"You have five seconds to tell me what the heck you are doing in my apartment, or we're going to find out if a pen can literally be mightier than a sword."

The scream they had just shared was still ringing in Bonita's ears as she looked at the bewildered man on the floor before her. The longer she stared at him, the more she realized who he looked like. Heck, he was even wearing the same clothing.

'You have to be dreaming,' she thought. 'There's no way this is Bang Chan.'

"I'm calling the police," she said, finally breaking the silence.

"The police?"

Bonita tuned out the man as she moved out of the laundry room. She had left her cell phone on her desk and of course — as luck would have it — the moment she started to walk towards the desk, her whole apartment was plunged into pitch black darkness as the power went out.

'This has to be a dream that has become a nightmare,' she thought, certain the Bang Chan looking stranger she had just encountered was going to sneak up behind her and stab her.

Stretching out her free hand, Bonita tried to navigate her way across the space with her sense of touch. She could hear the man let out an 'oh' of shock behind her at the darkness of her apartment followed immediately by a thud as he ran into something. When she reached her desk, she grabbed the flashlight in her sweaty palm. She flicked it on and immediately swiveled around to find out where the stranger was. In doing so, she accidentally shined the light right in his eyes, causing him to immediately squint and turn away.

"What the heck are you doing in my apartment?" she asked again, momentarily putting the pen down to grab her phone. Her eyes flicked from him to the phone screen before letting out a sigh.

'Service unavailable...of course,' she thought.

"I...I don't know. Is that what this place is? Your apartment?"

Bonita watched as he paused to look around him in confusion before he added, "All I know is one minute I'm in my bunker and the next I'm waking up here..."

"What is your name?"

"Bang Chan," he said.

Before she could question him more, a loud crack of thunder sounded out. She watched him let out a yelp of surprise before crouching down behind her couch. He curled up into a ball much like he had been in the laundry room, cupping his hands over his ears. To Bonita, he had been reduced to a little boy within seconds.

'So, he hadn't been hiding in the laundry room to jump me. He was hiding because he was scared,' she thought.

Even though she knew she shouldn't let her guard down, Bonita couldn't help but to feel badly for him. Bonita walked over to him, crouching down in front of him.

"Has the gunfire stopped?" asked Bang Chan as she locked eyes with him.

"It's not gunfire," she said, putting the flashlight and phone down. She reached out both of her hands to withdraw his from his ears. In doing so, it cemented the fact that this man was indeed real. His hands were just as clammy as hers had been when looking for a flashlight. "It's just a storm."

"A storm?"

She nodded, grabbing her flashlight and flicking the beam towards the window. The night outside was a midnight blue, but the rain still slapped against the window as a streak of lightning lit up the sky.

"What is this place?" he asked in awe.

"As I said, it's my apartment," she said. "Are you...are you really Bang Chan?"

'But he can't be. He's fictional. He's not real,' thought Bonita.

"Yes?" he said, quirking a brow. "Why?"

Moving to get up, she went over to where her DVD case for 'Bubble' was, picking it up and bringing it back to him. She handed it to him as he stood up, watching as his eyes widened.

"That's me.."

He immediately flipped the box over to look at the back, scanning the back of the box to read a brief description of the series — and consequently — his life. Bonita figured it had to be unnerving to see your life summed up so succinctly.

'That is, if he really is who he is telling me he is,' she thought, shaking her head. She had to focus.

"Empty your pockets."

"Huh?"

Confused by the sudden turn in the conversation and still trying to wrap his head around what he had just discovered, he just looked at Bonita for a moment without moving. Sighing, she reached out to take the disc case from him and set it aside.

"Empty your pockets," she repeated. "I'll let you sleep out the storm on my couch, but I want to make sure you're not going to kill me in my sleep or something first."

He nodded, moving to tuck his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He turned them inside out, dropping nothing but a few pieces of lint onto the ground.

"Take the boots off too," she said. "You could be hiding something in them."

He immediately complied as he bent down to undo the laces. He slipped his feet out of them after, turning both boots upside down and causing nothing to fall out.

"Alright. Stay right here a moment," said Bonita as she kept a hold of the flashlight and walked into her bedroom. Her mind kept screaming at her about 'stranger danger', but she was tuning it out. Even though she had a hard time believing his claims, she also felt he wasn't a threat to her. Besides, she knew it would be suicide to kick him out into the storm, especially when the thunderclaps seemed to scare the life out of him.

