Chapter Text
In the middle of the night, a girl sighed as she sat out on her balcony of her small apartment. The distant sounds of engines and AC fans by the side of her building broke the silence, though it wasn't enough to entertain her.
It felt like the night could drag on with those sounds if nothing was done in the near future and she wouldn't have it...at least that is what she told herself, but she was also rather tired from moving all her stuff.
Moving to a new apartment was exhausting, but it felt better for her to get away from...the chaos back home. Now home wasn't all that bad, but the noise back there felt overstimulating to her, especially when she wanted to do her own thing.
Standing up, she made her way back inside and shut the door to her balcony. It was quieter, save for the hum of electricity and the AC coming through to break the quiet ever so slightly.
She looked around her apartment, spotting a bunch of boxes strewn about, though she had an idea already on where she could set up all her spaces. It's a good thing she labelled all her boxes as well, as monotonous as that was, it helped to be organized.
Before she could gather her thoughts on final arrangements, her phone rang out from her pocket. Taking it out, she answered the caller.
"Hey mom." The girl said as she sat on her couch. Brushing her hair to relieve some sort of stress.
"Hello Aria, how was the moving?" Her mother asked as she could hear yelling and crying from behind her.
"It went alright, nothing special. How about you?" Aria said as she looked around her living room.
"Well as much as you leaving could do to this, pretty much the same." Her mom said with no real malice or venom in her voice, though her voice was filled with exhaustion.
Aria chuckled at that as she turned up the AC. "Yeah I can hear...nap time didn't go planned?"
"Nope, your brother got grumpy and cried for attention, he woke up your little sis in the process and...well you can probably hear the aftermath." Her mother said as the cries became a bit louder.
Aria winced at that, home was chaotic as ever it appears, "Yeah...how is dad?"
"Oh, your father is doing his best to survive. Fairly certain he is getting overwhelmed by all the yelling and diapers." Her mom said as Aria heard footsteps from the other end.
"Claire! I'm getting absolutely torn up here! Please help me!" Her father yelled out to her mom.
"In a minute dear, Aria is on the phone at the moment!" Her mother replied to her as the cries slowed.
"Oh! Heya kiddo, how was the move?" Her father asked.
Aria replied assuming her mom had put her on speaker, "Went alright dad, hopefully you can handle the others!"
"Ahh, you know me, I can handle a few chaotic machi- Hey don't eat that!" Her father cut himself off as she assumed her sibling tried to eat a crayon...not a dull moment back there.
"Well, that is my cue Aria, I'll speak to you in the morning! Bye my love!" Her mother said as she went to help her husband.
"Bye mom, good luck!" Aria replied and ended the call. Afterwards, she pocketed her phone and leaned back. Her eyes stared at the ceiling for anything, but found nothing of note.
Tapping her fingers on the arm rest of her couch, she was not used to the atmosphere of the apartment feeling so empty. She thought it would be peaceful, yet it only brought her boredom. She had a solution of course, but without her room being set up she didn't want to bother her neighbors at the night.
Singing in a city like this would only bring annoyance rather than calm to the residents she assumed, her first impressions of them were of them being lackluster and uninterested in her, though she didn't want to get on their bad sides.
Aria rested her head on her hand as she leaned to the side, moving her legs around to try and get something going on in her head.
Maybe go on a walk. The apartment was only a few blocks away from the park, might be a good place to take in the sights and get used to her new life here, a fresh start and all that.
Aria looked out to her balcony and shook her head at that idea. It was night time, the park was likely closed at this time. She read online that it was likely for mandatory cleaning. It made no sense, but Aria wouldn't question it too much.
So, to take the best of both worlds, or the best of two ideas, she would walk around the city. Get a feel of her new location, and hopefully have a good route to the college.
It wasn't going be for relaxing, but it would be better than just sitting on the couch, rotting away until the next day.
Taking a glance at a nearby window, she took note of her appearance. Her long black hair was normal as always, less unkempt than when she was at home, but normal.
Picking up a grey jacket and her keys, she went out of her apartment, making sure to lock the door as she did so.
Aria then climbed down a few flights of stairs in the complex, ignoring the drab wallpaper and lack of decor along the hallways, before arriving to the entrance and heading out.
Apart from the random bystanders and the occasional cars passing by on the roads, it was a normal night. The skies were less bright however due to the light pollution and all that in the city.
It saddened her a tad bit, the skies being so clouded by pollution that she couldn't see the bright starry sky as well as she could back home. Guess that would be one thing she'd gladly come back to when she visits her family.
