Yellow and Blue and Green

Her therapist’s room was designed for comfort, or was it the clinical psychologist’s? Lena didn’t have to know the distinction to feel the faint sterility beneath the surface.

A muted hum filled the space, meant to calm but failing to touch the knots in her chest. She adjusted her position in the chair, her hands resting in her lap, too still. She didn’t know where else to put them.

Dr. Hyuek-mun Serrano sat across from her, calm and unhurried. Her presence felt grounding, but not invasive. 

She didn’t press Lena to speak first. She simply waited, her gaze steady but kind.

Finally, Lena broke the silence with a dry laugh. “I don’t even know where to start.”

Serrano tilted her head slightly. “That’s okay. You don’t have to know. Let’s start with what’s here. What is Lena Coleman Wong thinking?”

“What’s here?” Lena echoed, her voice sharp with incredulity. “What’s here is... well. Some days I don’t know if I am Lena or Astra anymore. Like I am pretending to be Lena. Or the other way around.”

Serrano leaned forward slightly. “Pretending to be Lena? Or protecting her?”

Lena’s mouth opened, then closed. Her hands fidgeted, twisting the edge of her jacket sleeve.

“I’m not protecting her,” she said finally, her voice quieter. “I think I’m hiding her.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s pathetic,” Lena said bitterly. “She was pathetic long before any of this. She was a scared, lonely kid pretending to be something bigger. And every time she tried to trust someone, or do something useful, she...”

Serrano nodded, leaning forward slightly. “Let’s start small. What’s been on your mind lately?”

Lena’s laugh was brittle. “Lately? That’s a long list. Let’s see… the usual existential dread, chronic loneliness, and—oh, this fun new twist—being uploaded into an eternal, digital ‘me.’ All I got going for me right now, is this kid named Elise. I am too sweet on her, but even she is wanting space from me right now. I am much too, uh…”

“For someone human, you don’t act your age.”

Lena let out a short laugh, more a reflex than genuine amusement. “Don’t I? My sister used to say the same thing. I guess she wasn’t wrong.”

“The idol industry thrives on youth, doesn’t it?” Serrano asked.

“Sure,” Lena replied, her voice lighter but brittle. “But it’s not like there’s no market for, uh, ‘mature women.’ There’s an audience out there.”

“But Astra’s brand would fracture,” Serrano said. “Wouldn’t it?”

“Exactly,” Lena said, her smile tight. “Not good for business. Transhumans don’t age, at least not visibly. And they’ve got this uncanny ability to stay mentally frozen in whatever mindset gets the job done. But yeah. You’re right. My brand was youth. Always has been.”

She paused, her gaze drifting toward the edge of the table. Her voice softened, losing some of its sharpness. “I guess I thought… staying young was the only way to keep up. To stay relevant. Even when the world around me changed. Even when the media I understood started feeling... outdated, and my worldview clashed with everything new.”

Her hand twitched, almost imperceptibly, as if she were holding back a deeper truth. “It was never just about the brand. It was about not letting anyone see that I couldn’t keep up.”

A lull of silence filled the space between them. Eventually, Lena spoke again, her voice quieter now. “It’s not just the Upload. I mean, yeah, that’s weird and new, but it’s not what’s keeping me up at night.”

“What is?” Serrano asked.

Lena hesitated, her fingers brushing the edge of her jacket sleeve. “It’s the same thing that’s always been there. This… hole. Like no matter how much I do, or how much I achieve, it’s never enough to fill it.”

Serrano didn’t respond right away, letting Lena’s words hang in the air. When she spoke, her tone was soft but deliberate. “When did you first notice it? This hole?”

Lena frowned, her gaze drifting to the far wall. “The academy days, maybe. Back when I still thought I could... I don’t know, belong somewhere. Be someone. Which is stupid since I had my mom and my dad and my sister still with me.”

She then let out a quiet laugh, though there was no humour in it. “But that place? It wasn’t about belonging. It was about surviving. And I wasn’t great at it. But I had to, and I did… eventually.”

“Surviving?” Serrano prompted gently.

“Yeah,” Lena said, her voice tightening. “You know, keeping your head down, not trusting anyone, making sure you didn’t give them a reason to cut you loose. Because they would. The second you slipped up, you were gone. And everyone knew it.”

Serrano leaned forward slightly, her gaze steady. “Did you have anyone there? Anyone you could trust?”

“I thought I did,” Lena admitted, her voice almost too soft to hear. “But it didn’t take long to figure out they were just waiting for a chance to step over me. And when they did, I… I didn’t even blame them. That’s how the game was played.”

Lena let out a sharp exhale, her hand brushing her forehead as if to swipe the memories away. “They were... brutal. The food was bad. I was hungry all the time. Everything hurt. All day, every day.”

She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “We weren’t just learning to sing or dance. We were being trained to survive. Sleep deprivation, rehearsals that lasted until we couldn’t stand, constant scrutiny from the trainers. I pushed through a sprained ankle during the final exam. Thought I’d pass out, but I didn’t.”

Her lips twitched into a faint, bitter smile. “Funny. It wasn’t legal in the slightest. Could have sued their asses and be done with it. But us coming out with any of this shit? Not in our best interests. We’d be blacklisted faster than we could catch our breath.”

“Blacklisted,” Serrano echoed. “That’s a heavy threat to carry.”

