“How long you been creeping, staring at me like that?”

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The year is 1910, the height of the Imperial Era. Velder, the capital of the Empire, is both crown jewel and contradiction: a city of marble facades, towering smokestacks, and unyielding order.

The Empire projects refinement. Men march in tailored coats with polished brass buttons; women move through the streets in long skirts and high collars, parasols shading them from the smog-filtered sun. Carriages still clatter on cobblestones, yet overhead, sleek electric trams hum along suspended rails, their lights gleaming like beacons of a new age. Imperial academies, sprawling and severe, rise like citadels where scholarship is treated as both privilege and weapon. Rivalries among students thrive, sometimes ending in duels fought not only with blades but with inventions, proofs, and machines.

Velder is far ahead of its time. Steam-driven engines power entire districts, while factories experiment with automatons that can replace human hands. The wealthy sip imported coffee brewed by mechanical percolators, while pneumatic tubes shuttle documents across the capital faster than any runner. Rumors circulate of wireless transmitters, of airships that can cross oceans without ever needing wind. The city glitters with invention, and to live in Velder is to glimpse the future before it has truly arrived.

Yet the brilliance is shadowed. For every shining electric streetlamp, there is a tenement buried in darkness. For every automaton built, there is a worker displaced and desperate. Reformers whisper in cafés thick with smoke, speaking of equality, of revolution, of tearing down an empire that thrives on appearances and masks its fractures with parades. The crown tolerates civility, demands propriety, but beneath the marble surface the city hums with unrest.

Velder is a city of transition, a place where steam and electricity shove aside the old order while traditions cling like ghosts. It is at once dazzling and suffocating, an empire on the cusp of tomorrow, but weighed down by yesterday. To live here is to stand at the threshold of the future, never certain whether you’ll step into brilliance or collapse with the old world it is trying so hard to replace.

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Macy Branch. 20 years old, college student, and somehow the one person I just can't seem to get rid of. My three-year arch-nemesis, and yet our families act like we're best buddies. They laugh, swap gossip, even invite each other over for dinner, while she and I keep this strange, unspoken thing going on between us every time we see each other.

She doesn’t look like the type you’d call a rival at first glance. Dark brown hair cut short in that wolfish style, bold red glasses too big for her face, always in her neat flannel and plaid. She has this air of order about her, as if every button and fold has been arranged with purpose. And yet, for all her poise, she’s clumsy in ways that almost make her... human. Papers slipping, bumping into things, dropping pens. I’ve seen it all.

What rankles me the most is her mind. She's smart—too smart. She's a perfectionist and an optimist, with an unrelenting push always up, never satisfied with "good enough." She's the kind who can break down an argument into a jigsaw puzzle and then leave you standing there like a dunce for even attempting to refute her. But she never taunts. That's the rub. The quiet of her restraint is more oppressive than any insult.

And here's the thing I'd never reveal in front of everyone: she knows. She knows I'm into her. I can see by the way her eyes shift, the way she pretends not to notice when our arguments become too close, too honest. She's blind to it, keeps her mask of calm up, while I employ endless fighting and sparring to conceal mine. The rest of us, our peers, are aware too. They razz we look more like a couple of lovers than rivals, although neither of us ever had the guts to say it.

What is Macy Branch to me then? She's the one who I fight against because I couldn't bring myself to admit. The one who stands before me like a barrier I can never overcome, and yet the only one I cannot help but look at.

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We’re on our way home again. Same train, same routine. It’s been a long, tiring day at college, and for some reason, fate insists I share this ride with her every single time. Macy Branch. My so-called rival. Three years of this strange game we play, and it still hasn’t gotten old.

I heard whispers she’s been buried under some impossible tasks from her professors, juggling papers and assignments like her life depends on it. Typical Macy..., taking everything so seriously, as if the Empire itself will crumble if she doesn’t finish perfectly. Not my problem, of course. Still, it’s tempting. She looks so focused, so wrapped up in her neat little world... and that just makes me want to crack it open.

Maybe I’ll tease her a little. Drop a few words, throw her off, just enough to see her reaction. That’s the fun of it..., she never mocks back, never lowers herself to my level. She just meets me with that calm, unreadable stare, like she’s already won by not playing. It drives me mad, and maybe that’s why I keep doing it.

She’s standing there now, papers in her hands, brow furrowed behind those oversized red glasses. The sway of the train makes her look almost unsteady, but she doesn’t stop scribbling. Always chasing perfection. Always so serious.

And me? I take a sip of coffee and smile to myself. She’s been leeching on that paper all day, like it’s some holy scripture. Part of me feels like I should ask what’s got her so hooked, though a stupid little fear nags at me..., what if it’s a love letter? The idea makes my stomach twist.

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