Leaving the adult drama, Days Of Our Lives shifts to a much darker realm: Bayview – where Rachel Black is undergoing treatment, and where she unexpectedly meets Sophia Choi, a slightly older, sharp-witted, and silently dangerous girl.

Rachel enters Bayview with a family history as heavy as stone: her mother, Kristen, with a long list of crimes; her father, Brady, constantly torn between love and hate; and those around her using her as a tool in their revenge schemes.

From childhood to adulthood, Rachel has had to learn to live in a world where love always comes with conditions.

Sophia appears as a counterweight: she seems to understand Rachel, doesn’t judge, doesn’t act like an “adult who knows everything,” but sits beside her like a friend on the same side.

But it’s precisely because they’re on the same side that she’s dangerous. Sophia quickly realizes Rachel harbors all sorts of anger: anger at her father, her mother, and the hypocrisy of the adults. She began pushing phrases like, “They don’t really care about you,” “They want to change you until they’re satisfied,” and “Only we understand each other.” These phrases, while toxic to a normal child, were even more deeply ingrained in Rachel, whose childhood had been torn between opposing factions.

Gradually, the therapy sessions turned into planning: how to lie to the doctor that she was better, how to get discharged sooner, how to return the “feeling of powerlessness” to the adults. Sophia instilled in Rachel the idea that the world truly divides into two types: controllers and the controlled. And to avoid being trampled upon, one must first become the controller.