FADE IN: INT. ELENA'S APARTMENT, HAWTHORNE, EARLY MORNING Black screen. A digital alarm pulses at 5:45 AM. A hand emerges from white sheets and silences it without fumbling. No searching. No hesitation. The gesture is surgical. ELENA MORROW (34) sits up. Dark hair, shoulder length, already beginning to pull itself into the shape she will give it. The room assembles around her in pieces: white walls, a single architectural print (Tadao Ando, all poured concrete and deliberate absence), no photographs anywhere. The nightstand holds a phone, a glass of water, and nothing else. Where a mirror should hang above the dresser, there is only a blank rectangle of slightly brighter paint. Elena showers. The bathroom is white tile, precise grout lines, and one conspicuous omission: above the sink, where a mirror belongs, the wall is bare. She dresses from a closet arranged by gradient, muted tones moving from grey to charcoal to navy, the palette of a woman who has made the absence of color into a system. At the kitchen counter, she makes coffee with the focus of a lab technician. A pour over. A scale for the beans. A timer for the bloom. A thermometer probing the water. Every variable accounted for. Every outcome predetermined. She stands at the window with her cup and watches Hawthorne Boulevard wake up. A cyclist. A barista unlocking a door. A couple walking a retriever in the rain. Elena watches them the way a traveler watches a