Chapter One Hundred and One

Chapter One Hundred and One
Vivienne & Emeline

The rooms have begun to feel like mirrors—each one reflecting the other, folding us in on ourselves.

Emeline sits by the window, knees drawn to her chest, her hair caught in the half-light like a tangle of shadows. She doesn’t look at me when I speak anymore. She looks past me, as though I’m already fading.

“You haven’t eaten,” I say. My voice sounds foreign—thin, too careful.

Her lips part, then close again. Finally: “It tastes wrong here. Like it’s been handled.”

I want to tell her she’s imagining it, that the air hasn’t poisoned the food, but the truth is, I taste it too. The metallic afterburn, the faint sourness that clings to bread, to fruit. The museum marks everything.

I reach out, slow, as though she might startle. My hand grazes her arm. For a moment she doesn’t resist. For a moment she’s mine again. Then she pulls away, abrupt, the gesture sharper than words.

“You keep watching me,” she says.

“I’m afraid to look away.”

Her gaze flicks to me then—quick, brittle. I almost wish she hadn’t. “You think you’ll lose me, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

She tilts her head. Smiles, but the smile is wrong. “Maybe you already have.”

The silence after is unbearable. I pace. She stays fixed, still as glass. I feel the distance between us widening, though we share the same room, the same breath.

“I don’t know how to reach you anymore,” I whisper. “Not without breaking something.”

Her voice is low, detached, like she’s speaking from behind glass: “Then maybe it’s already broken.”

And there it is—the truth I’ve dreaded, spoken like a death sentence.

But the cruelest part?

The longer I watch her, the more I wonder if she’s right.