All By Design: A Nikolai Lantsov Series

Chapter Four: if you don't recognize yourself, that means you did it right

this time: There is a girl named Y/N L/N, and she has just come to a bright, new city that isn't quite her own. She hasn't entered the free fall yet, but she will soon enough.

this chapter's song: dear reader

Y/N L/N is a small girl from a small town, and nobody knows who she is. Some say Aleksander likes it better that way, as if it's a better incentive for his stars to perform if the world only ever knows them as an extension of him. Where would a nobody go if they abandoned him? Alina Starkov stayed in the city after she ran. Surely Y/N wouldn't even leave at all.

Where would she go, anyway? After a few years lost in the city's haze, Y/N will forget who she is, where she came from, why she wanted to do all this anyway. There is only what people expect of you or nothing at all. Compromises were not meant to be, only bets that go all in. This is what Y/N remembers, that feeling of needing to remake yourself until nothing is left but the later design. It is not the best way to end, no, but that was how she started.

It's how you started. You received the call, you picked up the phone. You thought it was a joke at first, either the universe or just some bored teenager looking for a laugh. It was real, though. You wondered, once, at the very beginning, if your life would have been that much worse if you had never answered the unknown number. Usually, you don't, but you didn't have that much to do that evening and you'd been leaving voicemails at record labels recently. Aleksander was merely the one who showed up.

Figuratively, of course. Aleksander never came to your home. He was never one to blur lines. It was his world or yours, and he had a knack for convincing you that yours was not something to cherish. He encouraged you to forget the past, said it was easier if you fling yourself wholeheartedly into any change.

He mused a lot when the hours were late, when his temper had abated from any dark flare of rage and simply curled there in the corner, pulsing on occasion. You can recall one time, the first warning sign, or at least the first you picked up on. Aleksander was talking about how quickly he'd made the change to embrace the new life. He mentioned the fact that he doesn't even remember what it was like to grow up. The way his face shifted when he carefully ignored his childhood, you'd think it happened centuries ago instead of just a few decades.

Aleksander doesn't dwell on the past. At first, you thought that was because he preferred to run towards the future, but no; he just didn't want you looking too closely. He let you stay in his office those late nights with the door closed and no one around because he wanted you to pretend like you were confidants, secret-keepers, good friends, but that was no truth, was it? Aleksander wanted a puppet he could play with ease, and you were always a quick student.

So you followed his guidebook on how to thrive in the fast-paced world out there. You burned all the files on your history, you deserted all the past lives that had once been yours. If Aleksander hated a color, it disappeared from your wardrobe even if it was once your favorite. If you said you didn't like to drink all that much, that preference shifted the moment he pushed a glass into your hand. You wanted to please him. Everyone did.

You've done a pretty good job of it now, you think. Forgetting. It's impossible to tell what's your own faulty memory and what is the result of years of carefully erased stories. You blocked out good memories and bad ones alike, and now all that's left is what you've made of yourself now. There is no guiding light, not anymore. You don't know what you used to be, only whatever you've become.

Is it good, then? Becoming someone like this, a shining star, an idol to the masses? Yes and no. Never take advice from someone who's falling apart, but if you could tell the younger you anything, it would be to run and run and never look back. You could have hidden from the hands reaching to pull you into the shadowy den of intrigue and fame, but you liked the idea of power, so you stayed.