#SuperViral, Ch 12: Glowing Pains Pt. 1

Before a big date, most women worried about their outfit or their hair; Lena worried that a single, genuine laugh might accidentally illuminate the entire restaurant.

But here, in the safe, controlled space of her studio, the anxious single woman dissolved. She was @AuraORA. Light was her medium, an extension of her will. Her apartment studio was a simple haven of dark grey walls and polished concrete floors, the perfect canvas. The only light came from her. She stood in the center of the room, eyes closed, her breathing slow and even. For her new Current video, an artistic piece called "Nocturne," she was trying her most complex work yet.

Slowly, she raised her arms. A soft, silvery light, like captured moonlight, bloomed from her skin in deliberate threads. With precision honed over years, she began to move it. The light swirled around her forearms, forming detailed, shifting patterns of silver and pale lavender that looked like frost growing on a windowpane. The patterns separated from her, drifting like glowing smoke onto the dark background behind her. They moved perfectly in time with the sad, thoughtful cello music playing softly in the studio.

Her voiceover, which she had recorded earlier, was a calm, thoughtful murmur. "Brightness is an easy answer," she said. "The question is in the penumbra, the space between. Harmony lives in the shadows, in what the light reveals by its absence."

Inside, a wall of concentration. Wavelength. Intensity. The beating heart of her, the fear and the hope-she locked it all away. Only the art remained.

This level of control had taken years of hard practice, of meditative discipline, of treating her own body like a complex instrument to be mastered. She could consciously control the wavelength, the intensity, and the movement of her glowing skin, creating art that was breathtaking in its precision. This was her safe space, the one place where her power felt like a clear gift, a social grace instead of a curse.

She ended the video with a final, stunning move. She pulled all the projected light back into herself until it formed a single, brilliant point on her chest before fading completely. The darkness was absolute, a canvas wiped clean. The silence that followed was filled with the quiet, deep satisfaction of a perfect creation. She had tamed the sun, bent the northern lights to her will.

***

Later that evening, she was replaced by Lena, whose frantic energy turned her bedroom upside down. The calm artist had vanished. Now there was only a woman surrounded by discarded outfits piled high on her bed, each one representing a different version of herself she could try on and discard. A first date. The words alone were enough to trigger the tell-tale, uncontrollable flicker of light.

"I just don't know, Maya," she groaned into her phone, which was propped up on her makeup table. On the screen, her best friend's face was a mix of sympathy and amusement. "Is the black dress too serious? Does it say 'I'm going to emotionally destroy you over appetizers'? But the floral one feels too… cheerful. What if I'm not feeling cheerful? He'll know I'm faking it!"

As she spoke, her skin, despite her best efforts, betrayed her. Her hopeful anxiety about "Mark," the architect from the dating app with the nice smile and the golden retriever, showed up as a soft, warm, golden shimmer across her shoulders and neck.

"You're overthinking it, Lena," Maya said, her voice a soothing comfort. "Wear the black dress. You look incredible in it. Just breathe. He's a normal guy. He's going to be analyzing your outfit for secret meanings."

"It's the outfit I'm worried about, it's the human light show that comes with it," Lena shot back. "Remember what happened with Daniel? The investment banker? I got excited because he'd also been to Japan and I turned into a chandelier. He nearly fell out of his chair."

Maya winced at the memory. "Okay, Daniel was a finance bro with the emotional range of a teaspoon. That's a fair comparison."

"Fine. What about Liam, the musician? I got annoyed because he checked his phone mid-sentence and my hands started pulsing red. He asked if I needed to call an ambulance!"

"Okay, that one was a little funny," Maya admitted.

"It's funny!" Lena wailed. Her frustration caused a brief, anxious pulse of dim blue to flicker across her hands. She shoved them in front of the phone's camera. "See? It's already starting! My skin is a terrible liar. Every feeling… just… out there. For him to see. For him to get freaked out by."

