- Jia Lissa - Travelling Alone: Vixen

A flush crept up Jia’s neck. She righted the novel—some pretentious thing she’d bought at a station kiosk—and set it aside. “Maybe I like watching the world go backwards.”

“It’s the way you hold your book,” Vixen replied, nodding at the untouched paperback in Jia’s lap. “Upside down for the last three stops. You’re not reading. You’re hiding.”

“I travel alone too,” Vixen said, her voice lower now, meant only for Jia. “Not because I have no one. Because I refuse to let anyone edit my story.”

Vixen didn’t ask to sit. She simply folded herself into the opposite seat like she’d always been there—all sharp angles, quiet confidence, and the faint scent of amber and cigarette smoke. Her coat was too elegant for a regional train, her boots too practical for a woman who moved like liquid shadow. Vixen - Jia Lissa - Travelling Alone

Jia turned from the window. For the first time in weeks, she looked another woman in the eyes without performing. Without choreographing her expression. “And what’s your story?”

“You’re travelling alone,” Vixen said. It wasn’t a question.

The compartment door slid open with a hydraulic hiss. A flush crept up Jia’s neck

The train plunged into a tunnel. For five heartbeats, there was only darkness and the syncopated click of wheels. When the light returned, Vixen had moved closer—not physically, but in the way the air between them had thickened, become a thing with weight.

The train compartment smelled of rust, stale coffee, and the particular loneliness of a border crossing at dusk. Jia Lissa pressed her forehead against the cold glass, watching the industrial outskirts of the last city blur into skeletal trees. Outside, the map was ending. Inside, she was just beginning.

When the brakes sighed and the doors opened onto the unfamiliar platform, they stepped off together. Two women travelling alone. Carrying different ghosts. Headed, for one night, in the same direction. “Upside down for the last three stops

And for the first time all journey, Jia Lissa wasn’t hiding. She was arriving.

Jia’s first instinct was to lie, to perform the polite shield every woman learns to carry. But the rhythm of the tracks had loosened something in her chest. “Is it that obvious?”

Vixen reached across the narrow gap and gently turned Jia’s face back toward the darkening landscape. “That’s the wrong question,” she murmured. “The right one is: what’s our story for tonight? ”