Reality returned to its original shape—in some ways, even sharper than before.
In the weeks after the ball, Zola would occasionally think of the lights, the spinning, the music, the kiss on the hand, but those belonged to the night. Daylight still belonged to readings, seminars, deadlines, and library lamps.
She still couldn't catch certain jokes in seminars. She still tried to find the right moment to speak during group discussions, only to realise others always spoke faster. She still rehearsed her sentences in her head before speaking, terrified her grammar would collapse and expose her foreignness.
Sometimes a professor would say, "Good point." But she could never hear the rest. Those two words would spin in her mind for hours—like golden coins salvaged from an exam she barely survived.
At night, she held onto books, coffee, and then more coffee. Her eyes felt as if someone had filled them with sand. The words on the screen began to float, as if deliberately provoking her patience.
Sometimes she wondered whether the ball had been a dream, too bright, too soft, too unreal.
On Instagram, she still saw her dance partners, laughing in tailored suits, as if life never asked anything from them.
And Zola, sometimes she joked to herself, she really was Cinderella. Except she was luckier than Cinderella. She didn't need to sort lentils from ashes. She only needed to sort books from her reading list, tear them apart, stitch them back together, turn them into essays, citations, theories, and references.
But the good news was, her relationship with Emily was growing closer.
Zola began to realise Emily wasn't a flawless goddess. Emily got stressed about grades. Emily complained on social media that the reading lists would never end.
Once, Zola saw her in the library. Not the polished Emily with glowing skin and flawless posture, but an Emily who had clearly been awake for too many nights. Her face looked slightly pale, rare, because Emily rarely came here. She preferred to exist at a distance, in perfect light, at the perfect angle.
But this time was different. Even her manicure had grown out, the edge revealing a strip of bare nail.
Zola stared for two seconds longer than she should have. Emily noticed. She pulled her hand back into her sleeve, a gesture so practised it felt instinctive. Then she shook her head very slightly, telling Zola not to say hello. Emily did not want attention, no, not like this.
She finished borrowing her books quickly, loaded the thick volumes into her Louis Vuitton Neverfull GM, and slipped out just as quietly as she had appeared.
After that, Zola felt something shift, something small but definite. She had become someone Emily could be barefaced around.
Emily began coming to the dorm common room more often. Usually, they sat together, each working on essays. The air held the sound of typing, turning pages, and a tension thicker than coffee.
This time, another long table nearby was occupied by four or five girls. They had laptops and lined-up coffee cups, but no one was actually working. Their laughter was too loud, too sharp, their words floating like bubbles that rose quickly and popped just as fast.
Emily looked up and frowned. One girl noticed Emily's expression, but instead of embarrassment, she walked over with the boldness of someone who believed every room belonged to her.
Zola was still wrestling with a paper she had read three times and still couldn't fully understand. She only caught fragments of the conversation:
"Essay…"
"Deadlines…"
"Everyone uses it…"
"Eleanor — the one with all the Firsts?"
Emily's expression changed, from mild annoyance to focused curiosity. Then she stood up and joined their table. Zola blinked, then returned to her unreadable academic jungle.
Five minutes.
Ten.
Fifteen.
Finally, Emily came back.
She sat down. Didn't type. First took a long sip of coffee, like someone steadying herself.
Zola waited three seconds before whispering, "What were they talking about? You were there a long time."
Emily pushed her laptop slightly aside, rubbed her brow, and asked: "You know Eleanor, right?"
Zola nodded. "Of course. She's amazing. I heard she got distinctions in almost everything."
Emily let out a slow breath. "They said Eleanor isn't a genius. She's… using something."
Zola froze. Coming from a country where drugs were strictly prohibited, the word hit her like a shock: "Using what? Drugs? Heroin? Ecstasy?"
Emily almost laughed at the panic in Zola's face. "Not that kind."
She hesitated, then chose her words carefully: "Something that keeps you awake. Makes you focus. Makes writing faster. Makes remembering easier."
Zola's spine tensed. "Like… stimulants?"
Emily shrugged. "They called it a study aid. Apparently lots of students use it. Especially here."
Zola didn't answer immediately. Something heavier than fear settled in her chest.
Emily stared at her grown-out manicure and said quietly: "Apparently there are types."
Her voice sounded almost clinical.
"Some keep you awake."
"Some help memory."
"Some make essays feel effortless."
Zola swallowed. "And the cost? There has to be one. Nothing in the world is free."
Emily gave a small, cold half-laugh. "Who knows?"
After that conversation, Emily seemed to lose interest — and a little patience, too.
She sat for a short moment longer, then stood up and left.
Once Emily was gone, Zola also gathered her things in a hurry and returned to her room.
She lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling, replaying the conversation in her head.
