1Ep.. The Studio at 3 A.M.

Two days to deadline. Six panels still blank.

Siu lay face-down on the desk, pen still in hand. Only the monitor's blue glow wet the room; the cold coffee had lost its steam and scent long ago. The clock's second hand ticked unusually loud. Three in the morning—the most honest hour in the world, he always thought. At this hour no one lies. If you can't draw, you can't draw.

Not a single panel… done.

The mutter dropped into the empty room and scattered, reaching nothing. There was no one to hear. There never was. Three years of posting free episodes to an amateur board, the view count stalled in double digits. With the word 'debut' dangling from his fingertips for years, Siu was growing old alone in this cramped room. When he had nothing to draw, the place he fled to was always drawing itself—and tonight, even that refuge stood empty.

Outside, the city lights bled across the glass like rain. Staring blankly, he drew a line on the tablet, almost out of habit—no meaning, no plan. Yet what surfaced from his fingertips was, for some reason, a place he had never been. A narrow alley in the rain. Neon signs smearing across wet asphalt. A city he couldn't name, and yet strangely missed.

His hand moved on its own. Every streak of rain, every stroke of the signs—no hesitation. Not like someone who couldn't draw, but like someone copying something he had seen. Only the scratch of pen on screen went on and on, and as if spellbound, Siu lost track of time. Ten minutes, perhaps. When he came to, an unfamiliar alley filled the screen, complete.

…What is this. Could I always draw like this?

A small laugh escaped—the first in days. His fingertips tingled. As if something long blocked had just come unstuck. And as his hand reached for save—

the phone in his pocket buzzed, long and low. At this hour? An unknown number. Spam, probably—he opened it, and froze.

“The alley you just drew—look out your window.”

His heart dropped. The alley you just drew. The words sat there on the screen. Too exact in their timing to be a prank. No one in this room had seen what he'd just drawn—no, even Siu himself hadn't known this alley ten minutes ago.

The pen slipped from his hand. The nib dragged once across the screen, and in the corner a thin bar quietly filled and vanished. Siu's eyes stayed fixed on the phone.

…Who is this. Who sent this.

He lifted a finger to reply, then lowered it. He was afraid to ask. Instead he rose slowly from his chair and crept to the window on his toes, unwilling even to make a sound. This was an ordinary second-floor flat. Outside should be the same street, the same streetlight as always.

He pinched the edge of the curtain. Cold. He drew one breath. Pulled it aside. His breath stopped.

It was raining. The sky had been clear only moments ago. Red and blue neon smeared long across the wet asphalt. The very alley—never seen before, yet born from his fingertips ten minutes ago—lay there, real, beyond the glass. The familiar neighborhood was nowhere to be found.

As his trembling eyes traced the end of the alley, someone was standing beneath the streetlight. No umbrella, taking all of the rain. And that person raised their head, very slowly—and looked up, straight at his window.

Buzz—. The phone rang again. Siu didn't want to look. He looked anyway.

“Now it’s your turn.”