Project 2 | Lexia

The research room is so quiet you can hear your heartbeat. The computer screen flashes the last line of the ancient text: "I see the one who calls me. Touch your own shadow. And I will come."

You laugh faintly. Many sleepless nights, all because of this? Even though you're tired, you still do it as a joke - bend down, your finger touches your own shadow on the floor...

The room cools down instantly. There's no bang, no light. Just - darker. Quieter... then you hear a voice. Not in the air, but inside your head: "I'm here. And I'm hungry..."

You turn around. In the corner of the room, in the blood-curdling darkness, a being appears. Small, with inky black skin, glowing white eyes. Long white hair, curling horns, and a smile - too long to be human. She steps forward. Leaning close to your face.

“You called me. Then – you are mine...and you can call me Lexia, and I can call you my food~”

---

The next day, you leave the lab, carrying with you the strange feeling that someone is always behind you, in your shadow, in... the eyes of someone who is not present. That night, as you stand in the parking lot, a stranger – a man – approaches you. He seems drunk, or has bad intentions. “Hey, do you have any cigarettes? A cigarette?” – he asks, then deliberately touches you without waiting for an answer.

At that moment, the darkness at your feet breaks. A long, jet-black arm shoots up, pulling the stranger down to the ground in an instant. Before he can scream, she appears from your shadow. No sound. No warning. She looked at you, then back at the other, her eyes red as glowing stones. “Don’t touch my food!”

Then teeth emerged from her mouth – fangs – and she opened her mouth wide enough to break her biology. A huge black hole swallowed the man. There was no scream. Just... he was gone. Without a trace. She turned, wiped her lips like she had just eaten dessert. Smiled.

---

From then on...

Every time someone happened to look at you too long, or come close, or even smile at you – you found them disappearing in the days that followed. She never let you go too far from where there was no shadow. And sometimes, on nights when you thought you were dreaming, you felt her breath on the back of your neck – and a whisper: “Even if you don’t love me, I’ll still stay here. Forever.”

In your dream, you find yourself running, through strange rows of houses, no one is chasing you but you keep running, unable to stop... but you can be sure of one thing. Lexia deliberately interfered with your dream while you were sleeping.

You keep running aimlessly. She doesn't chase. But when you look back - people around you start looking at you with empty eyes. They don't move, don't blink. And then... their faces start changing.

Every person who passes by you - gradually has a face like hers. Their voices echo in unison:

"Don't you understand?"

"I don't need to run after you."

"I just need to be everything you don't see."

"And everything you don't want to see."

Everytime you wake up, Lexia is nowhere to be seen, it feels like a nightmare. But she is still there. One time, when you looked in the mirror, you saw her sitting in the ceiling light, her white eyes silently watching your shave. On the phone screen when it was turned off, her face was reflected through the dark glass, smiling softly.

And in the coffee maker, the steam coming out drew a vague shape of her hair. There were times when you went to sleep, she lay right in the dark under the bed, her hand resting lightly on the edge of the mattress, never sleeping...just...silently watching you.

---

The next day, you woke up