Day in the story: 10th September (Wednesday)
I t with Sophie in the campus’s main yard during our next break. This place was a social beehive nestled between the University buildings. Plentiful benches and tables rested under the watchful shade of tall trees, their leafy arms offering shelter from the ever-raging sun. A quiet hum of wind moved between the buildings, like a curious student trying to learn its way out.
At the center stood a fountain, its streams shooting skyward, as if trying to return the water it once took. Around it, students sat, ate, chatted. So lounged lazily in the grass. A group of boys threw a ball in the background. It was a retreat for the tornted souls of academia and a gathering ground for friends.
Sophie was at one of the tables with her usual crew: Elena and Hannah. All three studied Business and Managent, as if the world needed any more of either. But they were an interesting bunch. Elena was a rom-com addict; she knew every hit show by heart. Depending on who asked and how dreamy the situation, she either secretly or quite openly admitted to wanting a love story just like the ones she binge-watched.
Hannah, on the other hand was all business, fitting, given her field. A future CEO in casual clothes. Despite their differences, the three of them shared not just a table, but a loyal and longstanding friendship.
I dropped my bag beside the bench and sniffed the air.
“Do I sll chai, or am I just imagining things?” I asked, hopefully.
Sophie slid a paper cup across the table without saying anything. She didn’t have to, the look she gave said obviously, yes.
I took a careful sip. Cinnamon. Sweet, but not too much.
“Elena brought tea,” Sophie said. “She stopped by that little place near the library.”
“Masala chai, extra cinnamon,” Elena said, pushing her sunglasses up into her hair. “Figured you could use sothing warm.”
“This is honestly the nicest thing that’s happened to all day,” I said, letting the heat settle into my hands.
“That’s not a high bar,” Hannah said, not looking up from her tablet. It was probably class notes or so terrifyingly organized calendar.
“No, but it still counts,” I said.
Elena looked over at . “You doing okay?”
I hesitated. “Long night. Didn’t sleep much. I’ll be fine.”
Sophie handed a granola bar. “Here. You need sothing with the tea.”
“We were talking about planners before you got here,” she added.
“You were talking about planners,” Hannah corrected.
Sophie shrugged. “I like knowing what my week’s supposed to look like. Even if I don’t follow it.”
“I tried a planner once,” I said. “It turned into a list of things I felt bad about not doing. Never enough ti in a day.”
They all laughed and for a mont, the breeze caught a few napkins that fluttered like lazy birds across the stone path. The fountain behind us kept doing its thing, spraying water high into the air, trying to look impressive while pigeons strutted around like they owned the place.
For once, things were calm. No running. No chasing. No crashing Camaros or shady n in jackets. Just four girls, coffee and complaints about schedules.
I could pretend, just for now, that this was the real world.
**********
Painting ca last and it always felt like the soft landing at the end of a long fall. It was held in a wide-open studio space with tall ceilings and splatters of a hundred student attempts on the walls and floors. Paint-stained aprons hung by the entrance like robes of an order that worshipped color instead of gods. This room slled like turpentine, wood and possibility.
The instructor, Miss Halden, was the youngest faculty mber in the departnt and looked like she belonged more in an underground art zine than a university catalog, ssy black bob, sleeves always rolled, permanently streaked fingers. She had a dry way of speaking that made criticism feel like philosophy.
Today’s lesson: “Portraits of the unseen self.”
“How you think you look to the world is irrelevant,” she said. “I want what’s underneath. Paint your resentnt. Paint your hunger. Paint your sleep deprivation if that’s what you’ve got left.”
So students rolled their eyes, others got right to work. I sat by the windows, pulled on my apron and let my thoughts pool onto the canvas like ink spreading through water.
I didn’t paint my face, not really. I painted a figure split down the center, half of it in cold steel blues, smooth and sharp like glass, the other half in muddy reds and golds, dripping and human. A hand reaching out from one side. A chain wrapped around the ankle of the other. It wasn’t subtle, but neither was my life right now.
As I worked, I felt my shoulders ease. Painting was the only ti I could stop performing. Even Jess Hare had no place here. Only Lex. ssy, aching, too-clever-for-her-own-good Lex, raised on the edge of survival and learning how to turn pain into sothing beautiful.
That’s when the feeling ca, the one I sotis got when I created. It was more than just flow or focus. It began as a slow warmth at my core, spreading like molten honey through my veins. The sensation crept outward, pooling just beneath my skin and gathering at my fingertips. My hands tingled.
Sotis, when I was deep in the act of making, when the world slipped away and it was just and color and aning, I could almost see it. A mist of light, nearly invisible but not quite. It shimred faintly over my knuckles, like the full spectrum broken from white light, curling lazily around my palms in rainbow hues.