Opening her bedroom closet, she took out an extra comforter and spare pillow, moving back into the living room where he was still standing obediently in the same place she had left him. As she began to set the couch up as a bed, another loud crash of thunder sounded out. Even though he had been told it wasn't gunfire, he still clapped his hands over his ears. Walking away from the couch, Bonita went back into her room to grab a set of headphones before coming back over to him.

"You can sleep on the couch," she said as he removed his hands from his ears as she returned. "You can also wear these."

"What are these?" he asked as he took them from her.

"Soundproof, Bluetooth headphones," she remarked. "They'll help you sleep without being jumped by the storm."

He took the headphones from her with a thin smile on his lips.

"Thank you..."

"Bonita," she supplied as he nodded his head.

She kept the flashlight trained on him as he rounded the couch and took a seat on it. He grabbed the comforter and tucked it up under his chin before putting the headphones on his ears. Bonita forced herself to turn her back on him after, going into the kitchen to grab the knife block and bringing it with her into her bedroom.

'Just in case,' she thought as she put the knife block on the dresser inside her room before shutting and locking her bedroom door.

Putting the cell phone on the dresser beside her bed beside the now shut off flashlight, she moved to get into the bed herself. She thought that sleep would not come easily to her that night, but surprisingly passed out a few minutes later.

---

'Obviously I wasn't murdered in the night' was the first thought to run through Bonita's head as she woke up the next morning, sunlight streaming in through the small crack in her curtain and onto her face. Overnight the storm must have passed.

'Maybe the hallucination I had last night did too,' she mused as she sat up on the bed with a groan.

Cramming her feet into slippers, she moved grab her phone before going to unlock her bedroom door. Opening it a crack, she had a view into the living room where Bang Chan was still passed out on the couch. He was even snoring, the headphones on his head slightly askew from when he had adjusted in the night.

"He's real..." she whispered out loud.

In the daylight coming in through the window, she could observe his facial features much better than the night before. He was truly the spitting image of the Bang Chan from the show. It was like life decided to copy paste him from the show directly into her apartment. Cautiously stepping out of her bedroom, she walked into the living room to crouch down beside the couch.

"How are you real?" she said in a hushed voice.

Even though the headphones were still over his ears, it was as if he heard her. His eyes opened then, the two of them locking eyes as their faces remained only a few feet apart.

"M-Morning," she said, blushing at the fact that she was stammering as she quickly rose to her feet and walked into the kitchen.

Sitting up on the couch, Bang Chan took the headphones off his head as he watched after her for a moment before getting up himself. Instead of following her into the kitchen, he walked over to the window by her desk. He looked out at the sun-streaked world before him, marveling at the fact that it was still there.

"Are you hungry?" asked Bonita as she put her phone down on the table in the kitchen. "I'll feed you before you have to be on your way."

Bang Chan turned from the window, looking towards Bonita who had her back towards him as she opened the fridge to rummage for ingredients.

"Be on my way? But I have nowhere to go," he said.

"So you're homeless?"

"Technically?" he said with a question before sighing. He walked to pick up the DVD case again, looking at it. He understood why she would have a hard time believing him. He had a hard time believing his new reality himself.

Bonita grabbed the egg carton out of the fridge before turning to see him studying the DVD case with a forlorn look.

"You understand why I don't believe you, right?" she asked as he looked up at her, catching her eyes with his again.

"I do," he said, "but I swear I'm telling you the truth. I swear on my life."

"Well prove it then."

"How?"

Bonita chewed her lower lip as she thought of just how he could prove it to her.

"Tell me about yourself," she said finally as she moved to start cooking them some fried eggs.

"Well, as I told you last night, my name is Bang Chan. I am twenty-six-years-old and have been living in an underground bunker built by my parents since I was fifteen. I have consequently been isolated from any other human interactions during that time. I spend my time alone trying to finish my school through study kits left for me along with other mental and physical exercises to stay sane. I had just started to run into a water shortage problem and was debating leaving my shelter when I ended up here."

"Wait...you were debating leaving your safety bubble?"

Bang Chan nodded, a small smirk flitting across his lips.

"Guess I kind of did in a way. Just in a more extreme way than I would have thought possible."

'Extreme is an understatement,' thought Bonita.

She was still at war with herself internally about whether to believe him or not. Plating the eggs, she put them on the table for the both of them.

"Come eat and then we'll figure out what to do after."

"We will?"

This time it was her turn for a smirk to flick across her lips at the hopeful infliction he placed on 'we'.

"Yes, we," she said. "Now come eat."

Bonita watched as Bang Chan walked towards the table in his socks, his pockets still turned inside out from last night. Bonita chuckled a bit as she moved to sit down across from him as they started to eat, wondering what her life had become.