I love your hair. I can’t believe it’s all like this naturally. Do you even wash it?

Yes, if I have to.

And just the feel of it - your roots are so strong. Look, it just springs right up when I pull it. Bet it can even hold me up… Whee!

A younger, half-dressed Lis takes hold of Roha’s pale hair with both of her hands and leaps off the bed, like she's taking off on a zipline. The hair makes a sound like paper shredding as the hair rips from Roha’s scalp.

Lis lands on her feet, shaking the tangle off her hands and laughing. Roha straightens her neck from the unnatural angle it’s been yanked into, and just smiles.

—

‘Lis was the real monster around town,’ Vira tells me in our interview. ‘You think men become dangerous with sexual jealousy, well, don’t underestimate a bunny boiler. Ever since they were in school, she always assumed Augustine would settle down with her, and here was this magic mountain girl, nudging her right out, without batting an eyelash her way.’ Vira lights another cigarette. ‘Lis, see, had this thing about Roha’s hair.’

‘If you’re here, you’re probably gonna talk to Vira too, around you? Bet she’ll bring up the hair.’ A now middle-aged Lis nips at her cuticles with her teeth. ‘Well, those in glass houses… Everyone got to see what she did. And yes, I was a stupid kid. I got jealous sometimes. I got blinded by emotion. But she was cold and conscious the whole time and did it all for money.’

While Roha remains in Augustine’s apartment, AK Undercovers embarks on a meandering new series of videos. Augustine calls his two faithful assistants back in for help in creating and editing the shorts, and they inevitably come into contact with his new - and by then he was using the term freely - girlfriend.

The videos that are uploaded that winter feature Lis, Vira and Roha, with Augustine nowhere to be seen. The women attempt skits, dress and undress each other, investigate cosmetics and other ‘girly things’ as the channel phrases it. ‘Girly’ is in nearly every video title.

On a cursory glance these shorts are awkward and confusing, an experimental phase to laugh at in retrospect. But they become oddly engrossing, terrifyingly discomforting, a roller coaster of mood and quality. Some end with Vira and Lis dressed, permed and primed, while Roha dozes in the back having not touched the expensive blusher or underwear they were intended to try. But others involve them forcing her awake and out of her corner to be dolled up, red lipstick slashing a mark up and across her face as she refuses to hold her head up. The assistant’s smiles are wan, and their baleful eyes search the camera for approval, the call of ‘cut’. There is the impression of unwilling children forced to play together by some callous elder.

Looking through the unused footage, the chances of videos filmed in this period making it to the channel were as haphazard as their content. But inspect closely the rejects and the veneer of childish innocence goes out the window.

On no less than three occasions, Lis attacks Roha’s hair. Always with a wide-eyed smile, always resulting in a fisful or more becoming detached. In another clip, during a supposed makeup playdate, Lis carefully applies mascara to Roha’s eyes to form heavy eyebags. She then arms herself with a razor and shaves off Roha’s eyebrows, cackling.

‘It always just grew back,’ Lis says. ‘She laughed too sometimes, because she knew all the hair stuff meant nothing. And they were just pranks. You should have seen Vira…’

While Vira largely appears to ignore Roha in the published videos, in the litany of the cutting room floor she can be seen tying up her unresponsive co-host, beating and mocking her. On one occasion, Vira sits on Roha’s stomach and strangles her with a length of red twine, over a 20-minute stretch, intermittently stopping for a drink and returning to the noose when Roha asks what’s next. In another, Vira takes a large knife to Roha’s skin, drawing a line of blood across her chest, soaking into her sheer nightdress, and chasing the cut with her finger as it seals up near-instantly with Roha’s Life Fountain healing factor.

The knife video makes it onto the channel.

‘And not a mark left the next day.’ Vira is unflinching when I ask her about these incidents. ‘I know it was wrong. But she never responded, so I was just supposed to try harder. Got carried away. But that’s what I was being paid for.’

‘It was all so eerie.’ Lis, unlike her old coworker, shudders with each fresh reminder. ‘She wouldn’t cry or scream for anything. A giant, creepy stuffed animal…’

‘Not a doll or a toy,’ Vira reasons. ‘I’m not sure how to say it, she was inert, but she wasn’t so artificial. More like a tree, or a cave. Something natural but unmoving. That’s the thing with Roha… and Life Fountains, you know? Try and try and try, and you won’t move them unless they’re wanting to be moved.’

Although AK Undercovers more or less retains its number of viewers, the channel’s engagement is remarkably low throughout the winter. There are few comments, no bustle and wildfire sharing of links among friends. It’s not hard to see why. The videos featuring Kir’s ‘girls’ are some of the most uncomfortable of the entire channel, which is no small feat.

It was during this low point that the police came knocking again. Roha had by now been featured rather extensively on the channel, but as one can imagine, the Life Fountain Foundation had practically zero overlap with AK Undercover’s demographic. The Foundation appeared to never have suspected to look in such a place. It is theorized that Nereid, the exceptionally social Life Fountain who took offense to Kir’s mention of her, was the one who tipped off her friends at the Foundation at long last, disgusted into action by the recent string of events. By then, Roha had been missing for over a month.

