Chapter 14: The protagonist just wants a friend!

After leaving the courtyard, I went back to the Academy buildings. After all… I didn’t really have anywhere else to go. As I walked, I felt something I hadn’t noticed before. Or maybe I had, but I ignored it. The stares. Every step I took was met with eyes full of disgust. They were judging, malicious, terrifying. Like their pupils were needles trying to stitch a face onto me that wasn’t mine.

My little ponytail twisted into a tangled mess, a knot of nerves that writhed with every passing second. And with that, more eyes turned toward me. Like I was some kind of freak.

"J-Just… stop staring at me."

It felt like existing itself was already a crime. I felt myself shrinking. Not physically, but inside. Like something in my chest was getting smaller and smaller. An empty shell, with a cracked voice and clumsy steps.

"Maybe I never should’ve spoken. I never should’ve crossed their path…"

The murmur of my thoughts was a sharp, cutting echo that repeated with every step. I walked through the halls as if I were swimming against an invisible current of contempt. The walls seemed to close in, the ceilings lowering slowly, crushing my pride bit by bit. There was no one there. Or worse: there were many—but none for me.

My shoes clicked against the floor, every sound making me feel more alone. More guilty. More in the way. I hugged myself, but even my own arms gave me no comfort. Where am I supposed to belong?

Maxine’s words kept ringing like funeral bells:"You disgust me."

All I wanted… was to help her. To get closer. To be useful. But maybe that was selfish. Maybe it always was. Because no one had asked me. Because no one… needed me or wanted me here. Not even me. I don’t want to be here. Alone. Do I… even want myself?

My vision blurred. Not from tears, but from that strange heat that burns in your throat when your soul wants to scream but doesn’t dare. I didn’t let myself cry. Crying would mean accepting that I had no one left. So I swallowed the lump, like a stone sinking into the pit of my stomach.

The voices of other students in the distance turned into whispers. A-Are they talking about me?

I couldn’t see their faces. I was too scared to look up and see their mocking expressions. The world was staring at me. And me… I just wanted to disappear into a crack in the floor. To be invisible. To be nothing.

"Stalker. You disgust me."

I heard a filthy voice in my mind, one I knew… from my lowest moment as a human… My moment of…

Remembering all of it at once sent the acid from my stomach straight to my mouth. I covered it as best I could and ran.

"Hey, what’s wrong, Nen?"

I didn’t care who I bumped into—I just needed the bathroom. So I ignored that slightly nasal, annoyed voice.

I rushed into the nearest bathroom and locked myself in the last stall. I let everything out.

My breathing was a broken tide. My thoughts were whips.

"If I disappeared… would anyone notice?"

For a moment, I wished someone—anyone—would say my name with sincerity. Not with pity. Not with disgust. Not with suspicion. Just… with a little warmth. But warmth doesn’t exist for those who live on the margins.

And so, with my eyes staring into the void, I realized the cruelest thing about rejection is the certainty that even if you give everything you have, you might never be enough for anyone.

I shut my eyes against that thought. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to feel that… small again.

But when I opened them… my heart sank. No… No… Not again.

I repeated to myself as I looked at my hands. Smaller now. Fragile, like damp branches about to snap. No longer Kathryn’s caramel-toned skin. They were mine… but not quite. No, not mine—because I noticed the small scar on my palm, the one I had when I was just twelve.

…Back when I didn’t have the strength… or the will to…

A tidal wave of bad memories crashed over me. The kind that drags you down, sucking you into the depths with no chance to breathe. My stomach tightened, my body trembling as if my very skin remembered what was coming.

The school. Classroom 2-1, where the desks smelled of old wood and cheap disinfectant. Where the windows never opened all the way, like even the air knew hope was trapped inside.

That’s where I was. The silent girl who sat by the window, books neatly aligned, braids carefully tied… with a heart knotted up tight.

And her. Mariel. My best friend…

Her smile was the light of the room, her laugh pulling everyone along like a catchy melody. She walked with a confidence I admired… and wished I had.

She spoke to me sweetly. She held my hand in secret when no one else was watching. She told me my voice was pretty, that my eyes looked like the cloudy days she loved so much.

I never understood why she was friends with someone like me.

"Isn’t it obvious? It’s because I love you so much!" she once said, hugging me on the swings.

I believed her. I believed her so much that it made me feel like the happiest person alive. I don’t even know why. But it did.

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"What do you mean, what? Silly. Do you love me too?"

Her question made me blush. Up until that moment, it had never been hard to answer that. The answer was simple: Of course! But…

"Mmm."

I just gave a little whimper and nodded, letting my hair fall over my face.

I don’t know why I got embarrassed. Or why my face was burning.

Mariel giggled. We spent a few more minutes swinging in silence. Only when we left did we start talking again.

"So, since you love me and I love you… wouldn’t it be amazing if we spent all our time together? Like… living together! Wouldn’t that be fun?"

