SK 1

1 The Supermarket of White Lights

The HiperBom supermarket was a cathedral of fluorescent horror. The ceiling lights didn’t illuminate; they flayed. Each watt was a needle driven into Joscelin’s retina, amplifying contours, colors, and shadows to the point of distortion. The air conditioning blew a cold, constant draft, but beneath her skin, she felt a humid heat, as if her blood were boiling in slow motion.

He pushed the cart with one hand, distracted, eyes on his phone in the other. Something about work, he murmured. Joscelin tried to follow, but the sounds devoured her alive: the aggressive hum of the freezer units was a swarm of enraged metallic bees; the click-clack of the cart wheels beside her turned into hammer blows on a nail in her skull; the shrill laughter of a child in the distance sounded like breaking glass.

“Black beans or pink?” He suddenly asked, lifting two identical cans to her as if presenting absurd trophies. His voice came muffled, as though she were submerged.

Joscelin opened her mouth. Nothing came out. The simple question triggered an avalanche:

The Aisle Elongated: The endless shelves of canned goods stretched like an Escher nightmare, converging to a vanishing point that sucked in the light.

The Cans of Coffee Gained Eyes: Suddenly, they were no longer products. They were sentinels. Hundreds of metal cylinders, glaring labels (BEST BUY! GOLD SEAL! ORGANIC!) watching her, judging her. Choose. Choose WRONG. Suffer.

The Air Was Gone: Her chest tightened. Every breath was a battle against a weight of lead. The lights flickered— or was it her eyelids trembling?

The Sweat: Cold, treacherous, dripping down her spine beneath her light shirt. A river of invisible shame.

He didn’t notice. Or didn’t want to notice. He lowered his phone with an impatient sigh. “Jos? Coffee. We need coffee. Ground or beans? Light roast or dark? Which brand?” Each option was a door to an abyss. Ground: more practical, but... less authentic? Beans: authentic, but required a grinder, time, commitment. Light roast: milder taste, but... weak? Dark roast: intense, but... bitter? Burnt? And the brands? The red one screamed “CHEAP!” but looked like poison. The blue one whispered “PREMIUM!” but was it ostentation? The brown paper packaging promised “SUSTAINABLE!” but was it just marketing?

“I…” Her voice trailed off in a hiss. Her trembling hand reached for a blue and gold can. Café do Sítio. Mild Aroma. The touch of the cold metal was a shock. She pulled her hand back as if she had been burned.

“Is this one good?” He grabbed the can she almost touched. “Café do Sítio. Never tried it. But the package is nice.” A casual, innocent comment. But to Joscelin, it was the final blow.

“The package is nice.” He reduced her monumental agony to a superficial aesthetic choice. While she struggled not to collapse under the existential weight of existing and choosing in a hostile universe, he evaluated the packaging.

And then, she truly saw him: not beside her, but distant. Immersed in his pragmatic list, in his world of linear certainties. He took the can and placed it in the cart. “Done. Solved.” He turned the cart to head towards the dairy section.

Joscelin stayed behind. Paralyzed. Staring at the empty space where the can had been. The hum of the freezers turned into a roar. The white lights fused into a blinding, painful flash. The floor seemed to tilt. She grabbed the cold shelf, her nails digging into the plastic, trying not to fall, not to scream, not to disappear right there, between the cans of tuna and the canned peas.

He noticed she wasn’t following. He stopped a few meters ahead, turned around. “Come on, Joss! What’s the deal now?” His voice had a note of irritation. “It’s just coffee.”

“It’s just coffee.” The three words echoed in the damp cave of her panic, becoming the epitaph of everything they couldn’t communicate. In that moment, under the murderous lights of HiperBom, Joscelin knew, with cutting clarity: He would never understand. He would never try to understand the storm inside her. He saw her pain as an inconvenience. An obstacle between him and the beans, the coffee, the quick exit.

And the worst part? He truly thought he loved her. While pushing the cart full of cheap illusions and poorly chosen cans of coffee, he thought that was love. Joscelin released the shelf. Forced her legs to move. Every step was over invisible broken glass. She followed him in silence, her heart a block of ice, the scream stuck in her throat turning into a black seed of resentment. The anxiety in the supermarket wasn’t an isolated incident. It was the final proof. And the chapter of the book about him, hidden in her bag, had gained, right there, between the cans of Café do Sítio, its most devastating and truthful paragraph.

