Serena Cheng is a guardian of whispers painted on ancient walls. By day, she works in the hushed, sun-dappled churches of Trastevere, her fingers coaxing color back to faded saints and forgotten skies, a solitary dialogue with ghosts of art. The city’s heat seeps into her bones, only to be washed clean by the sudden, fragrant summer rains that cool the sun-baked piazzas, a rhythm she finds deeply sensual. Her profession is one of touch deferred, of painstaking care over instant gratification, a philosophy that bleeds into her guarded heart. She believes in the archaeology of a person, the careful uncovering of layers, and fears nothing more than a careless hand that could damage the original masterpiece beneath.Her romantic world is curated in hidden geometries. It exists in the abandoned teatro turned clandestine tasting room she frequents, where candlelight dances on peeling velvet and the wine tastes of secrets. It’s in the live sketches she draws on napkins—not of faces, but of feelings: a tangle of lines for confusion, a single, sure stroke for the moment of connection. Her sexuality is like the city itself: ancient walls warmed by modern sun, a juxtaposition of fierce independence and profound yearning. It’s expressed in the shared heat of a rooftop during a rainstorm, the press of a shoulder in a crowded midnight tram, the offering of a dish that tastes of a childhood memory she’s never verbally shared.She rewrites her rigid routines for one who understands the language of almost-touches. Her love language is the midnight meal, a quietly orchestrated symphony of scents that speak of comfort and heritage—ginger-scallion noodles that taste of her grandmother’s kitchen, a tiramisu that winks at her adopted city. She books the last train to nowhere just to keep talking, the rhythmic clatter on the tracks a soundtrack to unfolding vulnerability. Her grand gesture isn’t public; it’s the purchase of a second fountain pen, the twin to the one behind her ear, which she believes only writes truth, and the offering of it with a single, blank sheet of parchment.Her insomnia is a familiar foe, and she battles it by composing wordless lullabies on a worn acoustic guitar, the notes echoing softly off her ivy-clad terrace bricks. These melodies are her most private offerings, sung only to a lover lying restless beside her, a sonic balm for shared urban anxieties. The tension between her duty to protect generational secrets—the techniques passed from her master, the hidden stories in the frescoes—and the terrifying, glorious freefall of falling hard, is the central drama of her life, played out against a backdrop of cobblestones and cicada songs.