Prologue
Prologue
(The night before the White Room)
The street-lamps of tiny Merriton, Illinois cast pale hexagons across the cracked sidewalk as Ashe Tran pedaled home from the café’s late shift. Early-spring chill threaded through his hoodie. Espresso grounds clung to the fabric like stale perfume. Merriton was quiet. Good for thinking. Bad when you couldn’t stop.
Inside his shoebox apartment, he dropped his messenger bag onto the threadbare couch. Sketchbooks, half-finished manga, origami cranes in the pockets. The single bare bulb above the door stuttered, casting long shadows over a scrap of peeling wallpaper, and a lumpy pillow sagged in the corner beside a stack of empty takeout boxes. No roommate, no music, only the fridge’s arthritic hum. Perfect if loneliness counted as perfection.
A dresser drawer slid open. Beneath thrift-store jeans and boxer briefs lay the impulse purchase: a folded pair of duck-print panties bought online weeks ago, after two moments he couldn’t stop replaying. The night he’d finally asked Monica out in the café’s cramped back office, she’d leaned across the Formica table and said, “You’re more like… one of the girls to me, honestly.” She’d smiled when she said it. He couldn’t even be angry. Just hollow.
And later, when he’d recounted it to his best friend, came the careless rib: “With that butt? You’ve got more ass than half the girls I know.” The friend punctuated it with a playful smack that stung through Ashe’s jeans. It wasn’t the first time a “buddy” had claimed that kind of permission, and Ashe hated how small it made him feel.
Those moments stayed with him. Shame tangled up with curiosity, and he couldn’t seem to leave either one alone.
Curtains drawn, ceiling light off, he changed: pulling the oversized white sleep-shirt over his head so it skimmed damp curls—still slick with post-shower warmth—at his nape, then letting it settle to mid-thigh as the duck-print cotton molded softly to the gentle swell of his hips. In the mirror he studied himself: the delicate slope of his collarbones, the tender curve of his waist that spilled into hips more voluptuous than masculine should allow, and the small cluster of piercings in his ears. He’d gotten them thinking they might make him look a little rougher, maybe even like a bad boy. Some days he thought they helped. Other days he wasn’t sure if they just pushed him further in the other direction. He shifted his weight, glancing over his shoulder at the soft roundness of his rear—the very curve that had earned his friend’s teasing. There was no thrill in it. Just the dull ache of trying to see what everyone else seemed to see.
He perched on the bed with his battered sketchbook. The pencil moved. A faceless figure took shape on the page, mannequin-like but not quite, wearing his outfit. On the corkboard behind him hung a photo of his kid sister Sara, eleven and gap-toothed, holding a glitter-plastered “WORLD’S BEST BROTHER” sign she had made years ago. Most of the glitter was gone. The responsibility wasn’t.
Midnight seeped in. Exhaustion settled behind his eyes. He set the book aside, flicked off the lamp. The room plunged into darkness—yet behind his eyelids an after-image of stark white clung like a camera flash. The refrigerator hummed—steady at first, then higher, until the pitch grew almost unbearable. Beneath it came a tiny stutter, like a breath caught in live wiring, sending a mechanical pulse trembling through the linoleum. An electric tension coiled in the silence, as if the walls themselves anticipated something sharp and sudden.
One last uneasy thought drifted through as he curled beneath the comforter, dressed in secrets…
If he vanished tonight, who—besides maybe a worried kid sister—would even notice?
The hum sharpened. The world went white.
