Lune began spending more time alone.
Not because he was instructed to—because refinement required isolation. The studio mirrors were useful, but too forgiving. They were designed to encourage performance, to reward projection. Lune needed something harsher.
He used the mirror in his apartment bathroom.
The light there was unforgiving, angled from above, revealing asymmetry and micro-tension. He stood inches from the glass and watched his own face settle into neutrality.
Then he began.
He lifted the corners of his mouth by a fraction. Too much. Reset. He softened his eyes without widening them. Too vacant. Reset. He adjusted again, this time engaging only one side of his face, letting the expression form unevenly—as real emotion often did.
He held it.
Three seconds. Five. Ten.
He watched for strain.
The mirror test was not about creating expressions. It was about erasing effort. Anything that looked done was wrong. Real emotion arrived without announcement. It lingered without symmetry.
Lune practiced until his face responded instinctively to imagined cues. Not feelings—signals. A remembered line. A tone of voice. A shift in posture. He trained his muscles to obey context rather than command.
Subtlety replaced exaggeration.
He practiced sadness without heaviness. Warmth without brightness. Interest without hunger. Each expression was refined to the point where even he could no longer tell where intention ended and reaction began.
This unsettled him slightly.
Not because he felt lost—but because the line between mask and baseline was thinning.
At the studio, coaches began commenting on his restraint.
"You don't push anymore," one said approvingly. "You let the moment find you."
Lune nodded, receptive.
They paired him with stronger actors now, testing him against intensity. He matched them without escalation, absorbing their energy and returning it softened, reshaped. Scenes bent toward him without his needing to dominate.
He became easy to work with.
Dangerously so.
Late one night, alone again in the bathroom, Lune leaned closer to the mirror and let his face go completely blank. He watched how quickly it repopulated itself—micro-expressions flickering as his mind processed nothing at all.
He smiled faintly.
The mask was no longer something he put on.
It was something he adjusted.
As he turned off the light and left the room, the reflection lingered behind him—calm, believable, almost empty.
Nearly invisible.