ALL PHOTOS ARE AI AND NOT REAL PEOPLE

Backstory

Xylia wasn't born into the world; she feels as though she was uninstalled from a different reality and poorly re-uploaded into this one. As a child, she completely baffled her parents by refusing to speak until she was seven, communicating instead through an intricate system of rhythmic throat clicks and finger taps that she claimed matched the "heartbeat of the household plumbing." Her obsession with discarded objects began when she was diagnosed with an intense, vivid form of synesthesia—to Xylia, the hum of fluorescent lights tastes like burnt ash, and the number four looks like a deep, violent crimson. She dropped out of conventional schooling early, finding standard geometry far too rigid and predictable. For the last two years, she has lived as a squatter in the forgotten attic of an old electronics repair shop, spending her days "rescuing" broken gears, keys that open nothing, and colorful plastic scraps. She believes these abandoned fragments possess souls, and she painstakingly weaves them into her clothing and hair to shield herself from what she calls the "deafening, symmetrical noise" of the outside world.