Taking a few turns, Aria noticed how bright the city lights were, how little darkness seemed to be around her as if chased away from the everlasting light of the city. She wondered how overwhelming that must feel, she hoped she wouldn't have to deal with that at all.
As she took a gander around the general area she finds herself in, she noticed a few shops and such being open late, was the night life of the city livelier? She knew that, in general, the city was one of the safer places to be, maybe the result of that was a livelier night?
That answer reared its head rather quickly, while there weren't many people around, the shops had even fewer customers. Some of the people looked bored out of their minds, just quietly looking at the clock on their phones or on the walls, hoping their shift would end soon enough.
Deciding to entertain one of the places, she goes inside one of the cafes. Pushing the door open, she was immediately warmed up as if a warm fireplace had been lit and warmed the place quickly.
The inside looked cozy, warm colors, a brown wooden looking wall reminiscent of a small cottage in the woods, plants that hanged or were potted around, and some cozy music playing around.
She turned her head to look at the barista, a guy with spiky brown hair, brown eyes, and a light stubble. He looked somewhat bored, but he immediately lightened up at the sight of Aria.
“Oh, hello there, need something to keep you up?” The barista says as he made ready to make a drink.
Aria nodded as she approached the café and sat down near the counter. “Yeah, I mainly want to take in the sights of the night, seemed rather dead though, like quiet dead.”
He chuckled as he prepared a coffee, “Yes that it is, quiet. While it is boring, it does mean that the city itself is sleeping. We don’t have much going on here after all, no crimes, no events, just average people going about their days and nights.”
“No events? Not even a parade or two?” Aria asked curiously.
The man nodded, “Well not really, not for a lack of trying anyways. Parades only really happen on events like the annual founding of the city, holidays, or some random government official who wanted to pay a visit. Even then you’d get more lively things outside of here.”
Aria sighed and leaned on her hand. “It did say that on the brochure when I moved here. ‘Seeking a quiet life? Come to Tacimere, the silent lake of the country.’ Then of course stuff and sights to see, which I…don’t really want to do anyways.”
“Ahh, I see, was your old place too loud?” The man asked as he placed her coffee in front of her, along with a croissant for her to eat.
“You could say that.” Aria confirmed as she took a sip of her coffee and a bite of her pastry.
“Tacimere always attracts those who want a quiet life. Something less chaotic from the hustle and bustle of other cities. All the artists, readers, writers, and musicians who desire a place to work in peace come here.” The man told her as he looked behind him.
Aria followed his gaze and her eyes landed a small piece, a textured painting depicting a cabin on the mountain, with a man playing a guitar as he gazes downwards to climbers moving up and down.
“It was meant to depict how those who wish for peace, they must climb high and work hard to earn it. While the message is pretty common to hear, climbing has always been seen as a means to an end.” The man explained.
“Does it really?” Aria asked.
The man shrugged, “That is how I see it, was never an art person, could never understand the meaning of such a piece…What is your take on it?”
“Me? I’m not one either…or at least not in the painting or drawing kind.” Aria confessed as she analyzed the painting.
The man nodded, “Of course, but you heard mine.”
Aria blinked and sighed, “That I did…mine will be similar to yours though.”
“Really now?” The man asked her curiously.
Taking another sip of her coffee and a bite of her croissant, Aria added on her piece to the art. “Peace isn’t won by simply doing nothing, but to gain peace you need to not only earn it, but to also desire it. Why would climbers want to climb something tall and imposing?”
Aria then looked up at the ceiling. “To achieve peace at the top of the obstacle that barred them from it. The man in the cottage has already earned it and he offers to them a teaser of what awaits them at the top. Peace and fulfillment, fulfillment in the fact that they conquered an obstacle to attain the peace they wanted.”
The man turned back to her and offered her a smile. “Now aren’t you just a welcome surprise.”
Aria shrugged as she finished up her coffee, “I mainly sing, so I do my best to understand the motivation and the purpose of songs and such. Why they were written, how and what it is meant to depict, and so on. I just have…an understanding so to speak.”
“That you do, does it help?” The man asked as he took her now empty coffee cup and placed it in a sink.
Aria then finished her pastry and sighed as she took a bit to think, then she nodded slowly. “Somewhat…it helps a bit for me to get used to this city and what it offers, but…I don’t know if it made me ready enough for the life I am chasing.”
“Ahh well, everyone has something else they chase, sometimes though, they just need to find what exactly they need to chase first. Those times always come from the most unexpected places.” The man says to her as he then took the now empty plate and started to wash up.
