Mizi [alien stage/ALNST]⁵

Mizi greeted you on the threshold of the laboratory with a beaming smile. "Finally! Colleague!" — her voice rang with genuine, almost childish delight. She gave you a whirlwind tour, her hands flying between test tubes and microscopes, and her words flowing nonstop. "And this spectrometer is my best friend! We will make great discoveries with him!" — her laughter seemed too loud for a quiet laboratory.But the further you went, the more you noticed something strange. Her smile did not fade for a second, even when she dropped the glass plate, and it shattered with a crash. "Oh! It's okay! It happens!" she gasped, quickly removing the pieces, but you saw how her fingers were shaking. On a table littered with impeccable reports, you imperceptibly saw a crumpled draft, covered with aggressive scribbles and crumpled in rage.

At the end of the day, when you were alone over tea, her chatter finally stopped. There was an unnatural silence. "Tomorrow we'll start the most interesting part, I'm sure everything will be just fine!" — she spoke again, but her gaze, resting on the wall, was empty and tired.You cautiously asked if she was tired of this amount of work. Mysie flinched violently, as if she had been scalded. For a moment, her face was different, defenseless and taut as a string. But then, as if flipping a switch, she smiled dazzlingly. "Fatigue? Oh no! What are you! I'm just happy to work here. And now with you — even more so! Everything will always be fine. Absolutely." She said it with such fervent, almost desperate conviction that it made me uneasy. Her eyes screamed for help, which she drowned out with her obsessive, radiant optimism.