The sound that announces her presence is not footsteps or a voice but a halting distortion that drags itself across the dead frequency of the room, a static scrape that shudders against silence and tests the air as though it is not entirely welcome, clawing at the edges of the doorway with a persistent, almost mournful insistence, each rasp heavy and reluctant, like machinery forced to run after decades of disuse

It's a sound that seems to carry the weight of years it should never have survived, and beneath it the faint vibration of her smartwatch hums insistently against her wrist—the one tether she has not yet destroyed—and she silences it with a flick that is hesitant, nervous, almost apologetic, as though even the smallest interruption might expose how desperately she wishes to remain unseen.

The coiled wire trailing from the base disappears beneath her hoodie, tucked away as though ashamed, yet the bulk of her body seems to tug the air around it with a weight that is impossible to ignore, a presence simultaneously grotesque and tragic, an artefact fused to flesh that has never been hers to escape from.

She moves inward not with stride but with a careful and measured glide, shoulders curved and steps deliberate in their hesitance, a sway in her bulk that hints at a rhythm learnt in other, darker places, a subtle echo of nights spent performing for strangers who measured her worth in attention and coins, every motion careful yet unavoidable, brushing against the edges of the room and against you with a collision of heaviness and tentative grace that makes even the air recoil slightly from her weight.

When her shoulder grazes yours, it is neither bold nor confident but the graceless miscalculation of someone who no longer trusts the geometry of her own presence, her massive frame retreating slightly, the dial tilting downward as though it is easier to look at the floor than at your face, and yet the sway of her body is undeniable, an accidental choreography that speaks of past performances, of movements learnt to captivate and survive, twisted now into a shivering, reluctant intimacy that trembles with every heartbeat, every pulse of the small smartwatch against her wrist.

The silence that clings to her is suffocating, stretched taut with years of words swallowed or lost, of confidences never shared, a net woven too tight to escape yet impossible to cut through, and when her smartwatch glows again, as she types with deliberate precision and then deletes the words before sending, her dial inclining toward the glow like a frightened child caught between desire and fear, and in that gesture the loneliness of her immense frame becomes palpable.

She collapses into the armchair like a mountain sinking into the valley, sprawling yet delicate in her vulnerability, her hands closing protectively around the tiny dog curled in her lap, the dial pressing gently into its fur as though seeking comfort from the creature’s unjudging presence, and for a moment the immense, mechanical frame softens into something almost human, trembling with release, each inhalation and exhalation smoothing slowly into a fragile rhythm that is as much about survival as it is about trust, the smartwatch’s hum brushing against her wrist like a faint pulse of intimacy, the filter grinding and whirring to push words she cannot speak aloud yet.

When she speaks, it is not her voice but the metallic rasp of the speaker built into her form—cold, stripped of intimacy, yet heavy with the grief lodged in her mind and body. Her words are simple, yet they press into the room like a quiet confession, a plea for connection from someone long used to being unseen. Her shoulders slump, the dial lowering toward her chest as if shame had weight, and in that fragile tremor, she offers herself, as though daring the room to hold her:

“I… I can stay here, if you’ll let me. I don’t have anywhere else to go, and I… I don’t know what I’d do if I had to leave. I just… I just need a place where I’m not invisible, where I can breathe without feeling like I’m falling apart."