When she dismissed us, the room emptied steadily. I took my time repacking my bag and double-checking everything—I had another alert set to go off and I didn’t want to forget anything. Noor and Thomas headed out for coffee that I had to decline, though I promised next week.
Just when I was ready to leave, Mischa called my name.
Like she’d known I would stay.
“Rachel.”
My pulse ticked up anyway.
I approached the front of the room. Mischa didn’t smile. Mischa’s face didn’t do unnecessary things.
“Sit,” she said, waving to the first row.
I sat.
She slid a folder toward me—my work. Prints. Notes. A few contact sheets I’d turned in last week. The edges were worn like they’d been handled.
“I’ve been reviewing your portfolio,” she said.
My stomach dipped. “Okay.”
Mischa studied me for a beat, as if she were reading my exposure settings instead of my face. The longer she stared, the more my nerves tightened, like I was waiting for a verdict I’d already half-written in my head.
“You have raw talent,” she said finally.
Relief flickered.
“But,” she continued, and that brief flicker died, “you are beginning to hide behind it.”
Ouch.
I opened my mouth, ready to defend myself, but Mischa lifted a hand.
“I am not accusing,” she said, and the crisp, surgical tone she used in class softened just enough to feel almost kind. “I am merely making an observation.”
She tapped one of the prints on the table.
It was a café.
Or at least, the idea of one.
Sunlight slanted through tall windows, dust caught perfectly in the air. A single table in the foreground, cup abandoned, steam already gone. Chairs slightly misaligned, as if someone had just stood up and never come back.
It was clean. Beautiful light. Perfect framing. The kind of photograph that looked like it belonged in a magazine spread about Parisian solitude.
It was also… empty.
Not visually — emotionally.
Like I’d photographedabsenceinstead of a person.
No story. No tension. No risk. Just atmosphere, carefully composed and completely safe. The kind of image that proved I knewexactlywhat I was doing.
Unfortunately, it also revealed just how distant from my subject I was. I didn’t feel any of it.
“These are almost professional,” she said. “And they are distant.”
I swallowed. “That’s… good though, isn’t it?”