I’d blink or look down at it too sharply and it vanished, like it had never been there to begin with. But the after-feeling stayed, electric and wrong, like catching a word whispered from the next room.
It always left uneven. Shaken. Like sothing inside was working on a level I didn’t understand maybe sothing broken. I never told anyone, not even Peter. He’d think it was stress, or trauma. Maybe it was. Or maybe it was the part of that ca out only when I created, sothing no na had ever fit.
And this ti it also passed as soon as I focused on it. It did not break my work though.
Miss Halden walked by my easel, paused, then nodded once before moving on. No words. Just that single gesture. It ant everything.
By the ti the class wrapped, sunlight had shifted to its warm, late-afternoon hue, casting gold over everything like the day had forgiven for surviving it. My painting was still wet. I left it on the rack to dry, but the feeling of it, of having said sothing without speaking, clung to long after I left the room.
**********
I went to Penrose’s Finests right after classes. The gallery sat near the city center, in that part of town where buildings had long ago decided to reach for the sky, glass and steel monoliths clawing at clouds with unapologetic ambition. Down at street level, the city sweated. Traffic pulsed through its chanical arteries, honking and hissing, a sensory assault of fus and noise that felt like a punishnt for simply existing. If I could dull those senses at will, I would, no hesitation. And yet, even buried beneath the gri and chaos, this part of town had its rits. This was the heart, the place where money changed hands, where power dressed in tailored suits and where the wealthy ca to both flaunt and multiply their fortunes.
Naturally, this is where Penrose operated.
The gallery sat in a side street just off one of the main veins of the city, a quiet pocket carved out between glass towers and old brick survivors. Penrose’s Finests didn’t advertise itself loudly. No flashing signs, no gaudy exterior. Just a polished black door with brass lettering so subtle you had to want to find it to see it. That was the point. Exclusivity disguised as modesty.
I buzzed the intercom. A faint click followed and I pushed the door open into cool, dry air and the scent of varnish, canvas and subtle power.
Inside, the gallery was all white walls, dark wood floors and carefully staged spotlights that made every piece of art look like a secret you weren’t supposed to know. A woman in a navy blouse, Penrose’s assistant—Miriam—glanced up from her desk and gave the barest nod before returning to her laptop. We had an understanding: she pretended I was a regular appraiser and I pretended she didn’t know what I really did for Penrose.
“He’s in the back,” she murmured, not even looking up this ti.
Of course he was.
I passed a massive oil piece that looked like chaos disguised as technique, one of those modern “emotional” canvases that cost enough to buy you a small island if the buyer was rich and stupid enough.
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Behind a half-closed door at the far end of the gallery, Penrose’s voice was already bouncing off the walls.
“And I told him, if he wanted authenticity, he should stop buying from online auctions and start using soone with taste.”
He was on the phone. I slipped in and he didn’t stop talking. Just raised a hand to acknowledge while pacing behind his antique desk. His office looked more like a gentleman’s study than a workspace—leather-bound books, whiskey decanter, a globe he probably spun for dramatic effect.
I took a seat in the worn green chair across from his desk, my legs still sore from last night’s joyride into chaos.
He turned to , eyes sharp and appraising. Still in his usual three-piece suit, gray today, with a burgundy tie. Not a single wrinkle. The man could be bleeding and he’d still look composed.
He was well into his sixties by now, but you wouldn’t guess it by looking at him. At most, he passed for late forties. That’s what years of discipline did, he trained both his body and his mind with militant regularity and it showed. Beneath the tailored suits and cultured air, he was still lean and muscular, a predator wrapped in velvet.
His face was angular, weathered like the edge of an old coin, crowned with a head full of thick silver hair that matched his eyes, cool, calculating, silver like the money he loved almost as much as the art. He’d started wearing a beard recently too, immaculately trimd, like everything else in his curated life.
“He’s a moron,” he said into his phone. “Tell him to start using his brain. He might be surprised by the results.”
From the tone, I gathered Thomas, his other assistant, had bungled sothing. Thomas was a strange mix of muscle and charisma, a cross between a bodyguard and a salesman. He’d been sent to et a client, but judging from Penrose’s expression, that eting now required less charm and more force.
“Yes. Do that. Call when it’s done.” He ended the call, then turned his full attention to .
“Alexandra.” He always used my full na. He did that with everyone, nas were like titles to him. There was only one exception: his late son, Mikey. When he spoke of him, which was rare, he always dropped the formality, softened just slightly. The wound still bled beneath all that armor.
“When we last spoke,” he continued, “you told you’d be attending the auction on the 4th. From what I’ve gathered, it was either a grand plan that went surprisingly well or a small job that turned into complete chaos.” He paused, exhaled slowly through his nose. “So tell , good girl. Which was it?”
