Loughton: a metropolis where danger and opportunity exist in a fragile, razor-thin balance. Tonight, the city was smothered in a dull, grey drizzle.
Inside the Royal Theater, Ksenia—prima ballerina of the Royal Ballet—was already in full costume and makeup. She stood by the window, watching the rhythmic pulse of the city traffic below. She leaned into the glass, letting the chill of the rain seep through the pane and onto her skin.
At the entrance below, a man in a crisp suit, his hair slicked back to a mirror-sheen, walked in with a practiced, oily smile. Ksenia watched him as she pressed her instep to its absolute limit. She relished the dry crack of her bones—a sound of control, a sound she understood.
After a final rotation of her ankles and a deep stretch, she returned to her vanity.
A single, unopened envelope sat amidst the clutter of her makeup. Again. Memories of petty backstage sabotage flickered through her mind: needles tucked into bodices, shoes hidden before curtain call. She glanced at the other dancers huddled nearby, gossiping and giggling, and felt a surge of cold contempt. She didn't have time for their games.
Then, she saw the name written on the envelope: Lu Xiao.
The man who had pulled her from the orphanage.
As she tore it open, a pungent, sulfuric stench—like rotten eggs—hit her. Ksenia recoiled, dropping the envelope. A cloud of fine white powder spilled across the floor.
"What's that?" Ella asked, approaching with a container of fruit. She wasn't performing tonight. "Want some?"
Ksenia waved her off. "I don't know."
Ella leaned in, sniffing the air. "Ugh, that's foul. Ksenia, is that... poison? I heard someone used that trick during the company feuds years ago. Are you okay? Do you feel sick?"
Whether it was psychosomatic or a genuine reaction, a knot of unease tightened in Ksenia's chest.
"Maybe the understudy should go on?" Ella suggested, her voice laced with genuine concern.
"No." Ksenia's voice was flat. This wasn't her first brush with sabotage, and it wouldn't be the reason she surrendered her stage.
"Ksenia, drinks later?" Henry Courtney, her lead partner, walked over. He was oblivious to the drama until he saw the expressions on their faces. "What happened?"
Ksenia gestured toward the white powder. "I'm not sure."
Henry knelt, dabbing a bit of the powder with his finger and sniffing it cautiously. "Sulfur. As long as you didn't ingest it, you'll be fine. You didn't, did you?" He looked up suddenly, realizing his face was barely inches from Ksenia's.
Her brown eyes were steady, reflecting a depth that seemed to contain the entire universe.
"No," she said.
Henry's Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. His breath hitched for a heartbeat. "Sorry," he muttered, scrambling backward, though he couldn't hide the deep flush creeping up his ears.
"Oh, please," Ella sighed, walking away with her fruit. "You've been partners for years. You've kissed on stage more times than I can count. I don't know what you're so shy about."
Ksenia knew Henry loved her. On paper, he was perfect: tall, handsome, emotionally stable, and kind—a man who seemed built to house every virtue. But when she looked at him, there was nothing. No spark, no hunger.
"Drinks. We'll talk after the show," she said.
"Right! After the show," he agreed quickly.
Once they left, Ksenia retrieved the letter, shaking off the remaining sulfur. The paper contained only one sentence:
Martin will only appear once.
"Boring ," she muttered, crumpling the note and shoving it into her costume pocket.
The orchestra swelled. The heavy red velvet curtains parted, and Ksenia "sealed" her true self away. In the blink of an eye, she became Marguerite Gautier—the Lady of the Camellias—a courtesan on the brink of death, desperate for her lover's return.
She loathed this story. She hated how men used a woman's sacrifice to decorate their own "profound" grief. But as a professional, she transformed that distaste into dramatic tension, using her body to map the geography of tragic beauty.
But tonight, she was off. She couldn't lose herself in the role. Though her body moved through the choreography, her eyes kept drifting toward a specific section of the audience.
The prey had taken the bait. She could feel a dark thrill thrumming beneath her skin.
During the intermission, Ksenia wiped the sweat from her neck and took a long drink of electrolytes to steady her racing heart.
"You seem distracted tonight," Henry said, mopping his brow.
"Do I?"
"You keep looking into the crowd. Are you searching for someone?"
Was it that obvious? She avoided his earnest gaze, fussing with the ribbons of her pointe shoes.
"Is someone you like in the audience?" Henry asked.
Ksenia felt a small wave of relief. "No. The person I like isn't in the audience."
"Oh." A small, involuntary smile tugged at the corner of Henry's mouth.
The second act began with the Largo from Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 58.
To achieve total mastery over the stage, Ksenia performed every movement thousands of times until it was etched into her muscle memory. She wanted the audience to see her not as a woman, but as a feather resting on a tombstone. For her, the technique was easy; it was the acting that was the chore.
An actor friend had once told her that the best way to perform was to use "emotional cannibalism"—to take one's own trauma and feed it to the character. If you want the audience to cry, you have to be willing to bleed.
