventh cup of coffee that day and wondering how it was already only an hour until midnight. She sat down at her desk, staring tiredly at the pile of papers she still needed to go through, let alone the never-ending list of emails. She sighed. Maybe she should take her own advice and get some sleep.

She began closing down the various tabs she had open, saving any progress she had made and logging out of the work servers. She was about to shut down the computer but found herself instead opening up the security feed for the labs. Might as well see what the werewolf is up to, make sure he hasn't broken anything.

That was odd... it took Karen a moment to find Rin on the monitor. He was just lying on the floor. Wait, was he asleep? That bastard! So that's how he was doing it. He was taking naps in there the whole time. That idiot, didn't he know how much power the room consumed? That was like sleeping with an entire stadium of lights on! The amount of energy he was wasting. Unbelievable.

She got up, storming down the hallway to fling open the door of the Lunar Room. She had to squint at the brightness of it all. How could Rin even sleep in a place like this? With a few precise movements, she powered down the console, plunging the room into a moment of darkness before the much dimmer secondary lighting came on. Rin, meanwhile, was still asleep at the foot of the treadmill. Karen gave him a disdainful look. He had a perfectly comfortable bed in the room she was kindly loaning him, but he chose to sleep on the floor with all the lights on? Talk about ungrateful.

She was startled as Rin groaned from the floor. It seemed he was waking up. About time, she thought. Slowly, he pushed himself up, rolling onto his back and propping himself up on his elbows. He frowned in confusion as he saw Karen standing over him, her arms folded.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Cleaning up after you, apparently," she replied, scornfully.

Rin was confused. Why was he on the floor? When had the woman got here? And why did he ache all over?

After a moment, Karen began to realise something was wrong. Rin hadn't gotten up yet and he looked a little disorientated.

"Hey, are you okay?" She bent down next to him.

"I..." Rin brought a hand to his head. Gods, he felt strange. It was like he was exhausted and energized at the same time. His whole body was buzzing with energy, but it was also too stiff to move properly. He was vaguely aware of the woman standing next to him, her earlier annoyance had now turned to concern. He hated when she did that.

"Did you hit your head or something?"

Rin ignored the question and focussed on getting to his feet. He was fed up with being subject of the woman's sympathy. It was demeaning. He swayed slightly, but manged to stay standing, bracing himself on the wall. Karen watched him carefully, worried he might just fall over.

"What... happened?" he muttered, and Karen wasn't sure if he was asking her or himself.

"I thought you were taking a nap in here," she answered him anyway.

His head snapped up to look at her, "I don't 'nap'," he denied, insulted. Well, at least his ego wasn't damaged, she noted.

Since it was clear Rin didn't remember what happened, Karen figured the best thing to do would be review the security footage for the day. Leaving Rin where he was, she turned and walked back to her office. The computer as she'd left it, with the camera feed open. She reversed the recording to the start of the day, when Rin first entered the room that morning. There were hours of everything looking normal, then sometime after noon, he just collapsed. As she slowed it down to normal speed, she noticed the gradual deterioration of his movements. It seemed that for some unknown reason, it had become harder and harder for him to move, until eventually he just collapsed. What could have caused this?

An idea came to her to check the progress log to see if that gave her any information. At first glance, everything looked normal. But then she began to look closer, and compared it to the earliest record she had, and she started to see the problem. God damn him! Why hadn't he told her about this? Surely, he must have realised something was wrong...

The log showed that he'd been increasing the light intensity over the past few days well above the intended maximum. The reason being that after a while, the reaction his body was having to the light had decreased. No, not decreased, changed. His cells were being overloaded with lunar radiation, with a higher frequency and intensity than it was capable of handling. Damn it, this is why she told him to keep with the slow pace! No wonder he was making himself sick.

She looked up from her screen to see Rin leaning in the doorway. "What?" he asked in response to the glare she gave him.

"You know what! You changed the max setting without telling me." He winced at being found out.

"So?"

"So! So, your body isn't used to lunar rays this potent! Your cells aren't being given the time to process the energy fast enough!" Rin started to say something, but Karen cut him off. "We already know you aren't healing at the speed you're used to. You're not giving yourself time to rest, and so all you're doing is overloading yourself! If you keep this up, you'll destroy your body faster than it can learn how to transform again! Is that what you want?"

"Of course not! But what was I supposed to do? Your way wasn't working!" Rin returned her glare just as furiously.

"What do you mean?"

"I did what you said, at first. But the effects were getting weaker as time went on, not stronger. I turned it up higher so that it would work again."

