Servants

In The Servants, Emily White turns the lens toward the quiet storms hidden behind ordinary facades, offering a collection where longing hums beneath everyday routines and fantasies bloom with the intensity of hand-inked manga art. These stories explore contrast-youth and age, routine and desire, restraint and imagination-interwoven with melancholy, humor, and the raw ache of wanting more. The title story follows Giovanni, a middle-aged man whose unglamorous life is disrupted by the arrival of elegant new neighbors: a magnetic couple whose beauty and confidence ignite in him a blend of admiration and restlessness. She walked past like a vision, the excerpt recalls, her movements so fluid, so luminous, that even the street seemed to hold its breath. As Giovanni drifts deeper into daydreams wild, cinematic, unreal his fantasies become a mirror reflecting all he has buried over the years: regrets, desires, and the fragile hope of rediscovery. In this evocative collection, Emily White asks: What if the fantasies we create become the only place where we feel truly alive?