KAI
The stench of poverty hung in the air like a fog. Everything here bore traces of the rich, as if they'd marked their territory even in the most broken corners of the city. It wasn't the good kind of trace—no charity, no helping hand. Just the scars their greed left on this place, on these people. I could see it in the hollow eyes of passersby, in the crumbling brick of buildings, in the way kids played in the grime because they had nowhere else to go.
My hand tightened around the spray can, and with a practiced flick of my wrist, I started releasing the paint across the wall. It was an unspoken ritual—a small, defiant act in a city where people like me were invisible. As the colors burst against the concrete, I poured my frustration into the strokes, mixing my anger with every shade. Here was my voice. Here was my rebellion. The rich had their palaces and golden gates; I had this wall.
But then, as if to mock me, a flyer drifted into my line of sight, catching on the damp wind. I gritted my teeth as it slapped against the wet paint, sticking right in the middle of my work. Irritated, I reached up to rip it away. But as it peeled off, a pair of piercing green eyes stared back at me from the glossy paper. I stopped, fingers frozen on the edge of the flyer.
It was her. The headline above her face read: World's Most Beautiful Heiress? The woman looked too perfect to be real, like some ethereal figure painted onto the glossy page. Those emerald eyes shone as if lit from within, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders in a cascade of curls. Pale, porcelain skin seemed to glow, even against the gritty concrete backdrop of downtown. The kind of beauty they plastered across billboards and television screens, as if to remind people like me that we'd never come close.
Below her flawless image was the subheading: Adele Everhart nominated as the world's most beautiful. Will she win?
A sour taste crept up my throat. Everhart. The rulers of this city. The family that held the reins of power and wealth, that took everything they could and left nothing but dust for the rest of us. The Everharts didn't care about the city or its people, not unless it was profitable for them. They were a dynasty—untouchable, invincible, and ruthless.
And here she was, Adele Everhart, paraded as an ideal, as some sort of goddess in a world they had destroyed. Her father's empire was built on our suffering. How could they not see that the city's decay, its grime, its shadows—these things were a reflection of the Everharts' greed?
I ripped the flyer from my mural, crumpling it in my hands, but the damage was done. There, splattered in the middle of my work, was a smudge of paint from where I'd faltered. Her face haunted the wall, even in the mark left behind.
My mural, once an image of silent rage, had changed. In its center, I'd been painting the figure of a man staring down from a crumbling cityscape, a witness to the divide that separated the upper class from everyone else. His eyes were hollow, unfinished, as if he could see but couldn't look away from the rot around him. A ruined city loomed behind him—skyscrapers alongside abandoned buildings, wealth beside devastation. The irony of it hit hard, like a punch to the gut.
I let my fingers trail down the paint-splattered wall, imagining how the mural would look when finished. The man's gaze would be powerful yet defeated, staring straight into the heart of the suffering the Everharts had wrought. A silent accusation, a wordless scream that dared anyone passing by to see the truth.
But even here, in the poorest corners, the Everharts' influence crept in like a weed. Adele's flyer, her pristine face—it was a reminder. No matter how hard we tried to escape, the Everharts were everywhere. They were in the high-rises casting shadows over the slums, in the banks that squeezed out our last cents, in the very bones of this city. They were an empire of greed, and Adele was its crown jewel.
My hands fell to my sides, paint staining my fingers, my clothes, the wall. She'd marred my work, yet in a way, she'd added to it, too. Her face, that mocking headline—it was the perfect, twisted touch. A reminder of the prison we all lived in, the one they'd built and then forgotten about. I let out a slow, angry breath, gripping the crumpled flyer before tossing it to the ground.
As I stepped back to study the mural, the smudge from her flyer seemed like a scar. It would stay there as a reminder that no matter how many times I painted over it, no matter how many defiant images I created, they would still hold the power.
This was my rebellion. Small, fleeting, but real. My hands went back to work, spray can hissing as the paint streaked down the wall. Let them come and see it, let them try to erase it. This was the only way I could fight back. And if my mural disappeared tomorrow, I'd find another wall and paint again.