Adrian had called him. Marcus delivered this fact to Elena with what he hoped was casual composure, though inwardly he felt the absurd weight of his own predicament settling across his shoulders like an ill-fitting jacket.
He was now officially—genuinely—a love postman. A human relay station for affections that would never be reciprocated. If this trajectory continued, he'd graduate from Marcus Chen, transmigrated protagonist and point-farmer extraordinaire, to Marcus Chen, professional carrier of other people's romantic longing. The cosmic joke was almost funny enough to make him cry.
"His tone was very anxious," Marcus continued, speaking truthfully because lying seemed pointless when she'd likely see through it anyway. "Terrified that something might have happened to you."
Elena's reaction was minimal—a slight tightening of her grip on the paintbrush, a momentary pause. The muscles along her jaw remained soft, her posture unchanged. She didn't engage with his statement, didn't offer commentary or defense or explanation. Instead, after those few suspended seconds, she simply redirected her attention back to the canvas before her and resumed painting with the focused precision of someone who had mentally filed Marcus and his message into a lower tier of relevance.
Which was... fair, actually. If he were her, he probably wouldn't care much about his own worrying either.
But the opportunity was glaring, and Marcus had learned long ago that opportunities were like buses—you could either board them or watch them disappear into traffic. He needed to close the gap between himself and his goal, and he had 222 points. The distance to 10,000 felt like standing at the base of an impossible mountain.
So he pushed himself up from his seat, moving with casual deliberation, and circled around behind her chair.
His stated purpose—admiring the painting—was technically true. His actual purpose was that the "chance" he'd been waiting for had, conveniently, materialized. The Fortune system was quiet at the moment, but it wouldn't be once he made contact. The anticipatory thrill was already thrumming through his chest.
The afternoon light struck Elena's exposed forearm at a perfect, almost painterly angle. The skin there was translucent as porcelain, delicate enough that Marcus could trace the fine network of blue veins beneath the surface—thin lines that looked fragile as threads, yet somehow held all the evidence of a living pulse. The red silk bracelet on her wrist stood out like a dropped ruby against snow.
He bent forward, letting his body drift into her space with the naturalistic progress of someone who simply wanted a better view. Elena's back was rigid now, hypersensitive to his approach, but she didn't pull away. Not yet. Not immediately.
Another step. Close enough that the warmth radiating from his frame was becoming the dominant force in the small radius between them. She was practically rigid beneath his presence—a small animal caught between the impulse to flee and the paralytic effect of very real danger.
Then Marcus made his move.
Without preamble or permission, his left hand slid across, covering her hand where she held the brush. His right hand secured her wrist. He felt her shoulder shrug upward involuntarily, a reflexive spasm of protest, and then she twisted her head to look at him.
Their faces were suddenly very, very close. Close enough that he could see the fine network of her eyelashes, the precise shade of gray in her irises, the way her pupils dilated slightly in response to the proximity.
His breath was warm against her ear. He could feel her breathing—slightly elevated, slightly controlled.
"What are you doing?" Her voice was low and carried the particular icy edge of someone who had been cornered and was marking the moment when she decided whether to tolerate it or retaliate.
Marcus kept his expression perfectly composed—the picture of innocent propriety. "Your grip on the brush is wrong," he said, his tone suggesting he was merely offering technical instruction. "You're tensing your wrist. If you paint like this for hours, your hand will cramp."
He reached around her with his right arm, the motion drawing him closer still, until his chest was nearly touching her back. His fingers found hers on the brush—delicate things, half the width of his own—and he began adjusting them with deliberate care, one by one, guiding them to what he insisted was the "correct position."
"It should be like this," he murmured, letting his voice drop into the warm, focused register of genuine technical instruction. Which made the whole thing somehow worse, because it sounded legitimate even as it was shamelessly predatory in its point-harvesting intent.
She was trapped. Not by chains or locks, but by the simple fact that his body formed a cage and her own limbs had betrayed her with immobility. Her breath was coming faster now, and her eyes—still fixed on his profile—held a cocktail of emotions that Marcus could almost taste: wariness, panic, anger, and something else he didn't want to name.
[+5 Positive Value]
The system notification bloomed in his peripheral awareness like a small, satisfied star.
[+5]
Another ping. His internal satisfaction was immediate and profound, a dopamine hit of such purity that he nearly forgot the entire framework of ethics supporting why this was problematic. He was inches away from her, breathing the faint scent of sandalwood that clung to her skin, and the numbers were climbing.
