Maisie Watson looks around her, then slowly, quietly made her way down the long corridor, toward the crisp brown office locked door. She hesitates for a moment before raising her fist and rapped on the wooden door. No reply.

“Doctor Vu?” she calls gently. “Doctor Vu, are you asleep?”

The housekeeper pursed her lips. Her eyes dart to the round, brass doorknob. But she quickly recoils when a second thought squirms its way into her head. She guiltily swats away her want.

Maisie Watson had been around Doctor Vu for quite a long time, however obviously not long enough to know the reason he prohibited her from ever cleaning his office. She had never let her curiosity get the best of her, although she must admit her mind sometimes wonder.

Doctor Vu is the most cunning and careful man she had ever met through her entire forty years of lifetime, but he still seldomly did let his guard down and left a few traces, here and there. Not much to piece together a picture of what was happening, but enough to feed to Maisie Watson’s wild imagination.

Just as the itch to open Doctor Vu’s office door and peek in becomes torturous pricks on her fingertips and her fingers inches to the knob, the door swings open. Maisie leaps back, hands clasp to her heart.

“What’re you doing?”

“Doctor Vu,” Maisie stammers, dare not to meet his eyes. She swallows twice, consciously lowers her arms to her sides. “I thought you’re asleep.”

“It’s too early for my bedtime.” Doctor Vu chuckles.

Maisie Watson mirrors his laughter, uneasy. She tries to read into his gruff voice, seeking a hint of defensive, cool tone when she comes too close to the office, but there is none. In fact, she can hear an unusual upbeat note. “Do you need me to run any last errand? I should get enough time to get to the store.”

“I won’t trouble you for that today. You can go home early.” Doctor Vu says, walking out of the office. She backs away, craning her neck a little and glimpses over his shoulder. She caught blurry sight of a woman’s long, black hair reflection in the mirror. She gapes, tilting her head to see more.

Doctor Vu clears his throat sharply and shuts the door. Maisie Watson jolts. She makes a mistake to snap her eyes to his. Electricity sizzles her skin. She glances away, guilt etching all over her face.

“All right, then, Doctor, I’ll go now.”

“Yes, you should.” Doctor Vu nods, making a point by holding up his watch. The rare pleasing trace withered. His monotone, calm manner seeps back. “Have a good night, Mai.”

“Thank you. You, too.” Maisie says, bows and quickly pads away from the office. She could still feel his watch bores holes onto her skull long after she stepped into the fierce snow hail. The wind wraps its fist around her, digging its frosty nails into her internal. She rubs her bare knuckles, huddles deeper into her thin, cheap mackintoshes coat, and hurries off the steps. Without turning, she knows Doctor Vu has moved to the windowsill to follow her.

She dares not to question, nor to slip and venture deep into Doctor Vu’s personal life. Small talks between them didn’t went beyond weather and dinner. It’s always she who carries out the conversation and Doctor Vu listens. He would sit on the plush leather armchair, under the bright reading light, an Encyclopedia-size book balances on his thighs. Maisie would always busy herself while talking, just so she doesn’t have to notice the intense gaze of him on her.

Doctor Vu is a tall, intimidated, silent man. He walks with a slow, lazy gait, and hunched shoulders. He isn’t handsome, but there’s a callous hardness etches in his features that Maisie Watson found mesmerized when she first met him twenty-three years ago. Yet, the edges of his square jaws, his tight lips, the define structure of his fingers, all of those stone-cut structures cannot compare to his eyes. His eyes, two cold, beady black basalts from the bottom of a northern, glacier river. Eyes that trail her every movement, observing. But not in an longing, flattered look men would look at their beloved. Doctor Vu watches her the way a scientist would watch a mouse strapped on an electric chair, interested to see how far the mouse can go and how would the fear triggers survival instinct and directly alters its DNA.

Maisie Watson should be saying that she’s scared and creep out, that she feels goosebump and chills pricking her spine, under his heavy-hooded scrutinize. But it would be partially lying. Because, sometimes, a dark, hidden part of hers secretly enjoyed being the object. And those times, she wonders if she truly craves attention that desperately.

