Her partner, meanwhile, grew obsessed. He often lay there for hours looking at his own reflection in the hole while caressing her face with unprecedented tenderness.

She cherished the frequent touch of his hand that now glided over her body as if it was fragile and therefore precious. At night, he covered the area where the hole was with an extra blanket, so it wouldn’t get cold. He asked her not to sleep on her stomach so the hole could breathe.

It wasn't only her partner's demeanour that changed. Anyone who glimpsed even the smallest bit of the black mark was immediately drawn to her. She simply had to wear a short top, lift her arms when waiting at the bus stop or at the baker, and a man, or sometimes a woman, would immediately walk up to her. As soon as the little black tip peered out from the bottom of her T-shirt, like the tail of a fog-furred animal hugging her stomach, she would have company.

People approached her daily, asking for her number, offering to carry her bags or let her skip a queue in exchange for a short conversation, or for simply spending time around her.

Some people even seemed to sense the presence of her black mark through her clothes, from afar. Her body, through hollowing, had solidified in everyone’s eyes, as if she had suddenly become visible where she previously had been translucent. She even wondered whether the quiet force within her had willed the birthmark into visible existence.

Everyone, her friends, her colleagues, and complete strangers, would compliment her on her empathy, on how at ease they felt with her, how they felt they were fully themselves in her presence—even without speaking.

To her own surprise, she responded. She began to attend the cinema and the theatre for free and would gloriously sink into every seat offered to her on public transport. She would listen to people’s life stories on the street, and silently drink coffees next to strangers. She had always been convinced that she preferred being someone people didn’t always notice yet might miss the presence of. Now, she enjoyed the limelight.

With time, however, the attention began to confuse her. It was as if desire enveloped her wherever she went, holding her hostage until she reacted. She needed to smile, or look away, or engage with it, even if that meant deliberately ignoring it.

The more people discerned themselves in the hole, the bigger it grew, and the more alien emotions expanded inside her, overriding her own. Language foreign to hers began to inhabit her inner world.

Work became unbearable. As a customer support manager at a hotel booking company, she had dozens of video calls with customers every day. Daily, customers cried in front of the camera, and she kept hearing a similar story: someone was always so tired, so tired, and had been alone for so long, they couldn’t handle navigating the website, alone.

Each night she would feel her entire body heavy with their sadness and anger and isolation. She blamed herself for the weight of her inner life. She withdrew, walking into work with headphones, avoiding parties, groups of strangers and even friends. She started to think of herself as socially anxious. Her social life collapsed because after most workdays she was too tired to expose herself.

And while people were enchanted by the black mark, they were also very easily offended when she didn’t show the emotional presence the hole seemed to promise.

One day, she was waiting at the bus stop on her way to work and lifted her arms, to stretch. Without seeming to know what he was drawn to, a man crossed the three-lane street and sat next to her, trying to move closer to her centre. She forgot where she was going and missed her bus.

She wondered whether she felt compassion for this man, who stared at her so ruthlessly. From the corner of her eye, she saw his greasy hair, his chewed-off nails, and while she felt physically repulsed, part of her couldn’t stop thinking that she didn’t want to disappoint him, to hurt his feelings, that he was probably very lonely. Don’t be rude, he needs a companion, she thought.

It was only when she put her hand on his hand and he leaned in to put his head on her shoulder, his sweaty smell fully in her nose now, that she withdrew, realizing what had happened.

She finally acknowledged that the hole had the curious property of absorbing and nursing the most acute feelings of any person reflected in it, even through her clothes, in real life or virtually. She would begin to feel that person’s feelings, and the reflected person would feel inexplicable inner relief.

She called her mother, who she rarely spoke to but consulted at the most crucial moments of her adult life.

Her mother just said it was all very normal, this was what it was like to live an adult life, especially for women, and she should of course use the birthmark to her advantage.

If people desire you for it, that’s perfect, just play it well, she said.