The videos are submitted to the police for review - which would be a slow process, city police being what it is. In the meantime, Roha is transported back to her Foundation-assigned home and told to resume her classes. His girlfriend ‘unjustly snatched’ from his arms, Augustine makes several impassioned speeches both online and before the news.

‘I don’t know why he embarrassed himself like that,’ Lis says.

Unexpectedly, or perhaps sensing that their wandering son had finally come under real threat, this is when the media megalith that is the Kir family chooses to raise its voice.

In an interview with entertainment news, a perfectly mascaraed Calya tells the presenters that it was all pranks, horseplay among friends. Roha was never hurt - they can see for themselves. Emile takes the same message to his channel’s 100 followers. (AK Undercovers, meanwhile, had just broken the 600,000 mark.)

Kir’s father Andon even emerges to clarify that yes, he is aware of his son’s little video projects. As proven in a previous, frivolous attempt at defamation, he takes all precautions to make sure the women are protected. And he would also like to point out that all the most violent and heinous bullying, the kindling of the current very understandable outrage, were inflicted exclusively by his son’s female assistants. Just watch the videos.

It’s hard to deny - but not 100 percent verifiable - that Kir was behind the camera for those exhibitions of abuse. But he does not step in, and he does not say a word as his alleged girlfriend is bound, cut and gagged. It is rather out of character, for him.

With the legal assurance, Andon Kir is adamant. My son isn’t a fool.

Predictably, uploads are on hold while the scandal plays out. But each day, with family and enemies and self-proclaimed objective newscasters all coming out to have their say, AK Undercovers’ unsettling ‘girly’ video series enjoys a spike in viewings.

‘He was playing us against each other,’ Vira declares. ‘Typical man shit.’

In my interview with Lis, she expresses the same conclusion, with a much more subdued tone.

‘Thing is, he didn’t have to start filming or anything. Lis already hated her on sight.’ Vira smiles. ‘I didn’t care. I actually came to respect her, after all that. Cooler than ice. No shame. Guess that’s why Augy took to her.’ For unspecified reasons, the video of her slicing open Roha’s chest has since been removed from the channel.

—

December 200x. Augustine furiously pans the camera around a thinly furnished room.

This ‘house’, she’s going ‘home’ they say, but just look. Nothing on the walls, paint chipping all over. A cheap folding bed and a heater that barely works. This is what they want - why they took her - they want her sleeping on the floor with the roaches - in the dead of winter!

He tramples over hollow floorboards as he rants, kicking up dust, waving his free arm, brushing neon blue aura pods from the walls and counters. His initial wariness of the stuff has clearly worn out.

You know, I might have come here with something else in mind, bed a girl on her own turf. But this place is such a mood killer. God, forget wanting to fuck - I can feel my will to live just sucked right out. Light switches aren’t even working!

In legal proceedings, the Foundation claimed that Roha’s bedroom light bulbs frequently burned out because she would sleep through days and nights without switching off the lights. Aides of the Foundation made weekly inspections of designated homes to attend to such things and Augustine had simply come at an unfortunate time. In addition, Roha herself confirmed that she often turned off the central heating of her house as a matter of preference.

But in having every fault of the house itemized, righteously compared to his own luxury flat, and concluding with a shot of Roha in her bare bedroom, forlornly poised (perhaps intentionally) on her thin-sheeted mattress - it was hard not to feel like someone needed saving, and Augustine was the person to do just that.

The two face each other, her looking up into the lens.

You must be cold. Oddly, it is Roha that says this.

I sure am.

He sniffles, a bit. Roha tilts her head and he thrusts an arm out.

Come on, princess. Let’s get you something hot to eat.

She looks at him a few moments more, somewhat skeptically. We, the audience, cannot see the face he is making in return. Eventually, she stands, and takes his outstretched hand.

—

Whether or not the couple actually got anything to eat is unknown. What is known is that later the same day, the ever-enterprising Augustine had a female guest, a double amputee, and filmed a quick review. The hazy blue glow over the original footage suggests that Roha was called on as camerawoman once again. The camera is much steadier than in her past attempts. (Somewhere in the mishmash of interviews and interrogations, Roha credits Lis and Vira with teaching her how to properly operate the channel’s setup.)

That evening, a Life Fountain Foundation aide drops by Roha’s house and discovers she’s missing again. The Foundation head, Cadmus, has an immediate hunch and calls Augustine Kir. Cadmus is accused of illegally obtaining the number and engaging in a harassment campaign that will ‘bury you, immortal magical fountain or not’.

There are various Foundation staff watching Cadmus make the call, including his wife, Lemina, but the call itself is not recorded. Augustine Kir goes on record claiming he does not remember any such conversation.

The closest the courts get to a contradiction is a small recording of Roha, asleep, with Augustine murmuring over her as he brushes back her hair, gentle enough not to disturb the pods of aura that rise from her scalp like a crown.

You don’t want to go back, do you? How could you?

No answer - no surprise.

I’m just some guy. I’m not immortal. I won’t be pretty forever, like you. That guy, those guys, who want you to be as cold and sad as them, they just have to wait for me to die... But right now, while I can, I’ll try. I’ll save you.

It’s would seems he’s talking to himself, riling himself up for the next step.

‘He was totally in love. Is that what you wanted me to admit? Of course I could see it. But you know what they say about love. It made him blind,’ Lis implores me from her floral-print couch. ‘It wasn’t her that needed saving.’