Chapter 62: Derek

Mr. Ardachir drove her back to the Academy. He did not say a single word during the ride, even when she tried asking him a few questions about the way the video had "disappeared" so abruptly. He simply ignored her — completely and magnificently.

She did not press the matter further, but it dealt her a serious blow to the morale. They say the worst pain is being ignored by the person you love most in the world — and it was true. Dying had seemed less painful. And she knew what she was talking about.

The rest of the classes until lunch — two long hours — passed in a haze. Eva could clearly tell something was wrong and left her alone. The rest of the class did the same, though they occasionally threw her strange looks. Blanche then realized that all her classmates were human, as though the magical population had never set foot in her high school.

Where were the others?

Even the teacher forgot about her sitting in the corner, more than usual. Until she remembered that this was supposedly her first day back since the accident. How was that possible? For her, it had been almost fifteen days...

Then she went pale. At that pace, for every month spent on Epsilon, she would live five months in the Otherworld. Which meant she was getting dangerously close to her eighteenth birthday... in less than two months!

So much had happened. She had absorbed so much information that what still felt new to everyone else already felt stale to her. Apparently, people knew she had been in a car accident, one that officially ended with "more fright than harm done." Well... officially. Because she remembered being truly hurt, and truly terrified.

At noon, Roberto and Arthur argued over who would take her tray and carry it for her, while Rémi snickered beside his girlfriend Olivia. Along with Blanche and Eva, the six of them made up the class's little nerd group.

Blanche, unlike Eva, had originally considered them simple classmates.

Nothing more.

Names on a list. Vaguely familiar faces. The kind of people you share a table with... without ever really sharing anything beyond forgotten pens and desperate glances during exams.

And then—

The snowball effect happened.

Her best friend's friends had eventually become hers too. Not all at once. No. Slowly. Almost sneakily.

Through study sessions — where nobody ever really studied, but everyone pretended with admirable dedication.

Homework assignments — distributed according to a very democratic logic: Blanche did the work, the others "proofread."

Pool parties at their history teacher's house — which, with even the slightest bit of hindsight, remained a profoundly absurd sentence, though no one had ever taken the time to question it.

Shopping trips — where the original objective usually disappeared after twenty minutes, replaced by collective wandering and extremely harsh judgments about clothes nobody would ever buy.

And movie nights — where the film mostly served as an excuse to eat too much popcorn and whisper commentary as though their opinions might somehow influence the plot.

In short.

After spending so much time together for no real reason... they had eventually become one.

She let the boys sort it out themselves; she was not very hungry. As a result, Roberto won and returned with a veritable feast to their usual seats.

Roberto, an approachable dark-haired boy with olive skin and black eyes, knew he was handsome — and played on it, arrogant just like her. After competing over absolutely everything, they had eventually grown fond of each other. And with a memory like hers, she always won.

An only child and the principal's son, he had naturally become friends with Eva, whose father taught at the school. He himself had long been friends with Rémi, who was dating Olivia. As for Arthur, Olivia's best friend, he had attached himself to the group without difficulty.

Rémi, a tall blond with nearly white highlights and an athletic build, had fallen for the little golden doll with blue eyes. Imagine his surprise when he discovered she was as intelligent as she was beautiful. Their love at first sight had been immediate, almost cliché. And since Olivia had a best friend — Arthur — Rémi had quickly understood he would have to deal with him. Fortunately, the green-eyed redhead was far more passionate about music than girls.

They had ended up sharing the same dorm room. Much to their misfortune: while boys were forbidden from entering the girls' dormitory, the opposite was not strictly prohibited. A ridiculous situation that amused Roberto and Blanche greatly.

At the table, the gamer watched them as though she were seeing them for the first time.

They were there, exactly as usual: sprawled out, animated, just loud enough to attract attention without ever fully admitting they wanted it. They were discussing an event that had happened during study hall that morning — apparently of critical importance, judging by their dramatic involvement.

A stolen pen?

An argument?

An overzealous hall monitor?

Hard to say.

As often happened, the subject mattered less than the way they talked about it: with that perfectly disproportionate intensity peculiar to people who, deep down, have nothing better to do — and therefore experience every tiny incident as a key episode in their personal legend.

Blanche, meanwhile, was only half listening.

Or rather — she pretended to.

Her eyes drifted across them slowly, attentively. Too attentively for someone supposedly following an ordinary conversation. She dissected gestures, silences, reactions. A smile slightly too forced. A hesitation before speaking. A glance darting away.

Then: their auras.

Where, only a few days earlier, she would have seen nothing but people — noisy, flawed, generally normal — she now perceived something else. Shades. Vibrations. Presences spilling slightly beyond the physical frame, as though each of them unwillingly betrayed a more honest version of who they truly were.

It was... unsettling.

Fascinating too.

And honestly, a little invasive.

Because once you start seeing that... it becomes difficult to go back.

And meanwhile, around her, the debate about the study hall incident was reaching magnificently absurd heights.

Nobody noticed anything.

Roberto's aura was clearer than she would have expected: pale yellow, light pink, over a faded violet background. Crossed by red filaments, just like Arthur's. Arthur's own aura shifted between gentle blue and blazing orange. Olivia's aura was entirely bright pink, cradled by a black shadow in the background.

She was convinced all those colors meant something. Her blue window activated: her "Aura" skill had just reached level five. While nibbling a few fries for appearances' sake, she carefully read what the system was trying to tell her.

"She's eating? Well, I'll be damned! Here I was thinking she was going to starve herself to death!" Roberto exclaimed.

Eva elbowed him sharply.

"What died was your legendary tact," Blanche shot back, dropping the fries to attack her dessert instead: a fruit salad in syrup.

While the others laughed, happy to have their Blanche back, she noticed that every time Rémi and Olivia touched — a kiss, a caress — their auras intertwined. And above them, she eventually distinguished a thin cord linking them together. Now that was new.

But she had no time to dwell on it. A glow caught her attention: a blond man in his forties entered the cafeteria, surrounded by a whitish halo. Nobody noticed him. He moved silently, avoiding every student with disturbing precision. When he stopped in front of her, Derek's eyes widened.

She could see him!