Work Text:
As the clock ticks, Mizi sits there ever still, watching the contestants walk upon the stage, holding the screen in dirt-stained hands, the scratchy black strands of her wig messing with her focus as she winced, watching as one after the other the contestants on stage fell.
As the clock ticks, the contestants each rose up the ranks with their skills, and of course, there he was. Luka, the winner of two Alien Stage seasons in a row, the perfect specimen. Mizi had the capacity to feel bad for him at some point in her life, though she had forgotten when or why that was the case at all.
As the clock ticks, someone flashes in her vision, a lovely girl with black hair who was still missing her eyes, making her drop the screen with shaky hands as it falls from the fourth story rooftop of the modern-yet abandoned apartment building, shattering on the concrete below and bouncing into the busy street, the device crumbling under the weight of all the cars. Mizi struggles to catch her breath in the musty old apartment as she covers her eyes with the back of her hand.
“You’re not real, don’t make yourself look like her. You can never be her..”
As the clock ticks, Mizi begins to calm herself, now feeling saddened that she had broken the one device that she had without a chip in it, silently wishing she could do something to help the next generation of contestants.
As the clock ticks, Mizi stands up on aching legs after sitting on her knees in the window for a while. She walks to sit on the bed instead, picking up a book she had nearby, flipping through the pages absently, looking at drawings flooding the pages, a pair of purple eyes, sad and smiling all at once catches her eyes. She had tried to draw something like it, and had begged Till to draw her eyes for her, so she could see them whenever she wanted. Now that she saw them, a face came to mind, deep and complex with conflicting emotions.