She didn't know why, but suddenly the story of Aladdin's lamp surfaced in her mind.
Did something like that exist in the real world?
And if it did, what would she even wish for?
Then a sentence rose like a quiet tide.
All gifts are priced long before they are given; youth simply haven't learned to read the tag yet.
A chill ran through her.
She forced herself to stop thinking.
In the next few days, Zola deliberately made herself busy enough to leave no room for wandering thoughts.
She edited her essay draft again and again, reorganised her seminar notes several times, and even set a rule for herself: no Instagram after midnight.
But the more she tried to restore order, the more the world around her felt slightly tilted — as if something invisible had shifted and was now settling into a different shape.
Especially in the library.
It was an ordinary afternoon, painfully ordinary. Outside, the sky was a shade of blue so bright it looked almost artificial. A breeze slipped through the window gap and made the corner of her notes flutter, like a tiny warning she pretended not to notice.
Zola lowered her head, trying to focus. But the whispering, the quiet laughter, the restless movement from the long table beside her kept pulling her attention away.
They weren't studying. She could see that immediately. They sat too close, screens angled like props rather than tools. Someone laughed under her breath; someone spoke in a hushed, hurried tone. There was a kind of excitement in their voices, the kind that belonged to secrets, not academics.
Zola recognised one of them.
Coco.
The same girl who had approached Emily in the common room. Today she wore polished black shoes and a bold shade of red lipstick, the kind that could easily look vulgar, but on her face it appeared deliberate and sharp.
Her movements were small yet skilled, the kind of discreet efficiency that only comes from repetition. Zola watched as Coco pushed a tiny folded paper bag across the table. The motion was subtle, almost elegant.
The girl receiving it hesitated, then whispered, barely audible, "How much?"
Coco smiled, not warmly, not kindly, but with the soft professionalism of someone used to handling transactions rather than relationships.
Zola didn't catch the exact number, but she saw the quick, silent transfer of money on a phone screen, smooth, practised, as casual as paying for a latte.
When Coco locked her phone, her gaze lifted and brushed past Zola's. Just a second. But Zola's heartbeat stumbled, as if caught doing something she shouldn't.
Coco didn't react with annoyance or embarrassment. She only smiled, a small, meaningful curve at the corner of her mouth.
A smile that said: You saw it. But you won't say anything. And you don't dare to.
Silence settled, thin and cold. Zola stared at her notebook, but the words had blurred. Her fingers tightened around her pen, as if holding it could anchor her back into her role as a normal student. Her heart, however, was restless.
Zola had never liked Coco. Like Emily, Coco was always surrounded by people, but Coco wasn't the centre. She orbited someone else, Sophia, Helena, George, Jacob, a revolving court that moved as one.
Coco spoke loudly, pointed, and instructed. But everyone knew the real authority was behind her, not in her.
Zola had once seen her yell at a girl who accidentally bumped into her, a girl wearing an old sweatshirt and cheap shoes. That humiliation stayed with Zola long after the scene ended.
Bullying, she had thought then.
But she never stepped in. Not because she agreed, but because she was alone, in a foreign country, and courage was expensive. She had been spared only because Emily kept her close, and those who adored Emily tolerated Zola as collateral.
Still, Coco's eyes always carried a cold kind of dismissal, the kind reserved for people she assumed were beneath her, or worse, similar to her but pretending otherwise.
Zola waited until Coco and her group finally dispersed before she packed her things and left.
In the elevator, she was alone until the doors were almost shut and someone slipped in quickly. The person wore a hoodie pulled low, almost hiding their face. One hand was stuffed deep in their pocket, while the other held something loosely.
When the elevator reached the ground floor and the doors opened, the movement was too fast, and something fell from his hand and rolled across the floor. It stopped at Zola's shoe. A small white pill bottle.
No brand. No instructions. No safety labels.
Only a pale yellow circular sticker, silent, anonymous, intentional.
Zola froze.
The student hesitated, then offered a small, awkward smile — not an apology, but a silent agreement. You didn't see anything. Zola looked away. He picked up the bottle, shoved it back into his pocket, and walked out. No explanation. No guilt. No panic. As if secrecy were simply routine.
The elevator door closed again. Suddenly, a strange thought crept into her mind: What if everyone was using something? She almost laughed at herself. That was ridiculous. Absurd.
Maybe it was just normal medication. Maybe she was imagining things. Maybe. She swallowed.
Just stay in your lane.
Just mind your business.
She repeated the words silently, like a quiet warning to herself. But the unease lingered, soft, cold, and patient, resting somewhere under her ribs.
