Heartbeat // JK

18- The Room

The studio was too quiet. Not the kind of quiet that came when people stopped talking, but a silence so engineered it felt like even my heartbeat was breaking rules.

The walls were slate gray, flat and sharp. In the corner, a single white orchid stood in its glass vase. Severe. Perfect. Unbothered. Even the flowers here seemed to have better posture than me.

A long table cut the room in half. Three people sat behind it, their attention fixed on me.

No small talk.
No welcome.
Just watching.

Sierra Hale sat in the center. I had seen her face enough times in press photos and interviews to recognize her instantly, but she looked sharper in person — sharper in the way that real life didn't soften or pixelate the edges.

Black turtleneck, hair parted like it obeyed rules I didn't know, posture so precise it could have been carved. She didn't smile, she didn't frown. Her gaze was cool in a way that felt expensive, like she wasn't here to be impressed. She was here to measure.

On her right, a man in thick glasses scribbled across a notepad. His pen moved too fast, the scratch of ink making decisions I would never get to see. He glanced up once, stamped me with his eyes, and dropped back down as though I had already been filed.

On her left, an older man sat with his hands folded in front of him. He studied me longer. His face was calm — too calm. There was no encouragement in it, but no dismissal either. Just a patience that made me think he had already heard me sing somewhere in his head and was waiting to see if the real thing ruined it.

My breath caught, sharp and shallow, like it didn't belong to me anymore. The air felt too clean, too thin, as if breathing in that room required permission.

For a second, I was certain I didn't belong. I was an ink stain in a gallery, too messy against all that curated control. Wrong texture, wrong color, wrong everything. My pulse banged against my ribs, too fast, too loud. I wondered if they could hear it. If they could see my throat moving.

I wanted to shrink, fold into myself, disappear into the white noise of the walls. But my feet betrayed me—they kept moving, each click of my boots ricocheting like I was hammering nails into the silence.

I squared my shoulders anyway, though my spine felt made of paper. If I didn't keep walking, I would collapse.

Sierra Hale finally looked up from her phone, her expression as neutral as glass. No smile. No greeting. Just a glance sharp enough to make me feel like she already knew everything she needed to.

"You're early," she said, setting her phone down with the kind of finality that made the air seem heavier.

I nodded once, too quickly. "Yeah. Just didn't want to be late."

My voice sounded thin to my own ears, the words evaporating before they even reached the table.

She rose from her chair. Taller than I expected, sharp in every line of her body. Minimal, deliberate, not a single detail wasted. She didn't offer a handshake.

"Eva Simon?"

"That's me."

Her eyes stayed on me for a beat, unreadable, before she tilted her head toward the room.

"Come in."

I stepped forward, and it was colder than I had braced for—not the temperature, but the tone. The kind of cold that lives in posture, in silence, in the way no one bothers to look up when you enter.

The others didn't look up. Pages turned, a pen scratched, the silence tightening around me like a rope. I stopped just past the doorway, unsure if I was meant to speak, to sit, or to breathe quieter. Every second I stood there seemed to stretch twice as long.