She has always been the odd, unnoticed child. Her older brother, Kai, is obsessive with perfection, control and parental approval with his ambitious and accomplishments, while her younger sister, Seyana, always in the middle of pursuing another love interest and skirting on the edge of the night as a young nude model. Maisie is the remaining one. The one that tries too hard to get her parents’ full regard, the one that they rarely supervise close enough to praise or shun during dinner, the one that bows her head and sores her back scuttling cleaning the houses and kissing them to bed at night.

Maisie draws her coat collar tighter around her collarbone, tugging her chin to her chest, hiding behind a lampost. The fragile yellow light flickers as the wind howls. Her fingers are turning blue, stiff like popsicle sticks. She shakingly closes two fists around her mouth, blowing to warm them, but her body heat freezes in her throat, drying her trachea and lungs. Snow continues to layer around her, closing its hold around her ankles, seeping through the holes at her soles, numbing her socks and inflated her feet.

Maisie Watson curls deeper into herself, shuddering out-of-control. She leans hard against the lamp post, closing her eyes. Her teeth knocking against each other. Her knees buckle under the cold, and she almost stumbles into a mound of snow.

I’ll freeze to death, she thinks, I’ll freeze to death and nobody will know of my blue corpse, underneath this thick, thich snow. She clutches the bus pass in her pocket, letting the sharp edges cutting into her palm. The pain registers slowly, very slowly to her nerves.

She wonders what would the stupid journalists say about her death, that it was the victim’s own fault for not wearing the appropriate clothes for the weather? None of them would look into the debt she had been paying for Mama and Papa’s poor health, none will know that she was the one who slaves away and chaps up her bills to pay off Kai’s costly education and Seyana’s luxury lifestyle. Words that chisel on her tombstone won’t be Beloved by her family for her hardwork and quiet care, it would be A shameful failure still living in her parents’ basement.

Just when she thought she might collapsed for real, the glaring headlights of the bus break through the thick hail. The driver blares the horn as he pull over the curb and shouts as soon as the door opens. “Are you having a death wish? Stand back or you’ll get hit.”

“I’m so sorry.” She stutters, teeth chattering and snapping each syllable apart, her hands are shaking so hard she cannot properly hold the bus card still for him to scan. The driver scowls and rolls his eyes, closing the door.

Maisie Watson timidly walks down the aisle and slides into the door closes to the back exit. The bus is empty, although the clock hadn’t even strike five yet. There are a rough, tough-looking jock sitting spread-leg behind her, a teenager dresses smartly that looks like she had been crying and an anxious Asian woman clutching to the yellow bar who keeps asking the driver when will they stop at Eton Lane.

She glances out at the black window, watching as the white landscape becomes whiter. A stale quiet settles, only being stirred once or twice by a cough or a sniff from behind her. The vehicle’s long body bobs and rumbles as it turns and speeds through the snow storm.

Unconsciously, she remembers to the fleeting woman’s dark head in Doctor Vu’s office. She tries to tuck the image away, but it stubbornly roots there, growing wilder limbs and spans over her entire brain like a cancerous tumour.

Stop it, she tells herself, It’s not right.

No. You stop it. Stop lying to yourself. You want to know more about Doctor Vu, a voice—not her voice—snaps back. She quickly presses her hands over its mouth, already feeling sinful just for agreeing. Yet, the voice struggles, breaks free of her hold. It clamps its claws around her face, hissing as Maisie Watson fights against it. The woman saw you, your eyes met. And you know what that look meant, don’t you? Do you seriously think she is his lover?

You’re just delusional, Maisie Watson replies.

I’ll tell you what that woman is telling you, you dense-skull: She’s a chained animal.

Maisie Watson slaps the voice into silence. It remains there, cheek emblazoned with a five-finger print, staring at her with both eyes. Her hand hangs limply between them, trembling, leaden and burning. Her chest heaves, fluttering. Her fleeting anger quickly morphs into a hard sea of regret. She leans forward, touching the voice, but it backing away as if she would shatter it. Its eyes still trained on her, drilling, as it steps and fades away.

Maisie Watson lets out a slow sigh, pressing her forehead onto the metal grip of the seat in front of hers, the ringing lingers. The stainless steel is smooth against her skin, shocking cold and calm. She grips it with all her strength until she can’t no longer feel numb and nausea anymore. Yet, the world continues to tilt away from its axis and starts toppling around her.