I just nodded silently again, head down.

"Come on, Juli. Look at me. I don’t like talking to myself."

I obeyed her call.

When I looked up, I felt a warm sensation on my cheek.

"Feeling better now?"

She gave me a small kiss to cheer me up. Her usual mischievous smile that could light up the night itself.

"Y-Yeah."

We kept walking, our pinkies intertwined in a delicate embrace. I never said it out loud, but… In that moment… she seemed like the most beautiful creature in all of God’s creation… and at the same time… the farthest away… how strange I was…

So strange…

Which is why it didn’t surprise me what happened days later…

On a normal day, I greeted her as usual. But… she said I wasn’t her friend anymore. That I was weird. A freak. Whatever that meant.

I don’t know what happened. Whether I did something too strange for her. Or if she just got disgusted by my existence.

But after that day—the day she said I wasn’t her friend anymore—it turned into hell.

Mariel and her group isolated me. Left me out of everything. Whispered behind my back.

And since I was too much of a coward, I never defended myself. I didn’t even try to make new friends.

"She’s sick!"

"Careful, she might spy on you while you’re showering in the gym!"

Those were the kinds of things they said every time we went into the locker rooms before gym class. It hurt. I… wasn’t like that. Not at all! I wasn’t anything they said.

I tried to say so, but the words got stuck in my throat like chunks of stone.

It went on for months. I thought about talking to adults so many times, but in the end I always remembered.

I never asked my parents for help… not because they were bad people—I know they would’ve helped me. So why didn’t I?

It was just that I… didn’t want…

I didn’t want Mariel to get in trouble. Ha. What an idiot. After everything she did to me, I still didn’t want her to suffer. Yeah, let’s go with that.

But it doesn’t matter. Nothing I did or didn’t do matters now. The only thing that does is what really happened.

It was a rainy Friday when I found Mariel waiting alone at the school gates. I’ll never forget that day.

"M-Mariel, c-can we talk…?"

The sweet girl I once knew was gone. She didn’t greet me with warmth in her eyes anymore. She gave me a look I still can’t describe, even today.

"…What are you doing waiting for me like this? Are you stalking me? You’re creepy."

"N-No! I just… I just want… to know what I did wr—"

My words froze when I saw the pain mixed with resentment in her eyes.

Her lips, which I had never seen curve so horribly, did so now, twisting into a cruel sneer on her perfect face.

"I don’t want… you to ever talk to me again. You… You disgust me, Julia."

Those words… they broke me. Hurt so much I cried oceans. I’m sure even the sound of that wild rainstorm couldn’t drown out my sobbing.

To be honest, I don’t know if Mariel said anything else, or if she just stood there watching me fall apart. I don’t remember.

What I do remember is that a week later, she left the school.

But the scar she left on me stayed.

She took my happiness. My… My…

She took everything from me. But not the pain.

The bullying from her friends only got worse.

I sank into the darkness, with no way out. With no one…

I came back to the present, my forehead soaked with sweat. My hands trembled, pressed tight against my knees. Kathryn’s ponytail was twisted up like a knot of anxiety, shaking with the anguish I couldn’t contain.

"No… I don’t want to go back to that…" I muttered, my voice trembling, as if the classroom were still there, as if Mariel were still watching me from the corner with that look.

The feeling was real. The whispers. The muffled laughs. The weight of stares like hot stones pressing into my back.

And the worst of it… was the loneliness.

"I don’t want to be alone…"

And then, for the first time in so long, I hugged myself. Clumsily. Desperately. As if trying to stop my heart from breaking completely.

"Please… someone…"

What felt like hours of torture in my mind had only been a few minutes.

And in that cold bathroom stall, between the echoes of my sobs and the cracked tiles, Kathryn—or what was left of her—tried not to fall apart completely.

I decided to leave. I didn’t want to keep crying in a place where anyone could hear me.

My steps carried me to a building that used to be some kind of library, though now it was abandoned. An old place, with a kind of steampunk air frozen in time, like even the dust had resigned itself to staying forever.

It was impossible anyone would be there.

Dragging my feet, I pushed the rusty door open with a dull creak. The metal groaned in protest, as if scolding me for breaking the silence. I expected the stench of dampness and rust, but instead, a faint scent of smoke hit me. I didn’t care. Just like I didn’t care about skipping the rest of my classes. I had no energy for anything.

I moved in silence, letting my eyes wander over the details around me. Broken shelves, old globes, a lamp dangling from a single cable like a forgotten hanging corpse. I focused on that—on anything—to stop my mind from spiraling back into those thoughts.

I stepped into a smaller room, with tables covered in dust and faded armchairs. From the old almanacs, it looked like this had once been the main reading area.

"Eh…" slipped from my mouth.

"Ah…" slipped from his. His eyes went wide, and the cigarette fell from his lips.

I-It was Professor Isac.