After ending the call with Maya's final words of encouragement ringing in her ears ("Just try to set off any smoke alarms"), Lena began her strict pre-date routine. It was a well-practiced but increasingly desperate habit. First, the deep, belly-breathing exercises. She focused on a single point of blackness in her mind, trying to starve the light of the oxygen of emotion. Then, a ten-minute mindfulness meditation, where she tried to see her feelings as passing clouds rather than internal suns. Finally, the most extreme step: she plunged her hands and forearms into a bowl of ice water. The shocking cold was a physical jolt designed to dull her nerve responses, to literally chill her out.

She stood before her full-length mirror, dressed in the sleek black dress. She took a series of slow, even breaths. She banked the internal fires, pushing down the excitement, the hope, the terror. Slowly, painfully, the betraying glow faded. It calmed from a shimmer to a very faint, almost unnoticeable pearly sheen, like the inside of a seashell. Her expression in the mirror was a fragile mask of calm neutrality. She looked like her @AuraORA personality, but inside she was coiled tight, every muscle tensed against the inevitable slip.

"You can do this," she whispered to her reflection. The words were a flimsy prayer. "Just be calm. Be reserved. Be boring. Boring is safe. Boring doesn't glow."

***

The cocktail bar was exactly the kind of place Lena always chose: dark, intimate, and full of shadows. It was a strategic choice, a battlefield selected for its defensive advantages. She sat in a plush velvet booth, her hands wrapped around a glass of ice water, the cold a welcome anchor for her fraying nerves. Her pre-date ritual had worked, for now. Her skin held only the faintest pearlescent sheen, imperceptible in the moody lighting. She was calm. She was reserved. She was successfully being "boring."

When Mark arrived, a genuine flicker of hope ignited within her. He was even more handsome than in his pictures, with a warm, easy smile and kind eyes. He slid into the booth, his presence immediately comfortable, overwhelming. The first twenty minutes were a revelation. They were normal. The conversation flowed effortlessly, from his work as an architect designing sustainable urban spaces to her life as a "digital artist," her carefully sanitized, non-Super version of the truth. He was funny, intelligent, and seemed genuinely interested, asking thoughtful questions about her creative process.

Lena's control was ironclad. She monitored her every reaction, kept her laughter to a low chuckle, her smiles measured. When he made a joke about his terrible coffee habit, she felt the answering warmth rise in her chest-affection, amusement, the terrible hope that this might actually work. A faint shimmer of gold bloomed across her knuckles where they rested on the table.

She saw it. Her breath caught.

Mark was reaching for his drink. He hadn't noticed.

She curled her fingers into her palm, pressing her knuckles against the cool condensation of her water glass. The cold bit into her skin. The shimmer dimmed, faded. She forced her breathing to slow, counted backwards from ten. When she looked up, Mark was mid-sentence, oblivious, his eyes on her face with that open, interested expression that made her chest ache.

She'd caught it. She was okay.

For the first time in a long time, she felt like she might actually be pulling this off.

Then, it all fell apart. Mark was recounting a story about a disastrous presentation early in his career, involving a rogue sprinkler system and a multi-million-dollar architectural model made of foam-core and regret. He told it with a self-deprecating wit that was utterly charming. At the punchline, where his boss had slipped in the puddle and landed headfirst in the miniature convention center, Lena forgot herself. A real, uninhibited laugh erupted from her, a sound of pure, unadulterated joy.

It was too much. The sudden, powerful surge of amusement overwhelmed her carefully constructed defenses. A brilliant, warm flare of golden light burst from her, from her hands or face, but from her entire being. For a split second, she was the brightest thing in the room, illuminating their dark corner like a miniature sun, casting sharp shadows on the wall behind them.

Mark physically jumped, his eyes wide, blinking against the afterimage. "Whoa," he stammered, his charming composure gone. "What… what was that? Is there a short in the wiring here?" He glanced up at the filament bulb above their table, trying to rationalize what he'd just seen. A couple at a nearby booth turned to stare, their conversation faltering.

