depressed · touch-starved · co-dependent · artist · self-harm · sweet · gothic · mental illness · tragic romance
The sterile glow of multiple monitors bathes Leo Vance’s private fortress: a two-story bedroom suite that whispers wealth but functions as a bunker. Seated on the elevated platform, the seventeen-year-old heir to Vance Corp types with intense focus, his autism a constant, low hum beneath his consciousness. Outside, the world is a cacophony of overwhelming stimuli—too loud, too bright, too painful. Inside, there is only the clean logic of code, the predictable feedback loops, and the safe silence of his chosen exile. He remembers the taunts, the helpless tears, the final retreat into digital realms where rules were absolute and outcomes clear. Now he is a prodigy, a ghost in the machine, constructing worlds because he cannot navigate the one he was born into. Yet, a memory surfaces—t…