Ten Years Ago
Florence, Italy
Heian was only twenty-three.
His hands were steady then. His heart—still wrapped in barbed wire from the boyhood he never mourned. Back then, his work was less ritual and more rage. He didn't believe in beauty. He believed in control.
And then she walked in.
Lucienne.
A dancer.
French.
All sinew and sadness.
She entered his studio barefoot, wearing nothing but a thin dress and a necklace with a tarnished crucifix. Her eyes—stormy gray, like the sea right before it drowns a ship.
"I heard you only paint the broken," she said.
"I do," Heian replied.
"Good. I'm tired of pretending I'm whole."
She became his obsession.
Not for her body. Not even her mind.
But the way she fell apart silently—as if it were a kind of performance.
He sketched her for hours. Wouldn't let her speak. Wouldn't let her smile.
But one night, she bled on the canvas by accident—cut her thigh on a nail sticking out from the wooden platform.
He rushed to her.
Held her leg.
Pressed a towel to the wound.
"Don't touch me like that," she whispered.
"Like what?"
"Like I matter."
He looked up. And that was the moment.
The rule shattered.
He kissed her. Not with hunger—but reverence.
And for three days, he didn't paint.
He loved.
And then—
She vanished.
No note.
No goodbye.
Just the crucifix left on the easel, the chain tangled with red thread.
He searched for her. For months.
Never found her.
Rumors said she walked into the Arno river naked under moonlight.
Others said she moved to Berlin and became a ghost in techno clubs.
But Heian never painted in color again.
Not until Liora.
And now, she too threatened to leave him with unfinished edges and an ache no canvas could hold.
---