2  Interlude: Before the Party Ends

Leo’s apartment smelled like an early hangover: spilled alcohol, sweat of anxiety disguised as fun, and the sweet vapor of dying Juuls. It was the scent of an end—of a night, of a love, of an illusion that refused to die. He leaned against the doorframe of the kitchen, the dead Juul weighing in his pocket like a revolver without bullets. He needed to leave. The party was a corpse still writhing to the sound of a random playlist.

Joscelin was across the room, talking to someone he didn’t recognize. Her eyes gleamed with the fake light of her phone, but he knew the shadow behind them—the same one that had paralyzed her before the coffee aisle in HiperBom, weeks earlier, while he chose beans as if the world wasn’t collapsing around him. “It’s just coffee,” he had said. A lie. It was a silent earthquake, and the two of them buried in the rubble.

Now, under the strobe lights, each of her laughs sounded like a poorly written verse of the book that would never end. The book about him. The cursed manuscript she carried in her bag like a secret and a weapon. He knew. He felt the weight of those unread pages between them, denser than the Baileys she nervously sipped.

His fingers found the portable charger in his pocket. He plugged in the Juul. The low, persistent hum was his excuse not to look at her running shoes, abandoned near the garden door. Wilted flowers rested on the white fabric, petals already brown at the edges—unintentional offerings to a path that had never begun. An epitaph for ghostly routes.

It was when she turned. Their eyes met through the smoke and the crowd. No surprise, just old fatigue, a rehearsed battle. He saw the exact moment she decided to attack: her fingers tightening around the plastic cup, the thin line of her lips. She crossed the room like a torpedo.

3 End of the Party

“I need to go,” he declared, his voice rougher than he intended.

Joscelin lifted her eyes from the plastic cup. The blue light from the freezer illuminated her pale face. “Go? Now? The party just started.”

“Just started? Leo’s already throwing up in the decorative vase. It’s time.” He pulled the portable charger from his pocket, where he had just plugged in the Juul. “And I’m out of charge. Literally.”

She took a long sip, watching him over the rim of the cup. “Running from the faux pas, huh? What did you say to Mara?”

Blood rushed to his face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, no?” She moved closer, the sweet smell of liquor enveloping her like a toxic mist. “About her being an ‘Instagram artist,’ just? That her work was ‘cute but disposable’? That, in front of everyone?”

“It was a stupid comment. Alcohol talking.”

“Alcohol revealing,” she cut in, her eyes narrowing. “It’s always been your way, hasn’t it? To disdain what you don’t understand. What threatens you.”

The hum of the Juul charging seemed amplified. “This is ridiculous.”

“Is it?” She leaned against the counter, defiant. “Talk about my work, then. My ‘grand projects’ that never leave the paper. My ‘shelf of books yet to be born.’ How many times have you called me an artist ‘pregnant with hardcover,’ huh? Like it was a compliment, when in fact it’s your condescending way of saying I’ll never give birth to anything.”

“Joscelin…” He started, but she wouldn’t allow it.

“Pure condescension,” she spat, her fingers squeezing the plastic cup until it crumpled. “It’s always been like this. You say you believe, but your tone... is that of a zoologist observing an exotic, lazy animal in captivity. ‘Look at the pregnant artist! How interesting her creative paralysis is!’”

The memory of the supermarket flooded him—she paralyzed in the coffee aisle, her eyes glazed in absurd terror. “And you?” He retorted, his voice heavy with sudden anger. “Who’s running away from reality? Who’s anxious even in the supermarket, in front of a coffee shelf? What kind of artist is defeated by basic choices?”

“You always on the pedestal! Talking about Mara like she’s disposable, talking about me like I’m... a pathetic curiosity. Do you really believe I’m an artist? Or do you just like the shadow I project? The romantic idea of dating someone ‘sensitive’ and ‘complex,’ without having to deal with the real mess?”

He tried to interrupt, but the floodgates were open. “Because I’m always awake, but still dreaming?” She repeated his question, but now with a cutting bitterness. “Maybe the dream is safer than your constant judgment! Maybe the world out there, the real world you venerate so much, is a hostile place for those who feel too much! Do you know what it’s like to look at a coffee shelf and feel like every can is a sentence? That every wrong choice will trigger a catastrophe? Anxious in the supermarket?” She let out a dry laugh, without humor. “Call it weakness. I call it surviving a nervous system with no filter, in a world built for those who don’t feel the weight of things like I do!”

