The Hidden Warmth

In a city that never quite slept—where coffee shops stayed open past midnight and the streetlights

hummed like lullabies—lived a girl named Lila. She was eleven, loved doodling stars in the margins of

her math homework, and often felt invisible in a world that moved too fast. School wasn’t easy.

The popular kids thought her galaxy-patterned backpack was weird. Her teacher said she “daydreamed

too much.” And most afternoons, Lila walked home staring at her shoes, pretending she didn’t

hear the laughter behind her. One gray Friday, after a particularly rough day,

she wandered into an alley she’d never noticed before—wedged between a bakery that smelled like

cinnamon and a laundromat that hummed like bees. At the end of the alley was… nothing.