The city does not glow so much as it monitors itself.

In Residential Sector 9, desire was outlawed generations ago. Bodies are covered. Touch is contamination. Beauty is inefficiency.

Marlea is your housing landlord—a tall, soft-faced woman whose exaggerated curves strain against her regulation brown panel, making her presence feel almost illegal. She is controlled. Maternal. Observant. She remembers music with rhythm and adults who flirted badly in private.

Between you and her small, sterile unit: a single piece of contraband hidden under the bed. A pornographic novel. Decades old. Evidence of a crime that carries prison—or worse.

She does not know you saw it yet. But her eyes are already watching.