When she tried to speak to her partner, he said she was exaggerating. People loved the hole, he could see it, he was even jealous of it, he wished he'd gotten the kind of reactions from women that she got from men. He thought the hole was such a great asset, she could easily become an influencer on social media and never work again, so why was keeping her job so important anyway?

She generally valued his opinions, and he had now become one of the few people she could still relax next to.

His inner life was so joyful and focused on carnal pleasures that it was still easy to be around him. Although she did forget what she wanted to eat when near him, which led to her entirely changing her diet.

She decided that, yes, perhaps she might be exaggerating. She decided that she had a rare gift after all.

Hadn’t the doctor said so too? People paid a lot of money to see all sorts of things on the internet: feet, hands, vaginas. They should pay for her hole. She asked her partner to take a photo and to post it on Instagram via her account without comment or caption. She had felt the hole grow but hadn’t dared to look at it since her boyfriend discovered its depth. The response was gigantic, even though she had only very few followers at first. People wrote her long messages saying that they could see themselves in her hole, that they had never felt as understood by anyone. Someone who was followed by someone famous reposted her image. Brands began approaching her, offering her a lot of money to display her hole. She was especially tempted by Whole Food’s offer to pose for a campaign titled: Your Holeness is Your Wholeness.

Newspapers began asking her to write op-eds about the experience of hollowness. Someone offered her a book contract.

The publisher called and said, You can really change people’s lives with this, have an impact, it’s time women speak the truth about their condition—although in her case, not much speaking would be involved, because they wanted it to be a photo-book. The hole, the publisher said, would speak for itself. She was tempted; she could just stop working for a while and live off the book contract’s money.

After she hung up, she walked to the mirror, but didn’t dare to lift her shirt. The little bit of flesh and bone still left around the spine seemed to whisper: Don’t make us vanish. She had recently felt the back of her body grow thinner and thinner, so thin that she sometimes struggled to walk or stand. That very thinness was now saying: Stop here. What will you become if you are just hole?

The next day she decided to consult a doctor with a reputation for helping young women. When she lifted her shirt, the doctor looked astonished. She had rarely seen a black, foggy hole that large. It was, if she were to be frank, fascinating, she wanted to work with her. Work with me?

Couldn’t you just operate or laser it away? she asked.

No, no, the doctor said, modern medicine hadn’t developed such a procedure yet. She had to wear a special fabric, that was crucial. It was difficult to get hold of, but she would be able to buy a jumper from an online shop recently established by two medics who had founded a start-up to help women around the world get treatment.

Studies suggested that if a person went past her without noticing the hole, for instance because she was wearing said fabric, the hole would heal more rapidly. In addition to wearing the fabric as frequently as possible, she should, the doctor added, avoid at all costs letting anyone see themselves in the hole.

Another helpful exercise was to stare at the hole in a mirror hard enough to see one’s own reflection, daily, for ten minutes. Some people were bendy enough to stretch down, so they could see their face directly in the hole. But those were exceptions, the doctor said. It didn’t hurt to do some yoga to become bendier. Just in case.

It was, finally, most essential that she really want these methods to work. Her determination was key. She needed to trust that they would work. It was crucial that the trust be genuine, otherwise the hole would sense her doubt.

She decided to give it a try. When she told her partner, he went quiet. It’s not at all the reason I love you, he said finally, not at all. If that is what is best for you, of course, he said.

She began to sleep and walk the streets in her new special light-proof black shirt. Her partner grew more distant, suddenly he was always too busy at work to see her. After a couple of weeks, he broke up with her, saying he didn’t have the headspace for a relationship, there was too much else happening in his life, like his promotion.

Perhaps out of habit, because that is what one does during breakups, she cried, she begged him to stay, she even lifted her shirt so he could see the black spot was still there, even if smaller. He was briefly spellbound but then looked away, saying that he had made the decision, and he wanted to give her the space to deal with the hole. She let him go, without further protest, because in her bones she had long known that this would be the price she’d have to pay.