Day in the story: 10th September (Wednesday)

I met 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. Some lounged lazily in the grass. A group of boys threw a ball in the background. It was a retreat for the tormented 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 Management, 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. Sharp, efficient, composed. 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 smell 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 me 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 something warm."

"This is honestly the nicest thing that's happened to me 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 some terrifyingly organized calendar.

"No, but it still counts," I said.

Elena looked over at me. "You doing okay?"

I hesitated. "Long night. Didn't sleep much. I'll be fine."

Sophie handed me a granola bar. "Here. You need something 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."

They all laughed and for a moment, 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 men in jackets. Just four girls, coffee and complaints about schedules.

I could pretend, just for now, that this was the real world.

**********

Painting came 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 smelled like turpentine, wood and possibility.

The instructor, Miss Halden, was the youngest faculty member in the department and looked like she belonged more in an underground art zine than a university catalog, messy 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 resentment. Paint your hunger. Paint your sleep deprivation if that's what you've got left."

Some 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 time I could stop performing. Even Jess Hare had no place here. Only Lex. Messy, aching, too-clever-for-her-own-good Lex, raised on the edge of survival and learning how to turn pain into something beautiful.

That's when the feeling came, the one I sometimes 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.

Sometimes, when I was deep in the act of making, when the world slipped away and it was just me and color and meaning, I could almost see it. A mist of light, nearly invisible but not quite. It shimmered faintly over my knuckles, like the full spectrum broken from white light, curling lazily around my palms in hues I didn't have names for.

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 me uneven. Shaken. Like something inside me was working on a level I didn't understand maybe something 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 me that came out only when I created, something no name had ever fit.

And this time 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 meant everything.

By the time the class wrapped, sunlight had shifted to its warm, late-afternoon hue, casting gold over everything like the day had forgiven me for surviving it. My painting was still wet. I left it on the rack to dry, but the feeling of it, of having said something without speaking, clung to me 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 mechanical arteries, honking and hissing, a sensory assault of fumes and noise that felt like a punishment for simply existing. If I could dull those senses at will, I would, no hesitation. And yet, even buried beneath the grime and chaos, this part of town had its merits. This was the heart, the place where money changed hands, where power dressed in tailored suits and where the wealthy came 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 me 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 time.

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 someone with taste."

He was on the phone. I slipped in and he didn't stop talking. Just raised a hand to acknowledge me 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, ignoring the fact that my legs were still sore from last night's joyride into chaos.

He turned to me, 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. Always ready, always coiled like a spring.

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 trimmed, like everything else in his curated life.

"He's a moron," he snapped into his phone, pacing slowly as I entered the gallery office. "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 something. Thomas was a strange mix of muscle and charisma, a cross between a bodyguard and a salesman. He'd been sent to meet a client, but judging from Penrose's expression, that meeting now required less charm and more force.

"Yes. Do that. Call me when it's done." He ended the call, then turned his full attention to me.

"Alexandra." He always used my full name. He did that with everyone, names were like titles to him. Formal, deliberate, exact. 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 me 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. The anger from the call was still lingering behind his eyes, but he let it slide away like smoke dissipating in a room. "So tell me, good girl. Which was it?"

"It was chaos, Mr. Penrose," I said plainly.

He finally sat down across from me, 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 intermediary, Miss Honey. The one you introduced me to. She wanted me to lift a necklace from the gala. All the intel she gave me checked out but it was missing some 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 me leave alive, unless I left the necklace behind."

"And yet here you are," he said, mildly impressed. "Show me 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?"

"Fifty 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. Sentimental or symbolic, perhaps. I'll contact Honey and handle the transaction myself."

He paused again, eyes scanning mine. "Anything else I should know?"

"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 someone's shadow, doing their dirty work and surviving things most people wouldn't believe.

He trusted me 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 me, 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 time and resources had slipped away from me, as they often did. Somehow, 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 something 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, presence.

It was flawless. Strange. Otherworldly. Perfect.

"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 time to time. Last week was your birthday."

He wasn't a sentimental man, not by a long shot. But once in a while, he showed his version of care. This was one of those rare moments.

"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. Talk, flirt, deal. She's human. This…" I looked at the mask again. "This will just be Usagi. For the times 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 meant to wear a face that didn't blink or smile unless you told it to.

"You have something 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 tucked the mask away, careful, reverent.

"Take care, Alexandra."

"And you, Mr. Penrose."

**********

I stopped by home first, just long enough to unpack, eat something warm and change. The light in the apartment 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 someone who might be out for anything more than a casual night, certainly not someone 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 me like the smell 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 calm observation. Light steps. A quiet hunt.

I found my target surprisingly quickly, a commercial 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 mentality. This unending compulsion to upgrade, replace and consume. 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 came to steal urgency and compulsion… and offer something better in return: stillness. Reflection.

Once night fell and the city dimmed into anonymity, I climbed up. The billboard loomed above me, 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 advertisement in its entirety, wiping it clean of its demand for obedience. Then the vision came to life.

From the darkness emerged 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 frame in rainbow melt, dissolving. A release. A transformation.

But the light that came 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 bloomed from fractured walls. Human silhouettes, stitched together from warm ochres, emeralds, 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 name 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 shimmered across my skin like dust caught in a sunbeam. They danced, sparkled, shifted. I stared, but this time, it didn't vanish when I focused. The mist surrounded me, warm and humming, like creation itself had poured into me 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 moment, feel the urge to wonder, rather than consume.

Let the city and the people who lived here, wake up, just a little.

**********

The light around me faded as quietly as it had come, vanishing the moment 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 same as it had always been. A loop. A dance. A blur.

And yet… I had changed something. A tiny sliver of this city now carried something else, something born not of profit or noise, but of intention.

A message.

A dream.

It was only one painting. One whisper in the chaos.

But it was enough to make me feel alive. Seen. Even if no one had looked yet.

And in that moment, that was everything.

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