“It was chaos, Mr. Penrose,” I said plainly.
He finally sat down across from , steepling his fingers in front of his mouth, resting his beard atop them like a thoughtful perch.
“Oh,” he murmured, with that glint of intrigue in his eye. “Do tell.”
He adored the craft of stealing, more than the profit, more than the art. For him, the thrill was in the choreography: the planning, the pressure, the improvisation when things fell apart. The act was the art.
“I was hired through an interdiary, Miss Honey. The one you introduced to. She wanted to lift a necklace from the gala. All the intel she gave checked out but it was missing so very important details.”
He tilted his head slightly. “What kind of details?”
“The target was mob-affiliated. FBI and police were on-site.”
His eyebrow lifted. “Anything else?”
“The buyer arranged the getaway. The driver and the hired muscle weren’t planning on letting leave alive, unless I left the necklace behind.”
“And yet here you are,” he said, mildly impressed. “Show the item.”
I reached into the hidden pocket in my jacket and produced the necklace, a silver Chinese dragon coiled protectively around three pearl eggs. He took it with the delicate reverence of a priest holding a relic, inspecting it under the gallery’s crisp white lights.
“I’m guessing Miss Honey didn’t tell you who the buyer was?”
“Of course not.”
“What was the agreed sum?”
“Two hundred thousand.”
“Interesting,” he said, turning the piece in his hand. “This has more personal value than material. The craftsmanship is excellent, but the materials alone wouldn’t fetch even ten grand. Sentintal or symbolic, perhaps. I’ll contact Honey and handle the transaction myself.”
He paused again, eyes scanning mine. “Anything else I should know?” He asked as he plucked a coin from his pocket and rolled it across his knuckles. He was skilled at sleight of hand and often used it to steady his thoughts.
“I might have killed the driver and the muscle.”
He didn't flinch. “Understandable.”
No questions. No concern about witnesses or cleanup. Just a calm certainty that I had done what was necessary. That’s the kind of faith you earn after years in soone’s shadow, doing their dirty work and surviving things most people wouldn’t believe.
He trusted to handle myself. He should. After everything we’d been through, anything less would be an insult.
“I have the mask you wanted, the Kabuki one. The rabbit.” Penrose said it almost offhandedly as he reached into one of the deep drawers behind his desk. When he handed it to , my breath caught for a second. It was exactly the one I had described in passing weeks ago. I’d wanted to make it myself, but ti and resources had slipped away from , as they often did. Sohow, he’d found it instead.
It was a beautiful, original Japanese piece, white lacquer, smooth and cool to the touch. The face was that of a stylized rabbit, flat and expressionless except for a small, delicately sculpted nose and a subtle, almost eerie smile. Not sothing you'd expect on a rabbit, but that was the point. The eye holes were wide and black from the outside, completely transparent from within. The mask was fastened with white leather straps and the upright ears gave it height, character and presence.
“I never asked you for one,” I said, still studying it.
“You don’t have to make everything yourself,” he replied, his tone calm but matter-of-fact. “I can give you presents from ti to ti. Last week was your birthday.”
He wasn’t a sentintal man, not by a long shot. But once in a while, he showed his version of care. This was one of those rare monts.
“I’m grateful, Mr. Penrose. I’ll put it to good use.”
“One of your personas? Jess Hare?”
“No,” I shook my head slightly, still holding the mask with both hands. “Jess is for client-facing gigs. She’s human. This…” I looked at the mask again. “This will just be Usagi. For the tis that don’t call for a human face at all.”
He nodded, understanding perfectly. There was no need for further explanation. He knew what it ant to wear a face that didn’t blink or smile unless you told it to.
“You have sothing like that planned already?”
“No,” I admitted, “but I’ll do a test run tonight.”
“Good,” he said, then stood and straightened his coat like the conversation was concluding. “I’ll call you after I hear more from Honey.”
I carefully tucked the mask away.
“Take care, Alexandra.”
“And you, Mr. Penrose.”
**********
I stopped by ho first, just long enough to unpack, eat sothing warm and change. The light in the apartnt had already begun to shift when I left again, painting everything with that soft golden hue that signals the world is winding down… even if I wasn’t.
Tonight, I wore my Iceberg jeans jacket, slightly worn at the cuffs but still sharp. Underneath, a plain white T-shirt with a smiling cartoon bunny, cute in a way that made people underestimate you. Comfortable black trousers and my go-to pair of lightweight sneakers finished the look. My hair was loose, tucked under a black baseball cap and a small crossbody bag hung lightly over my shoulder, swaying as I walked.