Karen thought on this a moment. She'd told him to slowly increase the intensity day by day, which should have given his body time to adjust to the higher than usual intensity. But maybe that had left too much time for it to adjust.

"Maybe... you started developing a tolerance," she said, half to herself.

"What?"

"Maybe, as a way to adapt to the higher intensity, your body stopped responding to lower stimuli." Rin stared at her blankly. She clarified, "Like if you drink alcohol all the time, it takes more to get you drunk."

It took a moment for that to sink in. "Why didn't you warn me that would happen?" he yelled.

"I didn't know it could happen!" Karen tried to defend herself.

"Why the hell not? What were all those damn tests for if it wasn't for figuring something like this out?"

"Those were for trying to find out how you work in a normal environment! To have seen this coming I would've had to study the effects the technology had on you during a test run."

"Then why didn't you do that?"

Karen slammed her hands on the desk, "I tried! You blew up my first attempt, then you insisted I skip all the other preliminaries!"

"Only the unimportant ones!" Rin countered.

"Which you decided was all of them!"

They both stood, fuming at one another, for a couple moments, neither wanting to take the blame for this.

"What now, then?" Rin muttered finally, still leaning on the doorframe.

Karen sighed, "Well, obviously, you'll have to stop using the Lunar Room for the time being." Rin began to protest, but Karen held up a hand to stop him. "Even if you hadn't already overloaded your body, it'll take some time for your tolerance to go back down anyway. Either way, you shouldn't be going in there for a little while."

"How long?" he growled.

"... A month, maybe more."

"A MONTH?"

"Calm down, would you?"

"What am I supposed to do for an entire month?"

"I don't know. But there's nothing you can do to change that." She ran all the possibilities through her head, trying to apply all the things she'd learned about werewolf physiology in the short time they'd known each other. "In the state you're in right now, I doubt even a regular full moon would have any effect on you. You're just going to have to wait."

Rin banged his fist against the wall. "You were supposed to help fix me. Now I'm even more broken than when I started!"

"I'm doing the best I can! None of this would have happened if you'd just told me about the issue in the first place." Couldn't he see she was as frustrated as he was? No one hated not being able to solve a problem more than she did. "I'll see what I can do to improve my designs in the meantime, but that's as much as I can do for now."

"Don't bother." He turned, seeming to have recovered enough strength by now to walk, "I'll figure this out on my own. Apparently, it's what I should have done from the start."

"Rin!" she called after him as he disappeared down the hall, but he didn't respond.

-W-

Rin was even less enjoyable to be around than usual for the next few days. He recovered fairly quickly from his overexposure to lunar rays, but if anything, that made him more irritable. The way he saw it, he was perfectly fine to get back to the Lunar Room, but instead he was forced to roam around the house doing nothing. It was infuriating. Not only did he still hate this place, and everyone in it, now he didn't even have a real reason to justify putting up with it all. A month. He didn't think he could take another day of this, let alone a month.

He was still angry at the woman. True to her word, she had been looking into reassembling parts of the Lunar Room, so that in future he didn't have as severe a problem, but that hardly mattered now. This was all her fault. Not just the state of his body, but his mind as well. Without anything to distract him, he found himself thinking more and more about her. He didn't understand her. Everything he knew about humans came from his time at the company, but she didn't really fit in with what he'd learned there. Humans were weak, they were stupid, and they always had ulterior motives. That is what he'd come to understand. But the woman wasn't like that. She helped him out of her own free will, not asking for anything in return. She was at least halfway intelligent, as she proved by building such impressive machinery. And while she may be physically weak, she had the spirit of a fighter. She appeared more wolf than human, sometimes.

Wait, what? Was he comparing her to a werewolf now? See, this is exactly the kind of thing he was talking about. Not only had the woman messed with his body, but his mind was all over the place at the moment Thoughts like that were just proof that something was terribly wrong with him. And of course, he blamed her for it. He just needed to get away, regroup. Suddenly, an idea dawned on him. Well, why couldn't he get away? Just for a little while? It wasn't like he had a reason to be here anymore, at least for the time being. Yes, that was a perfect idea! He could leave for a little while, stop surrounding himself with all this human nonsense, and surely his sanity would come back. Then, by the time he came back, he'd be able to use the Lunar Room again.

