She needs to get cleaned up.

The athlete’s whistling faded upstream, devoured by the constant murmur of the water. Jessica remained crouched for a minute longer, muscles tense as ropes, listening until only the natural sound of the forest remained. The sensation of having been a second away from the ultimate social catastrophe—being seen naked by a peer—left a tingling of terror on her skin.

The message. The message had mentioned him.

With hands still trembling, she recovered the phone from where she had dropped it. The screen lit up, showing a new notification. A cold sweat, different from the forest dew, ran down her back as she read it:

"Good thing he's an athlete, he ran right past. Good reflexes, Jessica."

The words pierced her like an ice dart. It wasn’t a coincidence. It hadn’t been luck. She had been watched. Every second of her panic, her clumsy fall among the leaves, her freezing waiting to be discovered… everything had been seen, recorded, and now commented on with a sadistic calm. Fear transformed into something deeper and claustrophobic: the certainty that there was no privacy, not even here, in the apparent solitude of the forest. The eyes of “The Deal” were everywhere. Perhaps literally.

She looked around, between the trees, searching for the glint of a lens, the silhouette of a hidden figure. She saw only green and shadow. The watcher was invisible, but his presence was more tangible than ever.

The phone vibrated again, almost making her jump. A new message:

"Now that you are clean, you can find your next reward. Follow the stream downwards, towards the city. Hurry."

Towards the city. Those three words were a balm and a spur. The city meant people, normality, and, above all, the real possibility of getting clothes, of ending this nightmare in the open air. Hope, fragile but powerful, flared up again. Perhaps this time, yes. Perhaps in the package she would find shorts, a loose t-shirt. Something to cover herself before venturing back into the world.

The mention of "hurry" reminded her of the nearby presence of other people. She had already seen one. There could be more hikers, runners, anyone else. She couldn't risk it.

With a last cautious glance, she emerged from her hiding place among the ferns and approached the water's edge. The clarity of the stream was irresistible. She sank into the current, which reached above her knees. The cold water made her shiver, a brutal contrast to the heat of her shame and fear. She crouched, rubbing herself with her hands to remove the dirt and leaves adhered to her thighs, her belly, her back. The water ran over her skin, washing away the mud but not the feeling of vulnerability. The leather choker got wet, darkening, and the metal eye dripped cold water between her breasts.

She washed with speed, nervous efficiency. Every second in the open water was a risk. When she felt she was as clean as possible, she stepped out of the stream, dripping. The fresh air on her wet skin made her bristle with cold and an acute awareness of her nakedness. There was no towel. Only the air to dry her.

She followed the bank, moving with determination now, her bare feet finding a barely visible path between the stones and the grass. Her eyes scanned every prominent rock, every exposed root, every bend of the stream, looking for the promised package.

She found it about fifty meters further down, where the stream made a gentle curve. There wasn't one, but two small packages, identical to the first, wrapped in the same cream-colored paper and tied with black ribbon. They rested next to each other on a flat, dry stone, like an offering on a primitive altar.

A flash of joy—two rewards, maybe underwear and something else—was immediately drowned out by a sound that froze her blood: voices. Youthful, male laughter, coming from the main path that, further ahead, joined the stream bank. They were approaching. Fast.

Panic returned in a wave. There was no time to open the packages, nor to see what they contained. If those people found her here, with two suspicious packages and completely naked except for a leather collar… the story would be impossible to explain.

She looked around frantically. The bushes were too low. The trees, too exposed. Her eyes locked onto the stream itself, in an area where the water widened and seemed deeper, forming a small pool in the shade of a weeping willow. The tree roots created a tangle on the bank, and the water was dark enough from the shade to offer some concealment.

Without thinking twice, she grabbed the two packages with one hand, pressed them against her chest, and slipped into the water. She submerged her body until only her head, from the nose up, remained above the surface. She pressed herself against the tangled willow roots, using them as a natural screen. The cold water enveloped her completely, soothing the trembling of her muscles with a frigid shock.

She held her breath, listening. The voices became clearer, closer.

“…I'm telling you it was that way, towards the old stump.”

“Why would anyone want to go there?”

“I don't know, but the art teacher said that symbol is interesting.”

They were students, probably from the school. They spoke with the carelessness of those who stroll without an urgency like hers.

Jessica sank a little lower, until only her eyes and the top of her head, with her blonde hair plastered to her skull like a dark cap, remained visible. The packages, held against her chest underwater, were her secret and her possible salvation. The metal eye of her choker peeked out just at the water line, like a strange creature observing from the deep.

The voices reached the point where the path met the stream, just a few meters from her aquatic hiding place. They stopped.

“The water looks good today.”

“Yeah, we should bring the girls some day.”

Jessica closed her eyes, praying they wouldn't decide to take a dip right there. Her heart beat so hard she feared the ripples in the water would give her away.

She was submerged in the stream, turned into a cornered nymph, holding her breath and the cold, with the reward so close and yet so far, while the voices of a normal world from which she was temporarily exiled resonated just a few steps away. The only thing separating her complete humiliation from those boys was a veil of murky water and the shadow of a weeping willow.