Her hands, usually so soft and clean, showed the toll of hours spent bent over tubs and buckets, the dirt nesting under her nails and the grime layering on her fingers. The smell of damp fabric and the tang of cleaning agents seemed to have settled into her pores, making it impossible to tell that she had even tried to freshen up.

Each stain had a story—a pause to wring out a load, the splash of water that caught the sunlight, the rush to finish a task before the next batch. She looked as though she had been painted by the labor itself, a walking record of relentless, dirty, exhausting work. The marks told of movement, sweat, and struggle, of the early hours before the day had even fully begun, when the world was still hazy and half asleep.