Okay, Chad thought grudgingly. I managed to avoid Bishop and whatever drama he was up to in the ladies' toilets.
Chadwick pressed against the lockers, head down, wading silently through the ankle-deep water. Behind him, Bishop flailed, and Ms. Clanker's glare cut through the chaos, the pink fine notice fluttering like a flag of doom.
Not my circus. Not my monkeys. He didn't want to get dragged into that mess. Voices, splashes, and the occasional metallic clatter echoed down the hall.
When he reached a less-flooded alcove, he crouched low, hugging the wall. From here, he could see a huge line snaking out of the Studio 7 art room.
Woah… the art class is popular today? I thought computer art had taken over everything. Still, it was nice to see people into actual art… even if some of them are just taking it for an easy degree, not like engineering or medicine, where you actually bury your head in books and work for it.
At another location in the Academy, Kerry was talking to the bunny girls—the Sparkle Bunnies.
He'd best avoid them. He hadn't even gotten around to enjoying the three gifts the bunnies gave him, just shoving them in a drawer and promptly forgetting.
Across from them, the storage closet loomed, and memories hit him like a splash of cold water… the Sparkle Bunny locking Aiden Finn in there.
Aiden Finn… Where did he go?
He hadn't caught a whiff of him—or that unmistakable cat-food breath—in ages…
Then he saw her. The girl he'd been looking for. Memories of what he'd read last night surged through his mind, tugging at something deep inside.
She was slumped at the bottom of the stairwell, shoulders hunched, with kohl running and smudged from her tears. A baggy T-shirt hung off her frame, the picture of defeat.
"Elise," he said softly, the name slipping out before he could stop it—pulled from some half-remembered whisper in the halls, the goth girl who always seemed half-faded, like she belonged more to the gloom than the glow.
"Huh?" Her head snapped up.
For a long, tense moment, they just stared—her grey gaze locking onto his in raw surprise, the world narrowing to the drip of water from a loose pipe and the faint squeak of something wriggling in her locker above. Reality hung suspended, shadows trembling at the edges, like the academy itself waited for her to decide if he was real or just another trick of the light.
"Y-you… Y-you can see me?!"
They remained locked in each other's gaze, the rest of the world fading away.
"'Can I see you'…? I can't… I can't stop thinking about you."
Elise's eyes searched his face, desperate to gauge if this was just a cruel hallucination or something real. No one had ever looked at her like that before — so intently, so genuinely.
Something about Chadwick's quiet strength and his obvious sincerity cut through the haze of her sorrow, leaving her feeling… seen, in a way she never had.
"Wh-what… Wh-what do you mean?" Elise stammered, her voice a fragile thread, fraying at the edges. "Y-you can't… c-can't stop thinking about me? W-we… we haven't… n-never really spoken…"
"I remember you… in that oversized uniform, saying you thought you smelt nice… in the courtyard, with all those girls from the academy pressing around me, daring me to pick one as their girlfriend… and they were all about to strip. I remember you, and all I could think of was my waifu, and I panicked."
Elise swallowed hard, her heart doing a little flip. She'd thought he was just being like another arrogant jock, too caught up in himself to notice her. But here he was, looking at her like—like he really saw her. Her—not the goth girl, not that half-faded shadow lurking in the background. Just—her. All of her.
She was suddenly aware of how bedraggled she must look, with her smudged makeup and baggy clothes, and the way her heart was pounding so hard he could probably hear it…
"Th-that day… It was sOOOOo embarrassing. We live in the porn age… Everybody and everything is naked, flashing… I thought… I thought stripping would make a guy notice me... I was confused…"
Chad leaned in a little closer, his voice dropping to that soft, steady timbre that cut through the academy's distant hum like a ward-spell settling.
"The story you read in class—Raven Dark'ness Dementia Bloodrose, with her long ebony hair streaked purple and those icy blue eyes like limpid tears? And Brad Dark'ness Bloodblade, striding in with his 'PAIN IS ETERNAL' T-shirt and red eyes burning from some tragic past? It was insane—in the best way. I mean, the way Raven calls out the 'preppy sluts' who don't get him, or how she twitches for that voodoo charm bracelet made from ancient spirit dog bones? I couldn't shake it. Related to Raven so hard… the whole 'not like other girls' vibe, hiding in black lipstick and eyeliner, drinking blood like it's coffee—period blood and all, no judgement. 'STFU, flamers!! All blood is the same!' That line? Hooked me. Your writing's got this raw edge, like you're spilling shadows straight onto the page. I couldn't stop turning it over in my head all night."
Elise's breath caught, her grey eyes widening as fragments of her own words bounced back at her—her words, quoted like scripture, not mockery. Her fingers twisted in the hem of her oversized Nirvana T-shirt, knuckles whitening. "Y-you… y-you remembered all that? The… the charm bracelet? The blood part? I thought… I thought everyone just tuned out, like it was some dumb joke."
He held his gaze steady, no flicker of pity or leer—just that quiet intensity, like he was seeing the shadows she'd scribbled, not just the girl slouched in them.
"Joke? Nah. It was you—fierce, unapologetic, calling bullshit on the posers. Brad ignoring the gothic cheer squad stripping for attention? That's the real magic. Felt like you were daring the world to see past the 'basic' and grab the storm instead. Hooked me from the first 'goth, not preppy' line."
"Y-you related to Raven… b-but… th-that's me…" She muttered under her breath, voice barely a thread, cheeks flushing under the smudged kohl as the truth tangled in her throat. "Th-the Brad character was… U-umm… y-you…"
Chad nodded, a small, genuine smile tugging at his lips, like he'd been waiting for her to say it aloud. "It was odd… because I found I related to Raven more."
"Hehe… really?" she whispered, tugging at the hem of her oversized T-shirt.
"I guess I'm not like other girls," Chad murmured, a teasing lilt in his voice. His shoulder brushed hers, barely, and she jolted, laughing all over again. The stairwell echoed with her giggles, hiccuping and uneven, tears streaking the smudged kohl on her cheeks.
"I guess I'm not like other girls," Chad murmured, a teasing lilt in his voice.
Elise blinked. Wait… what?
She stared at him, half-convinced she'd misheard. Then it hit her—he wasn't quoting her story anymore.
He was owning it.
A snort escaped her—then another—and suddenly she was laughing so hard tears sprang back into her eyes, mixing with the kohl again, streaking down like war paint gone wrong. "Oh my god… you did not just say that."
He shrugged, all mock innocence. "What? You wrote it. 'Not like other girls.' Classic Raven energy."
The more they talked, the less the world around them seemed to matter.
For the first time since... god knew when, Elise felt seen.