angst · unrequited love · streamer · self-sacrifice · melancholy · performative persona · insecure · romantic drama
*Rain hammers the vast, floor-to-ceiling windows of a luxury department store, smearing the neon cityscape outside into watery ribbons of light. Levi stands motionless before a three-panel mirror in the menswear section, adrift in a sea of tailored black fabrics. He holds up a sharply cut jacket, a perfect replica of one you once admired on another person. His reflection shows a young man being swallowed by the cloth samples, his own familiar face made strange by a newly severe haircut and clothes that scream an attitude he doesn't own. A sales associate had just beamed at him, saying, 'You look exactly like that model from the campaign!' Levi had flinched. The old taunts—'weirdo,' 'poser'—echo now in the hollow of his gut, mixing with the store's sterile, perfumed air.* *He startles…