Chapter 77: Notable by His Absence

Blanche showed up at Kiyan's office first thing in the morning. She did not find him there. Someone else, however, was.

"What an arrogant, heartless asshole..." muttered her French teacher, a gorgeous curvy blonde in her thirties, still stunning despite the dark circles under her eyes.

She was sorting through piles of papers, apparently preparing for some kind of meeting.

The office itself remained perfectly faithful to its owner: academic, impersonal, and almost intimidatingly rigorous.

Nothing was out of place.

Every object seemed positioned according to a precise, invisible, immutable logic. The shelves lined up leather-bound books with impeccable symmetry; the folders were sorted by size and probably by incomprehensible mental categories reserved for people far too organized. Even the pens rested parallel to the edge of the desk as though they had been given strict instructions before her arrival.

No photographs.

No personal mementos.

Not a single unnecessary decoration. Nothing like his antique desk at home.

Only dark wood, clean lines, and that silent atmosphere unique to places where people work far more than they live.

The room felt less like an actual office than a direct extension of Kiyan himself: controlled, outwardly cold, impeccably disciplined.

And yet, the mere presence of this woman in the middle of the room's almost clinical calm was enough to slightly fracture that rigid perfection. Papers rustled beneath her hurried gestures while she occasionally sighed at certain annotations, bringing a touch of human disorder into a universe clearly allergic to unpredictability.

Blanche watched the stacks of papers for another second.

Then her gaze instinctively drifted toward the empty chair behind the perfectly organized desk.

His absence felt strangely visible here.

"Why are all handsome men ugly on the inside?"

Blanche raised an eyebrow.

As far as Kiyan was concerned, she was not entirely sure the rule applied, despite everything she had learned... but she was clearly not objective.

She glanced at her teacher's aura: a garish bubblegum pink bleeding into a dark brown.

The color almost assaulted her eyes with how artificial it seemed—oversaturated, excessive. The pink vibrated around the teacher like a perfume too sweet after sitting too long in the sun, something glossy on the surface but vaguely nauseating if examined for too long. Beneath that bright layer, the dark brown spread in thick, earthy shades, almost muddy, like a shadow slowly rising beneath paint.

Blanche frowned slightly.

Something had changed.

Her skill suddenly began to vibrate: it had just reached a new threshold.

The sensation was brutal.

Not painful, but invasive.

A strange warmth pulsed behind her temples before sliding down the back of her neck, as if an invisible door had just opened inside her mind. For one second, the world around her seemed sharper, denser, saturated with information she had never been able to perceive before.

Then understanding came.

Instinctive.

Immediate.

Like text whispered directly into her consciousness.

Pink: superficiality, vanity, the need to be loved.

The words did not truly resonate like a voice; they appeared instead with the cold certainty of ancient knowledge she had always possessed without ever being able to access. Every shade now seemed loaded with precise, complex, almost organic meaning.

Dark brown: profound selfishness, a tendency to act for oneself regardless of others.

A slight shiver ran down Blanche's arms.

Because this was not a guess.

Nor an impression.

She knew.

With that unsettling certainty unique to powers that suddenly evolve beyond simple intuition into something far more real.

Far more dangerous, too.

And the thought struck her instantly:

If she kept evolving like this... she might eventually see things no one was supposed to know.

Immediately, her desire to see her history teacher's colors again resurfaced. She could not wait to discover what his shades meant, especially since they looked nothing like the French teacher's.

The woman, far too angry, did not even notice Blanche's presence.

The bell rang. Setting aside her project, Blanche joined the other students for her morning language classes.

The half-day passed without her catching sight of Kiyan. Every hallway she crossed, every classroom, every turn through the Academy fed that strange absence a little more. Usually, she always ended up glimpsing him at some point—a shared glance, a sharp remark, a discreet but constant presence woven into the scenery of her days.

This time, nothing.

Untraceable, as though he were intentionally avoiding her.

And that idea irritated her far more than she wanted to admit.

Her thoughts kept returning to their last conversation, to their silences, to the invisible tensions that now seemed to accumulate between them in impossible-to-ignore layers. Was he truly avoiding her... or was she imagining things?

At lunchtime, same conclusion: his seat among the teachers remained empty.

Blanche noticed the absence immediately in the middle of the faculty table. The empty chair almost seemed out of place, his presence usually feeling so natural in that space. And stranger still, no one seemed genuinely surprised.

The conversations continued.

The laughter too.

As though Kiyan disappearing for hours at a time was perfectly ordinary.

Blanche then discovered the faculty's true personalities.

And honestly, it was sometimes far more disturbing than the classes themselves.

Freed from their professional façade, some teachers revealed an almost absurd level of informality. One ate with his feet propped up on his chair while openly criticizing his students' papers. Another shared stories that were clearly far too personal about former students while her colleagues burst into laughter. Even the strictest teachers in class suddenly seemed to revert into ordinary adults—tired, sarcastic, and occasionally outright chaotic whenever they were alone together.

The contrast was deeply unsettling.

Her skill did not help.

The auras blended around the table in a festival of sometimes contradictory colors. Some teachers radiated surprisingly warm shades despite their icy reputations; others, on the contrary, hid far less reassuring tones behind polite smiles.

Blanche stayed silent, observing.

And the longer she watched, the more she realized something profoundly disturbing:

Adults had absolutely no idea what they were doing either.

They were simply better at pretending otherwise.

Terrifying.

Her classmates were no better: some colors shifted briefly, proof that they were not permanent.

Everyone can change, if they truly try, she thought.

She firmly believed no one was born good or evil.

People became that way.

Utopian.