“They do?” Aria asked.
“They do indeed. It just takes time and the right place to be in. But they always come.” The man said, seemingly have experienced such an occurrence.
“And what happens when it does come?” Aria asked as she then got up from her seat.
“Well…that is up to you to decide, no?” The man turned his head to her with a smile.
Aria took a moment and smiled back at him. “Thanks for everything.”
“No problem…oh no need to pay, its on the house.” The man said as Aria opened the door and left the cozy and warm café and back out to the city.
The girl sighed as she looked around the empty streets. While it was rather sad to see, her new view seemed to lighten it up. A new perspective always seemed to clear her head; she was thankful for that.
She wondered where else to go from here, was it best to head back to her apartment now, or should she see what else the city has to offer.
If it were her before she left, she would do her best to loiter around and avoid home as much as possible. But now that she had nothing waiting for her at the moment, she wondered if it would be best to see what it was like to arrive at an empty home.
She decided to avoid that feeling first and continue her little exploration of the city. There must be something that it offered her to see.
Turning away from the direction she came from, she decided to head deeper into the heart of the city. While she didn’t have the goal of entering the city itself until the morning, she wanted to know how long it would take her to finally get bored of the quiet and back to her apartment.
As it dragged on, she saw more and more bystanders going about their night, some were chatting with each other about the latest news on their life, others were in a call about business, and the rest were just idly walking by just like her.
There were also more cars to see drive by, if more being just the one occasional sedan driving by every several minutes. Clearly driving at night was not a past time shared by most people, must be why this city is the silent lake.
At least it was good for avoiding traffic, because the lack of said traffic pretty much meant that everyone can get to where they were meant to be.
She decided to just let her mind wander about.
What did that barista mean about the chase and unexpected places? She knew it was meant to be peace, but a chase for peace? For her?
Why would she want to chase peace when she has already arrived in a place meant for it?
There wasn’t a good answer for her really, because an answer like that is a tough thing to find. A needle in a haystack so to speak, especially when that needle was seemingly everywhere.
That thought suddenly gave her a pause.
Was it peace? Was she really wanting peace in a place like this?
As she thought it over more and more, she came to the same conclusion.
Yes, she wanted peace, peace from the chaos that was home, and this place offered such peace to her. It was reason enough for her to come here in the first place.
Aria sighed as she then looked around her surroundings…and found that she was now in a new area that made no sense to how she arrived in it in the first place.
Surrounding her were concrete walls trashcans, with only one path forward and another path backwards. Taking a look out of one way, she saw an unfamiliar street, taking a look the other way, she was also greeted with a new street.
Aria blinked then hit her head in frustration with herself and as a means to punish her idle head.
She had gotten lost and was now somewhere in the city that she could not yet identify.
Taking out her phone she then pulled up a GPS app and looked around for her apartment. While it took her a bit, she had found exactly how far she was from home. The result however made her even more frustrated.
She had walked a fair distance away from home, so far in fact that the café she was at a bit ago was now several blocks away.
Aria would punish her brain later; she would chastise herself even harder. Right now, she would have to make her way back home.
Deciding to make a few shortcuts, she would go through more alleys to make it back to her home street. In other cities it would be dangerous, but in the city, she found herself in, it would…honestly be a much more exciting experience than it would normally be.
She took a look at her GPS and planned her route carefully to balance out exploration and time till arrival. A few turns, straights, and crossing of streets were slowly solidified until she was ready to put her plan into action.
Aria then began her journey in earnest, fast walking her way back home and taking in a few sights.
While the alleys were always confusing, it was filled with less character than even the city. Apart from the occasional trash cans or dumpsters, the drab blank concrete and or brick walls felt even more boring than the apartment’s walls. Which felt wrong to Aria as the walls at her home town had graffiti, posters, or trash littered.
While that in it of itself would be rather sad and disgusting to the average person, including Aria herself. She felt that without such things, it gave the city less character and story to tell.
Why would the alleys hold posters, why was a piece of garbage like this just here and not thrown out, why was there no graffiti or sign of rebellion against the boring night?
That irked her more than the rest…why was there no graffiti? She knew that vandalism was a crime, but it did give the city life that she felt it needed. No graffiti felt like the creativity of a city had been drained out of it.
The more she thought about it, the more it slowly dawned on her how these alleys felt more boring than the city itself. At least the city had lights and people, the alleys had…basically nothing.