Mortification, hot and absolute, crashed over Lena. The golden light of her joy was instantly extinguished, replaced by the tell-tale heat in her cheeks. And with it, the second flare. A wave of soft, undeniable pink light washed over her face, her neck, her chest. A blush, but a literal, luminous one. There was no hiding it, no explaining it away with a witty remark.

"Sorry," she mumbled, her gaze dropping to the table. "Static, I guess. The air in here is really dry." The lie was pathetic, and she knew it. The sheer stupidity of her own excuse only deepened her embarrassment, which in turn intensified the rosy glow.

Mark was just staring now, his polite smile frozen on his face. The pieces were clicking into place for him-the sudden, impossible flash of light, the unnatural pink glow that now bathed her skin. He wasn't stupid. He'd seen Supers on the news, on BeamCast. They threw cars. They flew. This… this was a blush that lit up a room. A panic attack you could see. It was wrong. It was… weird.

Lena saw the dawning realization in his eyes, the subtle shift from curiosity to alarm. And that was all it took. The third and final flare, the one she always dreaded, took hold. Pure, unadulterated panic seized her. Her carefully banked control shattered. The pink of her shame was consumed by a sickly, flickering blue that pulsed across her skin. Her hands, resting on the table, were now casting faint, morose shadows, the light sputtering like a faulty neon sign. She was an emotional disco ball, a human lava lamp having a complete and total meltdown.

She tried to change the topic. "So, uh, what are your thoughts on the new Mayor?"

The words came out thick and clumsy. Mark wasn't listening, though. He was staring, transfixed, at the sickly blue shadows. She couldn't blame him. In a way, it was fascinating. The effect was like a dark, underwater light, and the shadows moved as her hands did, like a living oil slick.

The conversation died. An excruciating silence descended, thick with awkwardness. Mark cleared his throat, took a long, telling sip of his Old Fashioned. Lena was now entirely trapped in her own head, a frantic internal battle raging as she tried to wrestle the chaotic light back into submission. She couldn't think, couldn't speak. She could only feel the waves of her own humiliation radiating from her in pathetic pulses of blue light.

Mark, clearly unnerved and miles out of his depth, made a feeble attempt at conversation. "So… that's… quite a talent you have there." He didn't know what else to say. He flagged down the waiter. "Check, please."

The final goodbye on the sidewalk outside the bar was an unmitigated disaster. It was a mash-up of stiff, polite words and an uncomfortable handshake.

"So nice to meet you," Lena mumbled. She couldn't even meet his gaze. Her eyes were glued to the concrete beneath her feet.

"Likewise. Maybe we'll... catch up sometime," Mark lied, and they both knew it. His retreating footsteps echoed as he walked briskly away.

Lena didn't call for a ride. She walked, wrapping her arms around herself, though the chill she felt was bone-deep and had nothing to do with the temperature. The shame was a physical weight, a bitter coating on her tongue. The repeating pattern of her life, the cycle of hope and humiliation, had played out once again with brutal efficiency.

She caught her reflection in the dark, polished granite of a storefront window. Her skin, no longer pulsing with chaotic color, now emitted a dull, miserable, almost lightless grey glow. It was the color of ash, of defeat, of a light that had given up trying to shine. It was the ugliest color she knew.

She was AuraORA, who could command light to dance and weave stories of breathtaking beauty. But she was also Lena, the human lava lamp, whose every vulnerable, authentic emotion was broadcast for the world to see, to judge, and ultimately, to reject.

Her last video was titled "Match Your Inner Light." The memory was a shard of glass in her throat.

A lamp with faulty wiring.

A beautiful, broken thing.

No one takes home the broken things.

She pulled her collar up higher, hiding the faint, sad glow from the world, and walked on, alone in the darkness.

***