Late autumn in London was less of a season and more of a suffocating sentence. The fog hung heavy over the city like an impenetrable grey filter, soaking into the bones of anyone foolish enough to be out. Inside the Fallen Angel Cafe on Harvard Street, the air was thick with the cloying scent of cheap roasted beans and damp wool. The floorboards, warped by years of spilled drinks and leaks, groaned with every muffled step, sounding like the complaints of the weary souls gathered there.
Twenty-four-year-old Scarlett sat in the corner booth, her spine as rigid as a sunflower refusing to wilt under a storm. She wore a white trench coat, buttoned meticulously to her chin—a shield against the cold, and perhaps, against the world.
But it was her eyes that caught the dim light—a startling, rare shade of violet. They were wide and clear, holding the terrified innocence of a startled doe crashing into a field of wild violets, utterly out of place in this grime.
Across from her sat Uncle Danny, a veteran editor of adult manga, whose very presence seemed to stain the air around him.
He was a grotesque caricature of a man. The fluorescent lights gleamed off his receding hairline, highlighting the beads of sweat on his scalp despite the chill. His shirt buttons strained dangerously against a protruding beer gut that rested on the table like a separate, gluttonous entity.
"S. Sunflower, what the hell is this? Mannequins?"
Danny slammed his hand onto the table. The sound cracked through the cafe like a gunshot. The thick stack of manuscript paper between them jolted out of alignment, revealing the drawing underneath.
It was, objectively, a masterpiece. Scarlett's artistic technique was exquisite. Her ink lines were fluid and confident, singing with an elegance that belonged in a museum, not a trashy magazine. The backgrounds were lavishly detailed—baroque candelabras, intricate lace curtains, and blooming roses rendered with painstaking precision.
"Look at this line work!" Danny jabbed a sausage-like finger onto the paper, leaving a grease smudge on the pristine ink. "Technically, it's fine. You went to art school, we get it. But we don't pay you for art, Scarlett. We pay you for heat."
Scarlett's face flushed crimson. Under the table, her hands clenched into fists. She needed this check. Her rent in Zone 4 was two weeks overdue, and her landlord had stopped accepting excuses.
"We need chemical reactions!" Danny's voice rose, his spit nearly grazing her face. "We need the wet, crushed details of raw desire! You're handing me generic stock photos. If the readers' loins are bored, we're finished. Do you understand? No boners, no paycheck."
The vulgarity hung in the air. Scarlett felt a wave of nausea but swallowed it down.
"I'm sorry, Uncle Danny. I understand. I will... look for inspiration and revise it tonight."
"Inspiration?" Danny let out a cold, wheezing sneer. His lecherous eyes narrowed, undressing her with a gaze that felt like slimy hands crawling over her skin. He picked up his mug of lukewarm coffee, swirling it mesmerizingly. "You're a virgin, aren't you? That's why your work tastes like distilled water. Beautiful, but useless."
The accusation hung there, humiliatingly accurate. God, now everyone in the quiet cafe knew she drew erotica—and worse, that her erotica was dull. This professional failure stung sharper than poverty.
Danny didn't hurl the mug. Instead, he slowly tilted it, his eyes locking onto hers with malicious glee.
"Watch closely. This is what a mess looks like."
He let the brown liquid pour like venom. It splashed precisely onto the close-up panel she was most proud of—the one where she had spent three hours shading the male lead's jawline against a gorgeous gothic window.
"If you can't draw it, get the hell out of the industry."
The murky coffee bled down the sketches, destroying the delicate ink, washing over her pale fingertips, and finally splashing into the collar of her white coat. The liquid seeped through the fabric, a warm, sticky sensation that slithered against the dangerous curve of her waist and hips—a body built for the very desire she failed to capture on paper.
It felt like a silent, physical violation.
Uncle Danny leaned in across the ruined table, the smell of stale tobacco and unwashed skin rolling off him in waves. His voice dropped to a nauseating, hungry murmur as he stared into those violet eyes, now clouded with a mist of unshed tears.
"Perhaps, instead of working behind closed doors with your imagination," he whispered, his gaze dropping to her soaked collar, "you should let me show you what a 'real battle' looks like. That's the only way your brush will ever get 'wet' enough."
Uncle Danny didn't wait for an answer. He threw a few crumpled banknotes onto the sodden table—not enough to cover the damage, but enough to make his point. With a final, dismissive sneer, he buttoned his coat over his stomach and waddled out of the cafe.
Scarlett was left alone in the wreckage.
Shame burned hotter than the coffee. She scrambled to gather her ruined portfolio, her hands trembling so violently that she missed a single, coffee-stained sheet that had fluttered to the damp floor near the adjacent booth. She didn't notice. She just needed to escape. Clutching her coat tight against her chest, she fled into the unforgiving London fog, the bell above the door jingling a mournful goodbye.
But she hadn't been invisible.
In the shadowed booth behind her, a man had been watching the entire performance in silence.
He was a striking anomaly in this cheap establishment, like a diamond sitting in a pile of coal. He wore a bespoke navy suit that whispered of Savile Row, every stitch tailored to perfection against his broad shoulders. But it was his presence that commanded the air—cool, vast, and unfathomable. He sat there like the sea itself: endless, mysterious, and dangerously calm.
Liam shifted, the leather of the booth creaking softly. He reached down, his long, elegant fingers picking up the abandoned sheet of paper from the floor.
It was the close-up panel Danny had mocked—a detailed, heated sketch of a lover's entanglement, now marred by brown stains. The artistry was undeniable, the desire raw and palpable. But Liam's gaze didn't linger on the eroticism. It drifted to the bottom right corner.
There, inked in a whimsical, delicate hand, was the signature:
S. Sunflower.
Beside it, a tiny, doodled sunflower smiled back at him—innocent, radiant, and utterly at odds with the darkness of the drawing.
Liam froze.
His eyes, the colour of a glacial ocean—ice-blue, deep, and terrifyingly intelligent—widened imperceptibly. The calm surface of his expression cracked. A tremor of shock passed through him, sharp and electric, as if he had just touched a live wire.
He stared at that smiling flower, his thumb brushing over the ink. It was a beacon of light in a dark world, a symbol he hadn't expected to see in a place like this, on a drawing like this.
"S. Sunflower..." he murmured, his voice a low baritone that seemed to vibrate with a sudden, intense gravity.
The ocean had found its sun. And for the first time in years, the calm waters were about to be disturbed.