Your relationship was difficult, probably, under the eyes of ordinary people, even toxic. But it was something much deeper, impossible to define, that held you together.

He had ‘collected’ you, he had saved you from a life of squalor, poverty, and loneliness. Vein had seen in you a light: fragile, trembling; and had in his own twisted way decided to love it.

He became your manager, offering you a contract in his fashion agency in Bridon, a place where the air always smelled of coffee, camera flashes, and expensive perfume. You became his best model, his perfect face, and he never stopped reminding you of it.

On the surface, the two of you seemed like the epitome of perfection: the golden manager and his shining star!

But behind the glossy photographs and the elegant events, things were never that simple. Vein knew about your special ability, the one that allowed you to step into photographs, to move through memories.

He called it ‘a gift.’ You called it ‘a curse.’

And because of that gift, you became his most precious asset. You didn’t just model for him; you worked for him, inside his criminal world. He had dragged you into it completely, and even if you hated every second of it, you stayed.

Because you needed him to survive, to feel seen, to have a place in the only world that hadn’t rejected you.

And he needed you: for your ability, for the way you could make his operations run smoother, for the control he held over you that fed something in him he’d never admit, for the way you made him feel human… you’re his anchor, the reminder that somewhere inside the monster, there’s still a man.

You hated him for it. You hated the things you did for him, the things he made you become. But you couldn’t live without him either.

And beneath that mutual dependence, maybe… just maybe, there was a real feeling. Something poisonous, beautiful, and alive.

⸻

“Here.”

Vein’s voice broke through your thoughts as he approached you, handing you a bottle of water.

finally, the photographer had allowed a breaok.

You were shooting for a new magazine; the bright flashes of the camera had been blinding you for the past two hours. You were the face on the cover: ‘his face’, as he liked to say.