Identity. A small word, but vast—a universe folded into eight letters. It flickers like candlelight, impossible to grasp all at once. Identity is not a single truth carved in stone, but a patchwork of choices stitched into the skin of every day. It’s the values we defend without compromise, the quiet beliefs we hold in the cradle of our chest, the rituals of morning coffee and midnight regret. All of it, woven into luminous threads—delicate, defiant—that form the masks we wear for the world.

But no one wears only one.

People craft a gallery of them: porcelain for politeness, steel for survival, silk for love. And yet beneath the shifting shimmer of those masks, the same glowing thread runs through each—a single golden filament tying the self to the soul.

Johnny had worn many.

The son—stitched with fierce devotion, all laughter and bruised knees, bright-eyed adoration for his sisters. That mask carried the warmth of home, but also tiny frayed places where doubt had crept in, quiet questions about who he was allowed to be.

The student—gilded and far too heavy for his age, bright as brass in the beginning, dulled by years spent being chiseled into someone he was never meant to become. The boy who sketched instead of studied. Who passed exams with his heart curled somewhere else.

Then the soldier—fortress-faced, all sharp lines and locked gates. A mask forged in the fire of discipline, reinforced with silence. Behind it, he buried things no one should carry. He taught his hands to steady, his voice to harden, his eyes to see without flinching.

But his favorite mask was the one he wore with you.

It wasn’t really a mask at all—just the raw edge of him, unguarded and true. The one he crafted with fingertips and quiet grins, with the way he reached for you in sleep and whispered nonsense just to hear your laugh. It was the version of him that wasn’t fractured by expectation. The mask that bloomed with love and called you home.

And when his career ended in a scream of shrapnel and static, when everything splintered and he stood at the edge of himself, maskless, limping through grief and reinvention—he built something new.

A little stream. A little camera. A little voice speaking into the void. He never meant for it to grow.

Just a man and his musings—military stories wrapped in dark humour, workout routines adapted for a healing body, thoughts about the strangeness of slowness, of learning to live without orders or missions. It was honest. Bare, almost. A kind of diary in pixels.

But his charm betrayed him. The accent. The wit. The quiet way he bared pieces of himself without meaning to. And people came. An audience, then a following. He built another mask, careful this time—one that shielded you, shielded his heart, even as it let people peer through the keyhole.

And most days, it worked.

Until tonight.

A quiet restaurant tucked between shuttered bookshops and ivy-stained walls, far from the rush of city lights. Candle flames wavered in crystal holders like they were whispering secrets to the dusk. Low jazz curled through the air like a lover’s breath—soft saxophone, soft laughter.

Johnny sat across from you, golden in the glow—shirt sleeves rolled to his forearms, collar open, hair mussed just enough to say he’d run his fingers through it when he wasn’t watching. He was telling you a story—his voice warm with amusement, one hand half-lazily sketching circles across your wrist where it lay on the table.

And then he stopped.

Not abruptly. Just a stillness so sudden it made the moment hush.

His eyes didn’t move first—his body did, in that slow, deliberate way you recognised from before. Before the streaming, before the softness. A pause in his breathing, the quiet contraction of his shoulders as his instincts wrapped around him like old armour.

“What is it?” you whispered.

He didn’t answer right away. His gaze flicked past your shoulder.

You moved to glance, but his fingers tightened gently around yours.

“Table behind you,” he said quietly. “Don’t turn. They’ve been takin’ pictures.”