The Plot Calls #13 : "The Cho Goes On"

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and/or Ai-assisted-content-generation. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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Mira Solis had beauty. Not the forced, filtered kind. The real kind—the sort that made people stare across crowded rooms, that earned compliments in coffee lines, that stopped conversations.

But beauty wasn’t enough. Not anymore.

The numbers told her that.

She was stuck. One million followers—plateaued. Brand deals slowed. PR emails thinned. Her DMs filled with "advice" from men with usernames like FitnessKing47 and HotShotMarketer, all promising to "help her grow."

Mira didn’t want their help. She wanted certainty. She wanted legacy. She wanted to be the beauty influencer equivalent of Valerie Cho.

As a girl, Mira idolized Valerie Cho. Model. Mogul. Myth. Founder of Cho It All—the brand that turned Crimson Kiss lipstick into a cultural obsession.

Valerie vanished without a trace. But her products? Her legend? Still worshipped.

Mira chased that legacy. Her niche? Product hauls, micro-reviews, bite-sized luxury. But algorithms change. Eugenicist repressed homosexual narcissistic transhumanism-seeking tech bros owned the architecture. No one can win. They used AI to copy content, products, and people. Content flooded faster than Mire could post. Audiences splintered. The numbers stalled.

Be yourself, they said. But herself wasn’t trending. What was trending was whiskey in Mira's morning coffee. The anxiety that came from wanting more growth without appreciating the existing monumental success.

So, Mira obsessed. She needed more subs. She needed to be bold even if it was copycat cringe. She needed to stop worshipping the now missing Valeria Cho. Mira needed to be the new Valerie Cho. She recreated Valerie’s looks. Tracked down vintage Cho It All products. Even bought a faded tube of Crimson Kiss—the original formula, discontinued years before.

She emailed Harmony & Pratt Consulting—the agency Valerie once ruled. No reply.

Mira's hunger sharpened.

Then came the whisper.

Not a sound. A pressure. A beckoning.

The whisper led her outside. Down side streets slick with humidity. Past shuttered shops and cracked sidewalks. To the alley beside her apartment.

There, nestled between overgrown weeds and broken concrete, the soil shimmered—black and violet, breathing faintly.

A patch of ground that didn’t belong. A portal. A plot.

Mira knew. She didn’t question.

She knelt. Pulled the vintage lipstick from her pocket. "Crimson Kiss," she whispered. "An offering."

Her thumb brushed the faded Cho It All logo. The shade that built an empire.

She placed it gently in the soil. It sank.

The shimmer pulsed. The plot breathed. A pact.

The next morning, her reflection beamed. Her skin glowed. Her cheeks flushed. Her jawline sharpened.

She looked younger. Fresher. Unstoppable.

The numbers reflected it.

Her viewership tripled. Brands called. Her face trended globally.

More offerings followed. A signed headshot. Her first influencer contract. Her most-watched video.

The soil devoured it all.

Her beauty amplified. Her numbers soared. Her hunger grew.

But the joy? The pride? The spark? Gone.

Her followers adored her. But Mira's laugh rang hollow. Her eyes dulled. Her reflection felt… rehearsed.

She became robotic. Repeating catchphrases. Forcing smiles. Staring dead-eyed into ring lights.

Users noticed. Comments asked why her hair thinned. Why her cheeks looked sculpted, but her gaze—empty.

She stopped caring. Stopped posting. Stopped everything.

Except watching the soil.

Security footage surfaced online. A figure knelt by a glowing plot outside Mira’s building. A porcelain hand rose from the soil. The figure appeared to whisper to it, and then they both vanished.

The video went viral. Speculation raged. Conspiracies bloomed.

But Mira? She was never seen again.

Nora Solis, Mira’s sister, scoured forums, old footage, news reports. Desperation gnawed at her. Grief curdled into questions.

Nora knew what Mira chased. Nora chased Mira's mirage.

It wasn’t enough.

The legend of Mira Solis faded. Mira became the next excuse in the Solis household. If Mrs. Solis drank herself to oblivion, it wasn't because she was an alcoholic or deeply dissatified with her choices, family, and herself. The reason was more simple: Mira, who she enviously disregarded when she was around, was missing. If Mr. Solis disappeared for a week, somewhere - anywhere, there was nothing more to it beyond, "Mira is missing." There was no reflection of how and why Mira became Mira. There was no consideration of the passive aggressive disdain for ugliness, obesity, and lack of hunger the Solis's pushed on their children through their unexamined pain and shame.

Nora's other relatives used Mira as excuses to avoid deep conversations. It wasn't them being cowards or emotionally and intellectually lazy people. They were hurt Mira was gone, despite never making the effort to communicate with her while she was around.

As she scrolled through forums, Nora found Sam Erriden's unusual blog, "Stories from The Sideways." She stumbled upon a blog post where Sam described his next series, The Plot Calls.

Afraid, Nora shut her laptop. She was doomscrolling. She needed to learn how to be simple. She needed to learn how to lie to herself and suppress her profound intellectual and emotional inclinations. At some point, she needed to be an adult. She needed to get real. Real stupid. She needed to start now.

Nora yearned to be the hallucination of simplicity that her existentially oblivious family casually defined as being "normal."

If only she could lie, like that. Be busy, like that. Have excuses, like that. Life would be so easy. She could push her weirdness, her concern, her needs down until they were just a faint whisper of a lost immaturity. She could be free, like a child. Like the cartoon cutouts the adults pretended to be as they discussed representations of problems to avoid direct conflict by addressing the real problems.

Nora crawled in her bed and drifted to sleep. She thought of Mira and wanted to stop searching. She didn't want answers. She wanted excuses. Nora yearned to let her mind go idle. Then, she felt something. Something cold, familiar, and gentle.

A soft hum. A voiceless whisper.

As Nora's mind faded into tranquility, she exhaled, and said:

"The Plot Thickens."

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