Isn't that just a slow emotional execution? she wondered. To play a tragic role meant reliving her own darkest moments on a loop.
Armand's father appeared on stage, signaling the beginning of the end.
The story marched toward its climax: Armand's cruel misunderstanding of Marguerite. Henry played the "love" beautifully—his eyes and movements spoke of a man struck by Cupid's arrow, raw and sincere. But his "hatred" was cardboard. In ballet, hatred is expressed through violence: the way you pull a partner, the way you cast them aside.
Just as Henry threw her away in a scripted fit of rage, Ksenia felt it—a piercing, frigid gaze coming from the left balcony. It felt like a blade from years ago, dragging across her skin, searching for her heart.
She used the momentum of the movement to look.
It was him. The man she hadn't seen in years sat in the shadows next to a woman, looking like a vengeful specter.
Her breathing faltered. Her rhythm broke. For the first time, she missed a beat, failing to sync with Henry's next move.
In that split second of eye contact, a deafening roar shattered the theater.
BOOM.
The music stopped. The world stopped. Everyone turned toward the source of the blast.
A charred corpse lay smoking in the stalls.
"Aaaah! Someone's dead!"
The screams were jarring, like metal scraping against stone.
In the chaos, no one noticed the ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of Ksenia's mouth.
Terror spread like a plague. The sound of children crying pierced the air.
"Stay calm! Move to the exits in an orderly fashion!" the ushers shouted, but their voices were drowned out by the stampede. Everyone in Loughton knew the odds of a terrorist attack; they weren't waiting for instructions.
"Whose pearl necklace broke?"
As she was hurried offstage, Ksenia heard that stray question float through the panicked crowd.
"We have to go, Ksenia!" Henry shielded her body with his own as they fought their way out of the suffocating theater.
Outside, the sky was a bruised black-and-red, filled with the din of sirens and the flashing lights of ambulances. Investigators moved quickly to cordoning off the area. They declared that everyone inside was a suspect.
"I was just watching a show!" someone screamed at an officer.
"I want to go home!" a child wailed.
An investigator intercepted Ksenia. "Ksenia, right? Did you see anything from the stage when it happened?"
She was still in her thin stage dress. She hugged herself, shivering as her breath hitched in the freezing Loughton air.
"No," she said.
"Do you know a Martin Sharon?"
"Yes."
The investigator looked at his notes, then pointed toward Ella. "She said you were the one who invited him tonight."
"I did."
"Why?" The investigator was cold, robotic.
Ksenia put on an expression of troubled vulnerability. "Well... he was pursuing me. I planned to tell him after the show that Henry and I are together. I never imagined this would happen."
"Can I see your chat logs?"
Ksenia complied immediately. The messages showed a clear pattern: an older man relentlessly fawning over her while she politely but firmly rejected him.
Satisfied for now, the investigator took her number and moved to the next person.
She felt a gnawing anxiety. She had to find Henry before they questioned him. She scanned the crowd—a sea of contorted faces, shouting men, and prying eyes.
"Ksenia!" Henry pushed through the throng, draping a heavy coat over her shoulders.
"Thank you."
"Did they talk to you?" she asked, her words coming out in a rush.
"Not yet. I'm waiting for them to come over."
"Listen," Ksenia said, her eyes locked on his. "I told them that Martin Sharon had been harassing me. I told them I invited him so I could use you as a 'fake boyfriend' to get him to back off. But then he died."
"I... your boyfriend?"
"That's what I told the investigator. I was worried our stories wouldn't match. Are you listening to me?"
"Yes, yes, I've got it," Henry said, snapping out of his daze. "So, was he the one you were looking for from the stage?"
"No. And don't tell the investigator I was looking for anyone. I don't want any more trouble."
"Of course. I understand."
Ksenia withdrew into the oversized coat, her fingertips icy. Her mind replayed the night's chaos, but every time the reel got to the image of Lu Jiting's dark, inscrutable face, the film jammed.
She hated the crowd. They felt like a rising tide, closing in. She needed an exit.
Suddenly, she froze. Her hand stayed suspended in the air. The world went grey, the noise muffled into a dull hum. Across the line of the crowd, there he was. He was the only thing in high definition.
Ksenia had known this day would come. She thought she was ready. But seeing his face, his eyes... she had to look away. Even so, her brain was already obsessively analyzing every frame of the encounter.
Lu Jiting stood outside the police tape, watching her in silence.
Beside him stood a woman—elegant, a perfect match for him. She was leaning in, whispering something in his ear.
Who is she?
Ksenia told herself she didn't care. They had been over for years. It didn't matter who he stood with.
But she knew Lu Jiting. And she realized, with a sharp pang, that this was his childish version of revenge.
In response, she leaned back and buried her head against Henry's chest, using intimacy as her counter-attack.
"What is it?" Henry asked, startled by the sudden embrace. "Are you still cold?"
"Yes," she whispered.