By Urmi Gloria Rozario

A loud sound echoes from the second floor.
Mrs. Julia is humming her favourite song while cooking in her small kitchen as the warm smell of curry fills the air. Her peaceful moment is cut short by a sudden bang from above.
“Veronica, what is this sound?” Mrs. Julia shouts from downstairs while turning down her stove. “I told you to study, not to make such a mess.”
Mrs. Julia starts walking towards her daughter’s room, and in the middle of the stairs, another sound stops her—something shattering against the floor. She doesn’t wait another second.
“Veronica! What happened?” She pushes the door open.
The room is a disaster. Paint palettes, brushes, and crumpled sketches are scattered across every surface. And there—
Mrs. Julia is taken aback—not by the mess in her daughter’s room, but by Veronica herself, standing in the middle of it all, tears pouring down her face, a cutter clutched in her hand, ripping through her canvases one by one. The girl who has spent years carefully building this little world of hers—every painting, every carefully chosen colour—is now tearing it apart with her own hands.
“I hate her… I hate her… I HATE HER, MOM!” Veronica screams like a madwoman.
Mrs. Julia has never seen her like this. She steps carefully through the mess and gently takes the cutter from her daughter’s hand.
“Calm down, just for a moment,” she says, guiding Veronica to the edge of the bed and pressing a glass of water into her shaking hands.
Veronica keeps murmuring through her tears, “I hate her… I hate her…”

Art can be a hobby for some and a way to pass the time for others, but for Veronica, it is her safe haven. She still remembers the days when she locked herself in her room, stopped expressing her feelings, and withdrew from friends and even family—all because she was bullied at school. Painting is her only escape from that cruel reality. She pours the feelings she cannot share with anyone into her canvas. Whenever she strokes her brush against the canvas, she feels her pain and anxiety wash away.

Mrs. Julia sits beside her and slowly runs her fingers through her hair. “Drink the water first. Breathe a little. I am right here. Just tell me what happened.”
Veronica drinks. Slowly, her breathing steadies.
“Mom…” she starts, her voice raw from crying. “You know how much effort I put into my art piece for the 12th International Art Competition at St. Xavier’s?”
Mrs. Julia looks at her daughter with a soft smile. “I know that better than anyone, Sweetheart. I saw how many sleepless nights you spent on that piece. You wanted to win this so badly.”
“None of it matters anymore, Mom,” Veronica says with a sarcastic smile, remembering the incident that crushed her dreams.

Bullying had left her traumatized. It isolated her from the people she loved. That was why she built her own little world on Instagram. She shared everything on her page—every finished piece, every messy step it took to get there. She had only a small number of followers, but they encouraged her to chase her dreams and keep creating. What she didn’t know was that one of those followers would betray her—that this follower had been watching her page all along, quietly stalking every piece of art she shared.

“When I submitted my artwork to the competition, I was so happy, Mom. Genuinely happy. For the first time in so long.”
She laughs bitterly.
“That didn’t last.”
“A few days later, I got an email from St. Xavier’s. My entry had been removed for plagiarism. They said a nearly identical artwork had already been submitted by someone else before mine. According to them, mine appeared to be a copy.”
Her jaw tightens.
“Then I saw the name: Kristine. The person who had submitted the earlier artwork.”
Silence fills the room.
“It took me a second. Then it hit me.” Veronica looks up at her mother, her eyes red. “Kristine. My bully. The same person who spent years taking everything from me—my confidence, my friends, my sense of safety—she took my art too. She fed my progress photos into an AI tool, generated a version of my painting, and submitted it under her own name. So when my real painting arrived—the one I made with my own hands—it was mine that looked fake.”
“What do I do now, Mom?” Veronica weeps, burying her face in her hands.
Mrs. Julia is quiet for a moment. Then she gently lifts Veronica’s chin, looks her in the eyes, and says,
“She can steal your artwork, Veronica, but she cannot steal your talent.
Let her generate an image with a machine, but she cannot generate what you feel.
Every brushstroke you make carries your pain, your joy, your story. That speaks louder than any algorithm ever could.
You can pour your soul onto a canvas, Veronica. You can make people feel something when they look at what you create.”
She wipes her daughter’s tears with her thumb. “You can convey your inner voice through your canvas in a way an AI could never replicate.”
As Veronica sits with her mother’s words, a spark of hope blooms inside her.
Slowly, the storm inside her begins to settle.
Gathering every bit of courage she has left, she decides to try for the competition again.
Paintbrush in hand, she is ready to prove everyone wrong. Failure is never an option, and letting a machine replace her is unthinkable.
Every canvas tells a story, and her brushes are going to paint hers.