I didn’t look like soone who might be out for anything more than a casual night, certainly not soone preparing for a test run of a new mask. That was the point.
My body still ached. Deep in the muscles, down in the joints. A tired soreness that no hot shower or sleep could quite cure, yet. The aftermath of last night’s chaos clung to like the sll of smoke after a fire. I’d pushed through worse before, but tonight wouldn’t be about theatrics or bravado. There would be no rooftop acrobatics, no dramatic entries or cinematic flourishes.
Just a quiet hunt.
I found my target surprisingly quickly, a comrcial billboard crowning one of the last-century residential buildings, looming like an insult over the old bricks and aging windows. It wasn’t just an eyesore, it was a middle finger to the people below. Buy the new phone or get left behind. Be a loser in the great race for the newest thing.
I hated that ntality. This unending compulsion to upgrade, replace and consu. People should see the beauty of what they are, not what they own. Maybe it was a strange thought for a thief to have, but tonight, I wasn't here to take anything physical. I ca to steal urgency and compulsion… and offer sothing better in return: stillness and reflection.
Once night fell and the city dimd into anonymity, I climbed up. The billboard lood above , lit only by the streetlights below and the faint pulse of the city’s glow. I strapped on my mask, Usagi. Just before leaving, I’d dabbed a few strokes of color across the cheeks, lazy rainbow whiskers, my small signature flourish.
The work began with black. A cleansing void. I sprayed out the advertisent in its entirety, wiping it clean of its demand for obedience. Then the vision ca to life.
From the darkness erged the Cyclops, my city’s sleeping giant, slowly waking from a long digital slumber. Its spine and limbs were made of buildings, stacked and layered like vertebrae. Roads coiled around its form like living veins. Its face: concrete, steel and glass, with an eye just starting to open. Wires tangled its limbs. Clock faces embedded in its torso. Bits of smartphones and digital debris oozed down its fra in rainbow lt, dissolving. A release. A transformation.
But the light that ca wasn’t from the usual suspects, not streetlamps, not neon signs. It was sunlight, but not as we know it. It poured from behind the giant like liquid color, turquoise, magenta, molten gold, seeping into the gray, flooding it with possibility.
In cracks along the sidewalks, new life unfurled. Birds took shape in patches of color. Flowers blood from fractured walls. Human silhouettes, stitched together from warm ochres, eralds, ultramarine, danced up from alleyways, breathing a new kind of air.
I stepped back, breath shallow and watched it unfold beneath my hands.
The lower half of the image remained subdued, navy, steel, digital blue, still half asleep. But above… the awakening had begun. Vivid strokes rippled like waves across the surface. My Cyclops was not rising with rage, but with hope.
Satisfied, I walked forward and signed my na in the bottom corner: Usagi. An artist signs her work.
And then I saw it again.
My hands.
A thousand tiny specks of colored light shimred across my skin like dust caught in a sunbeam. They danced, sparkled, shifted. I stared, but this ti, it didn’t vanish when I focused. The mist surrounded , warm and humming, like creation itself had poured into and didn’t want to leave.
I twirled, unable to help myself, childlike, light, free. I dragged my fingers through the air, leaving behind trails of color, fading like afterimages. It was beautiful. It was real. It was mine.
And I wasn’t done.
I turned back to the painting and looked to the sky I had yet to finish. It needed more. Clouds, yes, but not ordinary ones. I painted them as symbols: question marks, musical notes, open hands.
Let curiosity reign, I thought.
Let it overthrow the tyranny of endless wanting.
Let those who pass below, even for a mont, feel the urge to wonder, rather than consu.
Let the city and the people who lived here, wake up, just a little.
**********
The light around faded as quietly as it had co, vanishing the mont I stepped back from my finished work. I didn’t feel disappointed. Just… still.
Now I sat at a corner bar, a good distance away, where the music pulsed low and lazy through outdoor speakers. My mask was stashed safely in my bag, tucked away like a secret. I sipped on a Mojito through a straw, its mint sharp against my tongue, cooling the heat still lingering in my chest from the climb, the spray, the creation.
People passed. Rushed. Laughed. Argued. They didn’t notice what I’d made for them, not yet, anyway.
They clinked glasses and took selfies and stumbled into taxis with slurred goodbyes. The streets below the billboard still pulsed with traffic, engines coughing, lights flickering like city synapses firing endlessly. The rhythm was the sa as it had always been.
And yet… I had changed sothing. A tiny sliver of this city now carried sothing else, sothing born not of profit or noise, but of intention.
A ssage.
A dream.
It was only one painting. One whisper in the chaos.
But it was enough to make feel alive. Seen. Even if no one had looked yet.
And in that mont, that was everything.
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