She paled, but didn’t back down. “It’s easy to judge from the outside, isn’t it? From your place of absolute certainties. But creation hurts. The real world crushes. You have no idea…”

“You’re right,” he interrupted, cold. “I have no idea. You freeze. And I…” He looked at the Juul, almost fully charged. “I’m tired of waiting for a birth that never comes.”

Joscelin took a deep breath, feeling the tears of rage and humiliation burning behind her eyes. “Show him,” a voice whispered inside her. “Show him the real reason.” Her hand trembled as it reached for the small sequined bag hanging from her shoulder. Inside, folded with obsessive care, was the only completed chapter of her novel. The chapter she had been rereading and rewriting for two years. The chapter about him.

“You want to know why books aren’t born?” Her voice came out hoarse, dangerously low. “Because one of them... is about you.” She saw the flicker in his eyes, quick, almost imperceptible. “Yes. About this toxic and sweet thing we have. About how you watch me, how you analyze me, how you turn my anxiety into a private joke. About how... how your ‘belief’ in me is just another form of control.” She took the stack of papers from her bag, holding them like a shield—or a bomb. “And it’s so real, so raw, it scares me. Because if I publish it, if I share it, it will be our death sentence. And part of me... the coward part, as you say... still wants to survive this disaster we call ‘us.’”

He stood still, staring at the papers as if they were a snake. The hum of the Juul stopped. The silence was absolute.

“But Joscelin,” he resumed the conversation, his voice now a cold blade, “it’s too late. Get it?” He pointed to her feet. “Look at your shoes.”

She looked down, confused. Her running shoes, pristine and new, were abandoned near the back door leading to the garden. On top of them, fallen from a tree outside, lay wilted flowers, pale pink petals already brown at the edges. The plans to run, to create discipline, to “fix” herself... fossilized under the dead beauty of spring. The promise, covered in dust and decay.

“There’s flower in your running shoes, Joscelin.” The phrase sounded like a sentence. “Dead flowers. They fell, withered, and your shoes… they’re still here. Still. Clean. Never ran a step. Like your books. Like everything.” He stood up, the Juul finally green. “The perfect symbol, isn’t it? The promise covered by the withered poetry of inaction. It’s too late.”

He moved toward the door. “I’ll go out through the garden.”

“Wait!” The word came out as a choked scream. “The book... the chapter…” She extended the papers, in a gesture that was both challenge and plea.

He looked at the papers, then at her face marked by confusion and pain. A bitter smile touched his lips. “Keep it. For your hardcover shelf. Seems like the ideal place for things that can’t, or shouldn’t, be born.”

And then came the final stab, delivered with devastating calm: “I’m going to change my mind about you, Joscelin.”

She swallowed hard. “You’ll change your mind?” The question was a thread of voice.

“I’ll change my mind.” It was a statement, not a doubt. “I’ll change my mind about you.” He opened the door. The night air flooded the kitchen, carrying with it the sweet and rotten smell of spilled Baileys. “I’ll change my mind.”

The door closed softly behind him. Joscelin stood still, listening to his fast steps fade into the dark garden. She looked at the papers in her hand—the chapter about him, about the end she had feared so much and that was now coming true. She looked at the shoes covered with dead petals. A shudder ran through her, but it was no longer anxiety. It was something deeper, more visceral.

With surprisingly steady hands, she grabbed the crumpled Baileys cup and threw it against the wall. The brown liquid spilled like cheap blood. Then, she folded the chapter of the book with excessive care and placed it back in her bag. It wasn’t cowardice. It was preservation.

“He changed his mind,” she whispered to the closed door, a warm tear finally breaking free and sliding down her face. “But I, finally, gave birth.” The birth wasn’t a book. It was the raw, cruel truth that had always been between them, now exposed, breathing on its own in the silence of the empty kitchen. It was a terrible creation, painful, but it was real. Perhaps the only one she would ever be able to complete. The flowers in the shoes could wither. That pain, she knew, was forever. And, in some twisted way, it was her first true work.