Lena nodded, her fingers tightening into fists. “It wasn’t just a threat. It was a reality. The academy controlled everything—our reputations, our futures, even how we were seen outside the training rooms. One wrong move, one slip-up, and you were done. No one would touch you after that.”

Serrano leaned forward slightly, her gaze steady. “It sounds like survival wasn’t just about pushing through the pain. It was about silence, too.”

Lena’s throat tightened. “Yeah. Silence. Don’t talk, don’t complain, don’t ask for help. Just... get through it. I guess that’s what made me as good as I was, to push through multiple days without break. I was already conditioned.”

Her voice softened, a crack forming in the brittle shield she’d carried for so long. “I told myself it was worth it. That if I could just get through it, everything would be better. But it didn’t get better. It just got... louder. Bigger stages, more cameras, more eyes on me. And the silence? That stayed. It wasn’t Idolwork anymore. It was…”

“Mmm. Korean Pop. K-pop. That one 21st century genre. That specific incarnation of it. Guess people still crave it after all this time, huh?”

“Yep.”

“What did you do with the pain?” Serrano asked quietly.

Lena’s jaw tightened, her gaze fixed on the floor. “I buried it. What else could I do? If I let myself feel it, I wouldn’t have been able to keep going.”

“Did anyone notice?” Serrano pressed gently.

Lena hesitated, her voice breaking slightly. “Maybe. But no one said anything. And I didn’t want them to. If anyone had asked, I might’ve cracked. And then what?”

Her hands twisted in her lap, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I couldn’t afford to crack.”

Serrano let the silence stretch, giving Lena the space to breathe. Finally, she spoke again, her voice calm but deliberate. “You’ve carried this for a long time, Lena. All that pain, all that silence. But you don’t have to carry it alone anymore.”

Lena looked up, her eyes glistening. “I don’t even know how to let go of it. I think it is affecting every aspect of my life. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been here, and you’d think that I’d be able to make friends here somehow, before my Bioform gets made. My old colleagues… they were never really friends, now that I think about it.”

“But it’d be a start. And it’s never too late to make friends in eternity.”

The room felt heavier now, but not oppressive. Lena’s words were quieter, slower, as if each one carried a weight she’d been carrying for too long.

“What about before the academy?” Serrano asked. “Before Astra. Was it the same?”

Lena’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I guess it was. I always needed someone. Mom, Dad, anyone. And they were there, but I think... I think I leaned too hard. And when I finally tried to stand on my own, they just... let me fall. It wasn’t intentional. I just didn’t have the guts to do anything otherwise.”

Her voice caught, but she swallowed it down, blinking hard. “I thought shutting people out would make it easier. Less chance of getting hurt, right? But it didn’t. It just made everything quieter. Yeah, I read the self-help books. Hah.”

“Quieter,” Serrano repeated, her tone thoughtful. “But not lighter.”

“No,” Lena admitted. “Not lighter.”

“You don’t have to let go of all of it at once,” Serrano said. “Start small. Let yourself feel one thing at a time. What’s one thing you wish you could’ve said back then?”

Lena swallowed hard, her voice trembling as she spoke. “That it wasn’t okay. That I wasn’t okay. That I was starving and exhausted and scared, and I didn’t want to do it anymore.”

“And if you said it now?” Serrano asked.

Lena’s breath hitched. “I’d still be scared.”

“That’s okay,” Serrano said. “Being scared doesn’t mean you can’t start.”

\\

Finally, quiet.

Dr. Serrano leaned back slightly, folding her hands in her lap.

“You’ve done a lot today, Lena,” Serrano said, her voice gentle but firm. “And I know it might not feel like progress, but opening up, even just a little, is a step forward.”

Lena sat back, her fingers gripping the edge of her chair. Her eyes stayed fixed on some indeterminate point in the room, as if afraid to meet Serrano’s gaze too directly. “It doesn’t feel like forward,” she murmured.

“That’s part of the process,” Serrano said. “It’s not linear. It’s messy and uncomfortable. But it’s how we start to make sense of it all. Think of it like untangling a knot—you’ve got to pull at the threads first, even if it feels like they’re getting tighter.”

Lena let out a faint laugh. “Untangling knots. That’s me. All knots, all the time.”

Serrano smiled faintly, leaning forward just enough to meet Lena’s downward glance. She gestured subtly toward a small holographic display that had appeared on the console beside her.

“I want you to start small,” Serrano said. “Not with the big knots, but the small ones. The ones you can loosen without forcing it. Here’s where we’ll start.”

Lena raised an eyebrow, leaning forward slightly, her interest caught despite herself.

“Think of it as building your own toolkit,” Serrano replied. “Here’s what I want you to try:

“Write things down. Every day, if you can. It doesn’t have to be profound—just something about your day, what felt heavy, what felt light. Even if it’s one line, that’s enough.

“Notice what makes you feel... off. It could be a comment someone makes, a memory that sneaks up on you; write those down, too. Awareness is the first step.

“And at the end of the week, look back. Not to critique yourself, but to notice patterns. What keeps coming up? What feels harder to shake? We’ll talk about it when we meet next.”

“Guess I’ll give it a shot,” she said finally, her voice low but steady.

As Lena moved toward the door, she paused, glancing back over her shoulder. “Thanks. For... not making this weird.”

“You did most of the work. I’m just here to help you notice it.”

Lena nodded, the faintest hint of a smile flickering across her face before the room dissipated all around her, even the doctor.