Ideally, he'd be able to just disappear into the forest for a month or so, but in his current condition, it wouldn't be that simple. But it wasn't impossible. Ordinary humans lived in the wilderness for short spans of time and called it a holiday, there was no way he couldn't do the same. Now, the only issue was who to ask. He would need some supplies, at first, at least until he figured out how to hunt with without shifting. He could ask the woman, but he had said he was done asking her for help. Besides, she didn't strike him as the outdoorsy type. Perhaps her father would know... he seemed about as smart as his daughter.

Rin had decided. He would ask him about it once the human returned from work. Now all he had to do was wait.

-W-

"What are you doing, dad?"

Karen stood behind her father, watching as he rummaged through a bunch of old boxes they kept in a closet. He seemed to be looking for something, but what she had no idea. She didn't even know what they kept in there. Looking at the small pile of things at Mr Frost's feet, it would seem a bunch of camping equipment. She remembered Frost industries had done some outdoor company retreats in the past, but she couldn't remember the last time her dad had been on one of those. Something wasn't right.

The old man was taken by surprise as he turned his head and saw his daughter standing in front of the door, "Rin wanted camping supplies," he explained, returning to rummage through boxes.

Karen frowned in confusion. "Why?"

"He wants to go stay somewhere in the forest."

Rin was leaving? Had he just completely given up on the Lunar Room? "Why didn't he ask me?" she asked aloud, that being what she was most curious about. He'd never had a problem bugging her about anything in the past. Of all things, this is when he thought he needed someone else's expertise? And to ask her dad, of all people? Although there wasn't a whole lot of people he could ask, really.

"I don't know. Maybe he didn't want you to know?"

That just made things even weirder. Why would he be trying to keep this a secret? Was he planning to just sneak away without her finding out? That coward! The least he could do was tell her she could stop working on his damn Lunar Room if he was just going to fuck off to the forest. She was angry, now. How dare that asshole try and run away!

Ignoring her father's protests, she turned and stalked down the hall towards where Rin was probably still lounging around. He, at the very least, owed her an explanation.

"RIN!"

Rin closed his eyes in anger as he heard the shriek of the very person he was still trying to avoid. He could guess what it would be about, too. The damn old man had gone and told her he was leaving.

"Why didn't you tell me you're leaving?" asked Karen as she opened the door to the living room. She had never been so angry in her whole life. Why did he even want to leave? He had everything he wanted here! Every single one of his demands were satisfied!

"I don't have to tell you everything," he replied, not looking up at her from where he was doing some sit-ups (just because he couldn't use the Lunar Room didn't mean he could afford to get lazy).

"No, but it would be nice to know that I'm apparently wasting my time with you damn Lunar Room! IT WOULD BE NICE TO KNOW YOU'VE GIVEN UP." Karen didn't quite know why she was as angry as she was. Surely, she'd be happy to get rid of the werewolf? He'd done nothing but complicate her life since he'd found his way into it.

That made him stop. What was she even talking about? "I haven't given up." He stood up so that he could properly face her. "I'm just leaving until I can use the Lunar Room again. I didn't realise I needed your permission to leave the premises."

"You... You're only leaving temporarily?" Rin nodded as Karen felt her anger melt away, replaced by slight embarrassment at having gotten so worked up a few moments ago. "For how long?"

He shrugged. "A month, maybe longer. Depends on how I feel once I'm out there." He grinned, not missing an opportunity to mess with her some more, "Why, will you miss me?"

"As if! I'll be glad to get rid of you," Karen spluttered, still flustered from before. "When are you going?"

"Tomorrow," Rin answered.

That soon, huh? "I'll help my dad find everything for you, it'll be faster." She began to walk away, but was reminded of why this whole misunderstanding had happened anyway, "Why did you ask my dad and not me, anyway?"

Rin smirked, "Am I not allowed to talk to people other than you? That's a little possessive, isn't it?"

Karen's face flushed, "That's not what I—! Oh, shut up!"

And just like that, she stormed out the room. Rin chuckled, glad that he would have the final victory for a while. As he thought that, he felt a weird emotion come over him. He was almost... sad to be leaving. He shook his head. That was exactly why he needed to go. The sooner the better.

-W-

The next day, Karen stood in the backyard, waiting for Rin. She and her dad had managed to find some basic supplies for outdoor living, which was Rin insisted he needed. He'd refused the tent, saying that shelter was the easiest thing to take care of. He had excepted a sleeping bag, a few changes of clothes, some food, and a box of matches. She'd given it all to him this morning in an old backpack they'd found, and had planned to just leave it at that, but she'd had this little niggling doubt at the back of her mind that insisted she do one last thing.

