The fine rain of New York fell like a curtain of gray gauze, blurring the city lights and creating puddles that reflected the neon signs.
Alyx left the gym. The pain in her muscles was a familiar, almost comforting presence from her constant training. The humid air mixed with the steam rising from her heated body. She lit a cigarette under the building's awning; the first drag felt raspy in her throat, and the nicotine effect was instant—a brief reminder that helped calm her nerves, still buzzing from the exertion.
She walked without a fixed direction, her boots splashing through puddles, the hood of her sweatshirt pulled up though it did little to keep the rain from soaking her clothes. As she walked, she thought about how she didn't want to return to the silence of her apartment, at least not yet. Because now, within those four walls, she felt the echo of the circus that, to her, was that intervention. Well-intentioned as it was, it haunted her, especially Barney's words—like a constant ringing in her head she wanted to silence but couldn't: "Impossible profits… insider information from the future…" It made her shudder more than the cold of the night.
She turned a corner and stopped short at a small scene. There, by the entrance of a closed café, under a canary-yellow umbrella absurdly bright in the gloom, stood a young woman. She had a bulky backpack on her back and, in her left hand, a small instrument in its own case. She was trying to hold it against her body to protect it from the rain while also managing the large backpack and holding the umbrella awkwardly between her shoulder and cheek.
"You need a third hand," Alyx said before thinking, approaching her and flicking her cigarette butt, extinguished by the rain, into a nearby trash can.
The young woman turned her head slightly, still holding her things, clearly surprised by the offer. She had an open expression, with large, curious eyes and a smile that seemed ready to appear even in the midst of discomfort. "I almost have it! It's just like a human puzzle trying to get everything together, and I think the solution involves giving up my dignity and waiting out this rain with all my stuff under some shop awning."
Moved by an impulse she didn't understand, Alyx stepped closer. "Here," she said, taking the umbrella from the young woman's hand. "I'll hold it; you cover your good friend."
"You're an angel sent by the god of music (and not soaking precious instruments)," the young woman said with genuine relief, gently and lovingly wrapping her small ukulele in her jacket as if it were a child. "Seriously, thank you. I was supposed to play at a bar a couple of streets over, but it seems the universe had other plans—like soaking me to the bone."
"Seems to be the universe's favorite plan lately," Alyx murmured, holding the umbrella to cover them both. The vibrant yellow of the umbrella, surprisingly, didn't seem garish to her; instead, it felt like it created a small, intimate world under the rain.
"You too?" asked the young woman, studying her with a gaze that wasn't intrusive but interested. "Divine plan of emotional drowning, or more of the physical kind?"
Alyx let out a short, dry laugh. "A bit of both, but more focused on a slow drowning with coffee and bad decisions."
"Ah, you're in the 'fuel and poison' phase. Yep, I know it well," the young woman nodded with clear understanding, leaning against the wall and stroking the body of the ukulele. "I went through the 'cookies and tears' phase after… well… after someone very important to me left… forever."
Something in the way she said it—without drama, just the dull weight of a painful fact—resonated with Alyx. This conversation wasn't an invitation to confess, just a simple statement of companionship in a clear moment of sharing life's great pains.
"And what do you do now?" Alyx asked, genuinely curious.
"Well, I'm painting a picture, though I'm not quite sure what it is yet," the young woman said, her smile turning ironic. "Sounds terribly boring, I know. But after they left, it's my way of finding… something. I don't know what yet, and if that picture will help. I live with a friend, and a few gigs here and there help give me a focus, a structure to live my life after. Having something more, you know?"
Alyx looked at her, amazed. In her own way, it was as if this young woman was channeling the chaos left by that person who had left forever into a structured form that kept her living, even if slowly improving, without self-harm. Alyx recognized she was doing the same thing—that was the perfect definition of her last few months with trading, Muay Thai, even the compulsive cleaning… they were rigid structures to contain an interior hurricane.
"I paint too," Alyx said, not knowing why she was sharing this. "Or I try to. I do trading. And… I beat myself up in a gym. I guess that's my focus or structure for my chaos."
The young woman nodded as if it made perfect sense. "I like how that sounds—'structure in chaos.' And does it work?"
"No," Alyx replied with liberating honesty. "It just helps me keep the chaos controlled. But it's still there."
"Maybe the point isn't for it to disappear," the young woman said softly, watching the rain. "Maybe the point is to learn to dance in the rain with it. Or, in my case, play a sad but beautiful solo. Do you have something that ties you to the chaos? You know, a specific object."
Alyx thought of the silver earring, the sketchbook, all of it—plus the memories of a future she shouldn't know.
"An earring," Alyx whispered. "Silver. It's not mine, but I kept it. Then the person it belonged to had their partner return it to me, and now I have both. And it really feels… like they're telling me, 'This is yours now.' But now I don't know what to do with it. The other one I had, I hid very carefully, along with a sketchbook that was hers, which I finished. But having this other earring now is like… it's both a final point and a starting point, but I don't know in which direction to go."
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