With rewards and punishments.

The last chord of music died, drowned out by the sudden roar of the white lights that swept "Neptune's Grotto." The perverse magic vanished, exposing a dirty and empty venue. For Magi, the shock of the light was physical, as if a layer of skin were being ripped off. She was no longer an anonymous statue, but a woman almost naked, aching, and tremendously visible on a pedestal.

May emerged from the shadows. His gaze, slow and methodical, scanned each of them, evaluating the state of the merchandise after the shift. Without a word, he nodded, ordering them down.

The descent was a ceremony of pain. Numb legs gave way, back muscles protested with dull creaks. Magi felt how every movement was an aggression against her tired body. She huddled on the cold floor with the other four, a disoriented and trembling flock, avoiding looking at each other, sharing only the mute language of suffering.

He led them back to the pantry. It was just them, their ridiculous costumes, and May's impassive gaze.

"Take them off," he ordered, his voice a knife in the silence.

Taking off the masks was like ripping off a scab.

"Now, the costumes. Everything," ordered May.

One by one, the girls stripped off their elaborate and grotesque costumes. The leather, latex, and gauze fell to the floor with a whisper that sounded like surrender. Lara, Chloe, Julia, Sofia, and Magi remained completely naked, revealing the geography of humiliation: sweaty skin, red marks from the costume bindings, and uncontrollable trembling.

The cold air hit their sweaty faces, marked by the mask straps. Sofia had bloodshot eyes, having cried silently for hours. Julia seemed to have aged decades, her habitual disconnection replaced by a deep and terrifying void.

May didn't take out money. Instead, from his pocket, he extracted five heavy brass coins, identical to the ones the customers used to activate them. They shone obscenely under the fluorescent light.

"The night had different levels of performance," he began, walking slowly in front of them. "Some exceeded expectations. Others... disappointed."

He stopped in front of Lara. He took her hand, which lay inert on her thigh, and placed a coin in her palm. Then he closed Lara's fingers around it with his own hands, a gesture almost intimate and grotesque.

"You are the gold standard. The illusion was perfect."

He did the same with Julia, whose hand offered not the slightest resistance.

"Invaluable coldness. You are an empty mirror in which they see themselves. Take it."

He gave a coin to Chloe, who looked at the metal with pure terror, as if it were a venomous spider.

"Although fear betrays you, it also excites. You learned to use it. Take it."

Finally, he stood in front of Magi. He placed the cold, heavy coin in her hand. The metal was warm from May's pocket.

"You controlled even your fear. You molded it for them. That has value. Take it."

Four coins distributed. Four hands holding them with disbelief, disgust, or silent dread.

Then, May turned toward Sofia. Her empty hands clutched the torn fringes of her discarded corset.

"You," he said, and his voice lost all pretense of neutrality, becoming cutting. "You broke the spell. You made a sound. You were recognized. You introduced reality into the fantasy, and that is the only unforgivable sin here."

Sofia lowered her head, a dry sob escaping her cracked lips.

"You don't deserve a coin," declared May, and the simplicity of the phrase sounded like a lash. "You deserve a reminder."

From the same bag where he took the coins, he extracted a small brush and a jar of electric blue acrylic paint, the kind used for the bar walls. Without a word, he grabbed Sofia's arm firmly and, with the brush, painted a thick and clumsy "X" on the inside of her wrist, right over the veins. The paint shone, wet and vulgar.

"So you don't forget," said May, releasing her as if discarding a dirty rag. "And so that we all remember why the rules are not a suggestion."

Sofia looked at the mark, her breathing ragged. It was a cattle tag. A mark of the fall.

No one spoke. The air was charged with horror and a complicit guilt. Magi looked at the coin in her hand. It wasn't payment. It was a symbol. A Judas coin for her silence, for her submission, for having sold her humanity in exchange for... nothing. And for having allowed Sofia to be marked while they were "rewarded."

She put the coin away. Not out of necessity this time, but as evidence of her own fall.

Getting into the van, Sofia sat far from everyone, rubbing the blue mark on her wrist, which wouldn't rub off. The others looked out the windows, toward the night that no longer seemed like an escape, but an extension of the same cage.

May had been brilliant. He hadn't divided them with money, but with the symbolic weight of a coin and the stigma of a mark. He had given four of them a silent reminder of their complicity, and one, a visible scar of her failure. The ride back was silent, each carrying her own kind of condemnation, heavier than any wad of cash.