"Come to say goodbye?"

Karen turned around and saw Rin standing beside her. He had his usual shorts on as well as a plain grey shirt, the backpack slung over one shoulder. She hadn't heard him approach, and his sudden appearance had startled her.

"I forgot to give you something earlier," she said, regaining her composure. She held out her hand, holding said thing for him to take.

Rin arched an eyebrow and walked towards her, eying the device in her hand; it was a pink flip phone, with a little rainbow phone charm dangling from it. "What do you expect me to do with that?"

"It's in case of emergency," Karen explained. Rin looked down at it dubiously, "Look, it's the only one I could find that is durable enough and has actual battery life. Look, I'll show you how to use it..."

Rin didn't really pay any attention to the demonstration of how to turn it on and dial the house number. He'd used plenty of phones like this before, whenever The Company sent him to do a particularly long 'errand'. He usually disposed of them afterwards, so he couldn't be traced. He was still unsure why the woman wanted him to take it though.

"I was just thinking, in case you run out of food or get lost, you can call, and we can come get you."

"That won't happen," he said, dryly.

"Hopefully, but just in case." She held out the phone again, and Rin gingerly picked it up. "And you better not lose it! That was one of my first ever phones, so it has sentimental value. I expect you to return it, just as it is now," she said sternly.

"If it's that important to you, why are you giving it to me?" He was still debating if it would be more or less effort to refuse the phone and just leave.

"Just take it, okay?" She met his eyes, giving him a sort of pleading look. He didn't like the way it made his chest tighten.

"Fine, whatever," he muttered, dropping it into his bag and looking away. Karen smiled. They stood like that for a moment, before Rin cleared his throat and said, "Guess I'll be going now."

"Right." Karen tried to think what she should say as a goodbye. "I'll, uh, see you when you get back."

Rin grunted his response, shouldering his bag once more and heading towards the trees. Karen turned and went back inside the house. She felt a little better now. At least Rin had some way of contacting her if he got into trouble, although there was no guarantee he would even if he did.

She didn't know why she spent so much time worrying about someone who didn't give a damn about her. It wasn't like they were friends. The last time she'd tried to treat him like one he'd spent the next week completely shutting her out. He wasn't exactly easy to talk to, anyway. You know what? Maybe it was a good thing he'd decided to go away for a while. It would give her a chance to refocus her life on the things that were actually important to her, like her work, her friends, and boyfriend. Ever since Rin had shown up, it had been a bit of a hassle to do anything that hadn't involved the werewolf. He had kind of taken up a lot of her time.

She shook her head as if to clear it. Okay, no more thinking about Rin, starting now. She checked her phone wondering if it was worth giving Evan a call. He normally had time to hang out, and it would be a nice distraction. She dialled his number and was surprised when the line was busy already. That was weird, he didn't call people that often. She shrugged, hanging up. He'd called back later, she was sure. In the meantime, she could just head up to her room and do some work.

Rin closed his eyes, and took a deep breath, inhaling the clear air of the forest. As he was slowly getting further and further from the city, the atmosphere was getting much cleaner, filled with thousands of familiar scents. It was exhilarating, bringing out his more wolfish instincts, clearing his head and allowing him to think without the noisy distractions of the human world around him. Unfortunately for him, the only thoughts he seemed to be having were about the woman. In anger, he kicked a stray pebble across the path; the whole reason he was doing this was so he could get her out of his head.

Rin stopped, staring back through the trees at the way he had come, in the direction of the city. Where she was. Her and that weakling mate of hers.

Not that he cared though; he had better things to focus on.

He was glad to be away from her, from all of it. Breaking into a sprint, he stopped thinking altogether, letting his feet take him further and further away.

-W-

"I would love to go." Evan smiled into his phone, looking out the window of his apartment at the city streets below. "I know, I'm sorry it took me so long to call you back, I just wasn't sure."

He paused for a moment, letting the other party speak. "I'm glad I ran into you too. I know things didn't end that great between us last time we saw each other, but I'm glad we can give this a shot."

He laughed at something the other person said, leaning against the window and looking out of it wistfully.

"Yeah, I'll call you tomorrow." With that, he hung up. He looked down at his phone and saw that he had a missed call from Karen. She probably called while he was on the phone.

He was about to call her back, but he changed his mind. Now that things with Karen seemed to have calmed down, he didn't need to be so careful about not upsetting her. He sighed, content with his life for the first time in a while. Things were finally looking up.

Now all he had to do was not screw this up.