Chapter 0 - Prologue: A lucky find.

They looked harmless. Dangerous things often do. Just a simple pair of headphones, maybe a decade or so out of date. Compared to more modern designs, they were large, bulky things, the padded cups in particular looking almost too heavy to wear.

Sophie wanted them. How could she not? Sure, they were probably shit, but one doesn't wear a large set of vintage headphones for sound quality, but to be seen wearing them. It wasn't that she was a hipster, or at least not JUST that, but at the end of the day she just couldn't resist. It helped that they were just so cheap. Money was pased over the table, and in return, the aged headset was handed over, unwrapped or packaged, lef to sit heavy in her hands, the chord hanging down and slapping gently against her knee. Even that was enjoyable, in it's own way. 

For now they simple sat around her delicate neck, the black, lightly dented and scuffed plastic and metal going well with her pale skin. Sophie wasn't a tall young woman, her form gently curved and pleasantly plump. She wasn't a model by any means, but as her occassional partners had said, she was cute, that pixie like nose and full pair of lips mischievious and endearing when curved into a wicked little smile. It was hard not to like her, at least on first impressions. 
Walking home from the record shop was strange, but nice. The headphones sat heavily on her collar, but it was a comfortable weight, and she could tell from the tickle on her skin that she was being noticed. So what if the chord sat in the pocket of her jacket all alone, without a device to plug it into? The music was secondary to the statement, and right now, the statement was working, eyes on her in the fading afternoon light. More than she had expected, that was for sure. 

They must have been lucky.

The song started when she making her way up the stairs to her apartment, noticing, with a start that almost flung her down the tilted hallway, that the catchy little number she had been nodding and humming along with wasn't coming from within her head, but from outside, and just beneath, the tinny strains of sound drifting up from the headphones, tickling at her ears and changing the pace of her steps. Sophie, gasping from the fright, unhooked herself hurriedly, almost strangling herself with the cord in the panic. At some point in her struggle, the music stopped, and imeddiately she felt embaressed, cheeks heating at what she had done. She had imagined music and made a fool of herself, even if (And thank god) noone was here to see it. 

Laughing it off, she finished her climb, the headphones in her hand, and returned to her apartment.