"I'll do it myself," Elena said, and her voice was still controlled, but there was a fracture in that control now—a hairline crack of panic. She tried to reclaim her hand, but her pull was weak, almost tentative.
"Don't move," Marcus said, and he tightened his arm around her, drawing her backward against his chest. "If your posture is wrong now, it'll be harder to correct later."
The excuse was transparent, and they both knew it. But Elena didn't fight him, not truly. She sat rigid, her breath coming in measured increments, while Marcus positioned her fingers with what he imagined was clinical care and collected his points like a man harvesting coins from a wishing well.
[+5]
[+5]
The system was delighted. Marcus was delighted. Elena was—he could feel it in the set of her shoulders—profoundly, dangerously undelighted.
How much longer could he maintain this pretense of teacher-and-student before her patience simply expired?
"What are you painting?" he asked, shifting tactics before the situation could deteriorate further. He kept her wrist held loosely—still contact, still points, but less aggressively imprisonment-coded. "Show me."
She didn't answer immediately. When she finally spoke, her voice was flat, devoid of inflection. "A forest."
Marcus glanced at the canvas and felt his satisfaction drain away like bathwater.
The painting was almost entirely black. Not the natural darkness of shadows or chiaroscuro depth, but a profound, suffocating blackness that seemed to devour light rather than reflect it. Whatever forest she had envisioned, it was utterly lightless—a dense, tangled, impenetrable mass.
"A forest?" He heard his own voice rise slightly, the surprise genuine. "What forest is black?"
"Does it matter?" Elena's tone carried the particular cutting precision of someone who had just caught him in a stupidity and was about to point it out. "Is it not allowed?"
The Dark Forest.
He understood then. Not just understood, but felt—a sick, cold understanding that crawled up his spine like something with too many legs.
This was her interior landscape. This was what lived behind those gray eyes and that perfect, controlled exterior. Not the manicured darkness of a calculated villain, but something deeper. Something real—a genuine, unfiltered glimpse into whatever psychological terrain had been shaped by eight years of immobility, by the murder of her parents, by the systematic isolation that came from being the family's dark secret and shame.
The romantic comedy of his point-farming evaporated.
Marcus slowly—carefully—released her wrist. He stepped back, giving her space, his earlier satisfaction curdling into something more like horror. He'd been so focused on the transactional details of contact that he'd missed the actual information she was broadcasting: that there was a darkness in Elena Nightshade that went deep. Deeper than manipulation. Deeper than calculated cruelty.
She was essentially showing him the walls of her own prison.
He was still processing this, trying to read her expression, when the sound of light, rapid footsteps cut through the moment.
Marcus turned to see Victoria approaching at an excited run, one of the colorful kites—an owl design, painted in blues and golds—held carefully in her small hands. She moved with the unselfconscious bounce of someone whose mental age corresponded to her childhood self, unconcerned with the wheelchair or the logistics of her sister's mobility.
"Sister!" Victoria called, already settling the kite gently across Elena's lap with surprising care. She reached out, grasping Elena's hand with both of her own, her expression open and hopeful in a way that Elena's could never quite be. "Let's play together! Come fly with me!"
Elena's response was immediate but gentle, her voice taking on a softer quality that Marcus had rarely heard directed at anyone except Victoria. "Sister, I can't. Why don't you go play with Aunt Maid instead? She can help you."
Victoria's face fell with theatrical speed. Her lip trembled, her eyes went wide with the outsized tragedy of childhood disappointment. She looked genuinely gutted, as though the universe had just informed her that kites would never fly again.
But the emotion lasted perhaps three seconds before something else caught her attention entirely.
Her gaze shifted from Elena to Marcus, and her entire countenance transformed. The disappointment evaporated. Her eyes went wide with sudden, delighted recognition, and her mouth opened into an enormous grin.
"Big Doggy!" she shrieked, the sound joyful and uncomplicated in a way that made Marcus's chest contract with something that was absolutely, positively not emotion.
Before he could process what was happening, Victoria had abandoned her sister entirely and was circling around Elena's wheelchair with the single-minded focus of a much younger child. She launched herself at Marcus, grabbing both his wrists with surprising strength.
"You come play with me! You come with me!" she demanded, her tone brooking no argument, her grip firm but not unkind. "Big Doggy plays with me, right? Right?!"