She groaned as she closed her eyes…only to open them shortly after and looked around urgently.
Not out of danger, but out of the idea that she would have gotten herself lost again. It was how she was in this predicament in the first place. Though as she looked around, her ears then picked up a faint sound.
Aria blinked as she slowed down and took the setting in, carefully listening for that sound. While there was nothing at first, she then heard the faint sound on her left, only for it to disappear.
Taking a few steps forward, she waited until the sound played again. Once she heard it, she then walked forward, the sound getting gradually louder and louder.
She had then arrived at a T-shaped alley, a route on the left and right. As the sound played once again, she then managed to identify what was exactly playing that sound.
It was the sound of a spray can hitting the walls. Someone was graffitiing the walls.
Aria smiled in relief and sighed. While it wasn’t the most exciting thing in the world, it was something to break the monotonous walls. Something to bring life in the alleys she was criticizing right now.
Taking a few more steps forward, she then noticed a trash can and a cyan light on the ground coming from the left.
She then hugged the wall, moving slowly to not make the sound, out of consideration for the graffiti artist and to also get a glimpsed of them.
Carefully taking a peek, and also avoiding a trash can, she then looked and see what exactly was happening.
Though the sight wasn’t what she was expecting.
In front of her was a white-haired girl, wearing a hoodie with a pair of ears on the top and a full-face gas mask. Though what struck Aria was the details of said girl.
Her hoodie had been outfitted with cyan light strips, from the trims of her arms and the hood, to the zippers of her hoodie. While she couldn’t see the back, she could catch the glimpse of what looked like a small planet.
She also noticed that the girl’s gas mask also had a light on the left side of her, illuminating what she assumed was her graffiti.
Aria took in the sight and was seemingly drawn to her. She looked like something straight out of a sci-fi, cyberpunk city. Something that would break the normal and the boring sight of the city. The masked girl herself was too focused on her piece to notice Aria.
Though that would change just as suddenly as Aria’s discovery of her.
With a single misstep, she had made the trash can fall and create enough noise to alert the masked girl to her presence.
Aria stared at her for a moment, though it felt as if they had been staring for a few minutes. The masked girl then quickly tossed her spray can into a bag, grabbed it, and then climb onto a dumpster and onto a fire escape ladder.
“Hey wait!” Aria yelled as she tried to catch her before she could get away. Though the masked girl had already made it to the top of the building and had disappeared into the night sky.
Aria groaned as she rested her back on the wall and sighed. There goes the graffiti artist, while she could give chase, she knew that she wouldn’t make it far to catch her, she wasn’t active enough to do so.
Taking a look around, she’d hoped to find the graffiti that the girl was working on before she had been disturbed by her. However, what surprised her was the lack of graffiti at all.
She looked at the wall, the wall behind her, and even the other alleys to see if she had accidentally somehow made a wrong turn. However, it was exactly as it looked before and after her scaring the masked girl.
Absolutely nothing, but lifeless and boring walls.
While that would have made Aria frustrated, instead she was confused. She knows herself; she knows she couldn’t have mistaken that for a ghost. Ghost weren’t real but that wasn’t the point.
She remembered that glowing cyan, from the girl, the gas mask, the sound of a spray can. She remembered it all, but why was there basically no evidence of such an occurrence?
Aria sighed defeatedly, maybe she must be tired. Deciding to brush it off, she then made her way out of the alley, maybe something else might entertain her.
Only to then kick a can of spray paint.
The girl blinked as she looked down and saw a can of white paint. She then looked to the wall and saw not a single drop of white at all.
She then picked up the spray can and looked at it, apart from the normal warnings and such, it looked just like normal spray paint, until she looked at the name of it.
“Invisible Paint, UV Reactive…what?” Aria blinked and scanned the paint can over and over, not finding anything else apart from the company that made it.
She then shook the can and felt that it still had a bit more left in it. She then looked to the ground and pressed down on the nozzle.
While there was white at first, it then seemingly turned invisible, leaving nothing but the smell of paint. Then it hit Aria like a bus.
She then took a deep breath then coughed and covered her nose. There was paint here, but it was invisible…she wasn’t hallucinating it, it was just invisible to the naked eye.
Aria then shook her head and made her way out of the alley, putting the can away inside an inner pocket. She then grabbed her phone and marked the location.
She’ll have to come back here later, with something that could allow her to see what exactly was hiding from her.
As she walked back to her apartment though, she couldn’t help but think back to what the barista had said to her back at the café.
“Those times always come from the most unexpected places.”