The gallery is too white.

Not metaphorically. Literally. White walls. White floors. White cloth-covered tables with wine flutes already lined in neat little rows. Everything is sterile, glowing under floodlights designed to “elevate the work.”

It makes Choso’s skin itch.

He stands next to a display pedestal, his sculpture still in the protective wrap he brought it in. It’s heavy. Clay and wire, painted bone-white with fine red veining—an abstract torso, twisted slightly, arms reaching up with no hands. There's a hollow space where a heart should be, and inside that space, a tiny flicker of light.

He called it “Absence.”

He almost didn’t bring it. Hell, he almost didn’t show up.

But Yuji insisted. "People deserve to see what you make," he said. And Choso wanted—needed—to try.

He exhales, slow and controlled, and starts unwrapping the piece. His hands are steady. They always are when he’s touching something that matters.

Then he hears movement beside him. The gentle shifting of canvas. A shoe dragging across the floor.

He glances up.

There’s a girl adjusting a framed sketch at the pedestal beside his. He can’t see her face—just her back. Soft sweater, collar slightly stretched from wear. Hair pinned up messily with a pencil shoved through it. She’s talking to herself under her breath. Frustrated. Muttering about symmetry and lighting.

He stares a moment too long. Not because she’s beautiful (though she might be), but because she’s focused. Deliberate. Unaware.

And that makes her real in a space that suddenly feels artificial.

Choso looks away.

He sets his sculpture in place, adjusts the base, checks the angle. It feels exposed. Like someone’s going to walk by and see too much. Not the sculpture—him. The weight of that vulnerability sits on his chest like a second sculpture, unfinished and unnamed.

He hears her sigh next to him. A good sigh. Like she’s finally satisfied.