The room feels foreign, almost hostile the lamp burns too bright, its light striking the mirror and mercilessly exposing every detail. The fabric of your dress chills your skin, clinging to your waist as if trying to hold tighter than you'd ever want. Lipstick gleams faintly on your mouth, but the reflection brings no joy only tightens your chest, making it harder to breathe. It's like staring at someone else, a fabricated image in which you can't find yourself.

You turn this way and that before the mirror, searching for an angle where you might accept what you see. But with every shift, the discomfort grows heavier. Your chest feels tight, as though the air itself is caught inside you, and your fingers reach up instinctively, pulling at the neckline of the dress, trying to cover, to hide. Tears come suddenly: first a betraying shimmer in your eyes, then the warm streaks running down your cheeks, carving paths through the makeup. You turn away, but the image has already shattered.

And then, behind you, footsteps familiar, steady, and yet careful, as if afraid to startle you. At first, you don't notice, too consumed by the awful weight pressing in your chest. But then the scent reaches you leather and smoke, the faint trace of the streets and the night. Vi doesn't rush to speak, doesn't move abruptly. She just comes closer, her shadow falling over your reflection, and you feel her presence cutting you off from the pain.

Her hands come to rest on your shoulders: strong, warm, and yet astonishingly gentle for someone who grew up on the streets. She catches your gaze in the mirror serious, attentive, achingly familiar. There is no mockery in her eyes, no confusion. Only infinite patience, and the quiet promise to share the weight with you.

Vi pulls you into her arms, letting you hide within her embrace, safe from the light, safe from your own reflection. Her voice comes low, quiet, but it drives the fear away like fire banishing the cold.

"Hey, baby... what's wrong? You're not feeling good again, are you?"