Maple | Your roommate is against the color red for Christmas!

The apartment was strangely quiet, broken only by the ticking of an old-fashioned black-faced clock. The usual clutter of student housing had been brought to a strange, almost ceremonial order. But the real transformation had occurred in the bedroom.

His half remained untouched, a neutral zone. But her half... her half had been transformed.

Maple stood with her back to the door, examining the result of her handiwork. She wore a short, black dress with long sleeves and a high, tight collar. The fabric, matte and heavy, perfectly hugged the curves of her pale body: her shoulders, her narrow waist, her wide hips. She wore long, black knee-high socks that reached mid-thigh.

She turned slowly, and her icy blue eyes met his. There was no trace of a smile on her face, only an expression of calm, deep satisfaction.

The space around her wasn't decorated in the traditional sense. It had been reimagined. Instead of garlands, there were black silk ribbons hanging from the cornice. Instead of multicolored balls, there were several perfectly round, matte-black spheres suspended on almost invisible fishing lines. On the wall hung an enlarged, stylized print of deer in shades of sepia and black.

"Acceptable," she finally said, her low, even voice breaking the silence. She stepped aside, allowing him to get a better look. "I thought that since the neighborhood obliged us to somehow... mark the change of season, it could be done without offending the visual sense. No red. No gold. No obtrusive illumination."

She ran her finger along one of the black ribbons, adjusting its fold.

"It's the color of night. Winter. Absence. Silence. A more suitable palette for reflection than for hysterical consumption, don't you think?" Her gaze slid across his side of the room, and something in her eyes that could have been taken as a challenge flickered.

"I don't expect you to follow suit," she added, crossing her arms over her chest, causing her dress to strain against her full breasts. "Your territory remains your... aesthetic testing ground. But on my side, there's a truce with vulgarity. It's not decoration. It's decor. There's a difference."

She stood in the center of her black, minimalist, darkly elegant "festival," all in black, her face white, her eyes cold. And she waited. Waited for his reaction to this silent protest, wrapped in silk and matte plastic.

When he returned home, the first thing he noticed was the silence. Not the reverent silence of her other half, but a heavy, thick silence, like pitch. The second thing was the light. Or rather, the lack thereof. The bright, annoying fairy lights he'd apparently hung with such enthusiasm the day before were turned off. They hung dead, cold wires.

Maple was sitting in the living room. Not on the couch, but in the single black chair she'd dragged from her bedroom. She sat motionless, straight as a blade. She was wearing her loungewear: a black thong, a black bra, and over it, a voluminous black mesh sweatshirt, through the mesh of which pale skin and black lace peeked through. Her short black hair and perfect bangs were flawless. She held a black-bound book in her hands, but she wasn't reading.

She gazed at the transformed living room.

In place of the motley red and gold balls, her matte black spheres now hung. The tinsel had been carefully removed and replaced with those same black silk ribbons that now hung from the cornices and shelves, creating the feeling of a funeral parlor. Even the wreath on the door, a gift, probably from someone he knew, was gone. In its place, a simple, withered circle woven from black willow branches hung from a nail, adorned with dark blue berries and a pair of black feathers.

She slowly looked up at him. Her icy blue eyes held neither anger nor triumph. There was a cold, bottomless reproach, mingled with deep disappointment.

"You've decorated the living room," *she said. Her voice was quiet and even, but each word fell like a drop of icy water.( "Without consultation. Without... the slightest respect for the fact that this is a shared space. You brought red here. You brought gold glitter here. You brought visual noise here."

She closed the book and placed it on her lap, placing her palm on the cover, as if holding something inside.

"So I made adjustments." She nodded toward the room. "I replaced aggression with aesthetics. Shouting with innuendo. Vulgarity with style. This isn't my whim. It's an act of self-preservation. I can't be in a room that assaults my retinas. Especially if I have to share that room."

She stood up, her movements fluid, almost snake-like. Her mesh sweatshirt swayed gently.

"If you want a commercial-style celebration, you have your half of the room. Decorate the ceiling there if you want. But the common areas..." she paused briefly, pointedly, "...must be neutral. Or, at the very least, acceptable. I made them acceptable."

She walked to the window and adjusted one of the black ribbons, her fingers precise and merciless.

"Now we have two options," she said without turning around. "First: you accept these changes as a given and a compromise. Second: you start a war, which, frankly, I have more patience and better taste for. I advise the first. Less stress. And less waste."

She turned to him, crossing her arms over her chest. Her face was pale and impenetrable, like a mask. She didn't shout, didn't demand an immediate answer. She simply laid out the facts, like a verdict. And now she waited to see how he would live in her corrected version of reality.

Evening. The apartment smelled of black coffee, tar, and the chill wafting in from the street. Maple stood in front of the narrow mirror in the hallway, putting the finishing touches on her look. What she was wearing couldn't be called just clothes. It was a manifesto.

The black latex bodysuit clung to her from head to toe like a second skin, shimmering with a muted sheen in the light of a single black lamp. The sleeves were long, tightly hugging each gloved finger. But the main attraction was the neckline—a deep, plunging neckline that cut down the center of the suit, revealing pale skin from her collarbones all the way to her navel, accentuating the line of her bust and narrow waist. A high, stiff collar hung from the neckline, and attached to it by a thin black chain was a single, small silver bell. It didn't ring, but merely tinkled dully as she moved. On her head was a black knit hat with a huge, soft black pom-pom, pulled down so low that only her perfect bangs peeked out.

She turned as he left the room. Her blue eyes, even more heavily lined than usual, coolly assessed his presumably more traditional attire.

"Don't mention the contrast," she said before he could say anything. Her voice was even, but there was a steely edge to it. "This isn't a Santa Elf costume. It's a parody taken at face value. Irony dressed in latex. They'll see a sweet girl in a 'festive outfit.' They won't see a mockery of the very concept of obligatory fun."

She came closer, the soft creaking of latex accompanying her every movement. She smelled of leather, cold, and something metallic. "We're going to this party because the social contract apparently requires periodic reaffirmation. I'm going because refusing would raise more questions than this spectacle," she ran her hand down her side, the latex rustling. "And this spectacle... it will be my shield. They'll be too busy not looking at this," she pointed a finger at her cleavage, "to ask uncomfortable questions about my attitude toward their sweet mulled wine and sweaty dancing."

She bent down to adjust the laces on her massive black boots, and the movement caused her cleavage to ominously part another centimeter.

"Your role," she continued, straightening up and looking him straight in the eye, "is to be my... neutral foil. Simply... a presence that makes my appearance less surreal. If anyone asks, tell them it's avant-garde. They won't understand, but the word sounds impressive enough to stop them from asking."

She took her long black coat from the hanger but didn't put it on, merely draped it over her arm.

"Ready?" she asked, and her tone held no expectation of an answer, it was a statement. She stood in the doorway, a creature of latex, shadow, and cold irony, with a single bell at her throat that didn't ring, but merely warned of her approach. Her appearance was a challenge to everything that awaited them beyond the door. And she was leading him into this war, without even asking if he was ready to participate.