Forbidden Rules

Rick awoke the next morning to the soft, automated hum of the curtains drawing back, bathing the suite in the gentle light of dawn. The city below was still draped in a thin veil of mist, a sprawling, silent kingdom waiting for its ruler to awaken. For a moment, the fear from the previous night felt distant, like the fading remnants of a bad dream. In the light of day, in the heart of his new empire, he was invincible.

His confidence, temporarily shattered, had been rebuilt overnight, fortified by the very mystery he faced. The blank handbook wasn't a threat; it was an invitation. He was no longer just a resident; he was a contestant, a player in the most exclusive game in the world.

He spent the first part of his morning crafting a meticulous social roadmap. His first destination: the 50th-floor sky garden. It was the perfect stage—semi-public, elegant, and a natural place for "chance" encounters. He laid out his wardrobe on the king-sized bed, discarding several outfits before settling on the perfect ensemble: a linen suit that appeared casual but whose every crease and fold had been calculated for an air of effortless sophistication. It whispered "old money" rather than shouting "newly rich."

In front of the full-length mirror, he practiced his opening. He rehearsed three different versions of "A pleasure to meet you," each with a subtle variation in tone and warmth. One for a peer, one for a potential mentor, and one for someone he might need to impress. He was an actor preparing for a debut performance, and the entire tower was his stage.

The sky garden was even more breathtaking than the brochure had promised. It was a masterpiece of bio-engineering, a slice of paradise suspended between heaven and earth. Exotic flowers and bizarre plants, some of which he had never seen before, flourished under a complex, self-contained ecosystem. The air was thick with a humid, sweet fragrance. Yet, for all its beauty, there was something unsettling about the place. The perfection felt sterile, almost morbid. The flowers bloomed in colors too vibrant, their petals arranged in patterns too symmetrical. It was nature, but nature that had been stripped of all its wildness, tamed and curated to the point of being unnatural.

He saw her then. A woman in a simple, elegant white dress stood with her back to him, gracefully pruning a bush of roses. The roses themselves were an impossible shade of electric blue, their color so intense it seemed to hum in the air.

This was it. Opportunity.

Rick cleared his throat, took a steadying breath, and began his approach. He moved with a practiced, fluid gait he'd copied from models on Milan runways, a walk designed to convey both confidence and non-threatening grace.

"Good afternoon," he began, his voice pitched to a magnetic, low timbre he'd spent years perfecting. "These blue roses are truly remarkable. Are they a variation of the 'Blue Danube'? I recall seeing a similar specimen at a private floral exhibition in Geneva a few years back."

He had fabricated the anecdote on the spot. It was his signature move, his go-to icebreaker. It was designed to quickly establish his credentials as a man of culture and extensive travel, a subtle way of saying, I belong here. It usually worked.

The woman turned around slowly, her movements languid and deliberate. She was beautiful, but it was the cold, flawless beauty of a porcelain doll or a marble statue. Her skin was alabaster-pale, without a single blemish, and her eyes were a startlingly light grey, so pale they seemed empty. They looked right through him, as if he were made of glass, focusing on some distant point in the void behind him.

She didn't answer his question. She didn't even acknowledge it. She simply stared, her expression a perfect, unreadable blank. Then, she raised the pair of silver gardening shears in her hand and, with a sharp snip, cut off the largest, most vibrant blue rose from the bush.

What she did next made Rick's brain stutter and freeze.

She brought the rose, still glistening with morning dew, to her lips. And she began to eat it.

Her expression remained utterly impassive as she chewed. The sound it made was not the soft tearing of petals. It was a crisp, sharp crunching, like someone chewing on shards of glass or dry leaves. Blue juice, the color of ink, mixed with her saliva and trickled from the corner of her mouth, staining her pale skin like a trail of blue tears. It was a grotesque parody of a meal, a horrifying act of consumption that defied all logic.

The carefully practiced smile on Rick's face froze, then melted away, leaving his features slack with shock. His mind, usually a whirlwind of strategies and calculations, was utterly silent. There was no framework, no social protocol that could account for this.

The woman continued to chew the flower methodically, her vacant eyes never leaving his. Then, without a word, she walked past him. The rustle of her white dress was the only sound besides the sickening, rhythmic crunch, crunch, crunch coming from her mouth. She left behind only the heavy, sweet scent of roses and an unnerving echo of that sound that seemed to make his own teeth ache in sympathy.

Rick stood paralyzed for a long moment, the fabricated story about Geneva dying on his lips. His heart was a frantic drum against his ribs. He fought to regain control, to fit this insanity into a neat little box his mind could process.

"...Behavioral art," he finally choked out, the words a desperate shield against the raw terror seeping into him. "Yes. This has to be top-tier performance art. The world of the ultra-wealthy is just... this profound." His own explanation sounded hollow, pathetic. "She was testing me. Testing my composure. Of course. That's all it was."

He hastily found an explanation for the bizarre scene and drew his first conclusion: Rule Number One might be: Do not engage in casual conversation, or do not comment on anything in the garden. It was a rule he felt he had learned at a high psychological price.

He turned and walked away, his stride no longer confident but hurried, almost a retreat. He decided to switch to a safer venue, a place governed by logic and order. The library on the 30th floor sounded rational, civilized.

What he didn't realize, as he fled the garden's morbid perfection, was that the woman's empty eyes had followed him until he was out of sight. And on her placid, doll-like face, the faintest hint of a smile had appeared—a smile that was a perfect echo of the one he had seen in the elevator. The game had truly begun, and he had just made his first move. In the Tower of Bliss, he was learning, there was no such thing as a "safe" place.