Elvricia Kinantha had forgotten a lot of things that day.

Breakfast, for one. Lunch too, if the half-finished iced coffee and three apologetic sips of mineral water could even be counted as lunch. The pain in her shoulders, the ache behind her eyes, the fact that she had been standing under hot studio lights since morning and still insisted on redoing a scene because the way she delivered one line felt a little bit off.

But the script?

She never forgot the script.

Even now, almost ten at night, with the dressing room finally quiet and most of the staff already cleaning up the set for tomorrow, Cia still sat in front of the vanity with the revised pages spread on her lap. Her costume had already been changed into an oversized hoodie and shorts, her makeup half removed, and yet her eyes remained glued to the highlighted dialogue as if the world would end if she looked away for even one second.

“Cia,” her assistant said for perhaps the fifth time in the last ten minutes, “please go home.”

“In five minutes,” Cia answered automatically, though the answer came out softer than usual, weaker too. “I just need to read this one more time.”

“You’ve been saying that for half an hour.”

“Then clearly,” she murmured, licking her dry lips as she scanned another line, “I am a very honest woman with terrible time management.”

The assistant did not laugh. That should have been her first sign.

The second came when she stood up and the room tilted so hard beneath her feet that she had to catch the edge of the vanity before she could collapse straight into it. Her vision went blurry at the edges, her knees weak, and she only had enough time to blink once before warmth slid over her upper lip.

A drop.

Then another.

“Cia—”

Her assistant’s voice sounded too far away. Cia lifted her fingers to her face, stared at the red staining them, and for a very stupid second all she could think was how inconvenient it was to get a nosebleed on the same day the script got revised.

Goodness.

What an awful timing.

“I’m fine,” she said, which would have sounded more convincing if her face had not gone pale enough to frighten everyone in the room. “Just—ah—someone get me tissues, please? Not the script. Don’t fold the script.”

The door opened before anyone answered.

Zayne stepped inside with the kind of calm that always made a room quiet down, his dark coat still carrying the chill from outside, his silver-rimmed glasses catching the light for only a second before his gaze settled on her and sharpened.