Age 20

Veronica spent most of her time not in classes at a singing club. A sign on the wall across from the tiny stage read "Karry Me Karaoke" and most of the time the couches around the room were filled with her friends. From her eyes he could see a screen with lyrics scrolling across it, but more often than not her attention was moving between her friends while she sang songs that she knew by heart. Jano curled up on his bed most nights with a small mirror that he kept on his side table. He had discovered the best way to control where the images would appear was to get rid of all but a few good reflective surfaces. It was easier to see in a hand mirror than the shiny metal cap of a fountain pen, but if the surface was too long it was far too disorienting. He discovered that when he applied a reflective decal across one side of his room at the school's lodgings. A hand the size of his body moving around was creepy. He always wore his thumb sized mirror pendant when out and kept a medium sized mirror within reach while at home. The new fascination with Karry Me Karaoke took up most of his time in the evenings, and he did not try to ignore the songs while he did other things as he often would do while studying. After so many years of watching her he could sing along with her favorite songs and at times it felt like he was right there with her.

Two years of career training had made him realize that he did not want to do any of the normal careers that adults his age were training for. After a long talk with his guidance talk doctor he decided to take writing classes. Thirteen years of watching through someone else's eyes had shown him a world so different from his own and he often imagined how life would be in it. His first book for teenagers sold well, the idea of living in a world that was clean and full of hope speaking to the pessimistic, hormone driven ages. He bought a small home with the earnings and set up a writer's studio inside of it. There he created a world for his characters to live in that was inspired by the things he saw around her.

Half of the way through his second book about her world he developed writer's block. His creativity was all driven by things that he saw through her eyes and often it was the same people and same places in front of her while she was singing. He took a few weeks off and started a painting course at the city's art commune. While learning how to put the images in his mind down as images on canvas he realized that he didn't want to write a story about her anymore. He wanted her to be his, and his alone. So he let his paintbrush guide him toward a new story set in her world. That sloppy first attempt at a street scene from her world would hang on his wall for many years, to be joined over time by portraits of the characters from each of the books that would follow.