Zola hated nothing more than closed-book exams. She would rather churn out three two-thousand-word essays in a week, would rather sit in the library until three in the morning with coffee propping her eyelids open, than spend one hour and forty minutes staring at a paper, fighting for survival on the battlefield of pure memory. But she had no choice. Core modules were core modules, and closed-book was closed-book. There was no exemption, no escape.
On the day the grades were released, the whole college felt wrapped in a thin, tense layer of air. The common room, usually buzzing with chatter, had fallen strangely quiet. Only the soft rustling of students turning their phones and the careful, shallow breaths of people trying not to panic remained.
Zola found a seat by the window, sinking into the cushions as if they were swallowing her whole. She drew her knees up, phone in hand, refreshing the grades page again and again with a nervous intensity that bordered on compulsive. The waiting felt like a thin needle—non-fatal, but sharp enough to pierce through anyone's patience.
The sunlight outside was bright, almost blinding, but no one had the mind to appreciate a rare, clear day. The usually chatty girls nearby had all toned themselves down. Their conversations would stop halfway, eyes drifting to their phones before guiltily slipping away again, as if not looking could delay whatever was coming.
"When will it come out? My heart can't take this," someone murmured.
Zola didn't respond. She pressed her lips together and refreshed the page again. Her fingers were starting to ache, but she kept repeating the same meaningless motion, as though she could wrestle fate into submission through sheer persistence.
Then, suddenly—a sharp, high-pitched "It's out!!" exploded across the common room like a firecracker tossed into silence.
Every head snapped up. Zola's heart jumped straight into her throat as her screen finally changed.
Before she could react, a delighted squeal burst from the next table.
"Oh my god, I did SO well!" Coco's voice was bright, triumphant, like she had just won the lottery. She waved her phone in the air, immediately enveloped by a small crowd. She launched into a vivid retelling of how smoothly she had written the exam, how easy the questions had been, how she barely revised and still managed to crush it.
The other girls chimed in instantly:
"You're amazing!"
"For you it's nothing!"
"I knew you'd ace it!"
Their voices gathered like a whirlpool, pulling everyone's attention toward Coco.
Meanwhile, Zola's screen showed a single number—51.
A cold, sharp pebble lodged right in the centre of her chest.
She had done everything she could. Waking at six every morning, studying until her eyes stung at night, refusing Emily's coffee invites just to squeeze in more revision for this stupid, brutal exam.
But reality was never gentle. She clenched her phone; something inside her was scraped raw. First-year grades didn't even count toward the final degree classification; she had repeated this to herself a thousand times. But the number sat there like a thorn: a reminder that effort didn't guarantee fairness.
And Coco's laughter kept ringing across the room.
Zola stared at the number for a long time. 51—a floor button in an elevator that would never go any higher, stuck forever above the line of "barely pass."
Her throat felt stuffed with cotton; she couldn't form a single word. She forced her breathing to stay even, pretending nothing was wrong, pretending this was just another trivial grade. But the crescent marks on her nails dug into her palm betrayed her.
Coco was still recounting her miraculous success.
"I partied last night, can you believe it? Still got such a high mark!"
"I barely studied!"
"Closed-book exams are no big deal, really."
Yes. No big deal. For some people.
Each casual sentence hit Zola's ribs like a dull punch. She knew Coco had taken something— not the party kind, but the other kind. The ones that made your brain sprint like it had been greased, the silent academic steroids everyone whispered about but never confronted.
The world worked like that, People who took shortcuts always ran ahead. People who played fair were always swallowed by the struggle.
A thin, sharp anger stirred in her chest, pushing up, being pressed down, over and over again like a clumsy attempt at reviving a dying heart.
When Zola returned to her room, the corridor was quiet, wrapped in warm yellow light that seemed to float like thin mist. She closed her door gently, afraid that one loud sound might snap the fragile string she was holding inside herself.
She tossed her bag onto the chair and collapsed onto her bed, sinking into the softness like falling into a dark pit.
Her eyes shut, but her mind burned bright, too bright. Coco's laughter, the screenshots of grades on social media, the smug confidence in everyone's voices—they raced around her head like a circus spinning out of control.
"Why?" she asked the darkness. She had worked so hard. Never cheated, never cut corners. Woke at six, studied past midnight, dreamt of exam questions in her sleep. And for what?
Barely a pass.
She turned over, tugging the blanket into a twisted mess. Her heartbeat thudded—deep, heavy, suffocating. She suddenly remembered a saying she heard often back in C-country: diligence makes up for clumsiness.
Tonight, it felt like a sweet but hollow lie. Because hard-working people didn't always succeed. Those who bent the rules could glide through easily. Reality had never promised to be fair.
Her eyes began to sting. At first it was a faint burn, then like a tide rising behind her eyelids. Tears slipped out quietly, like thieves crossing a border, disappearing into her pillow.
By three a.m., she was still awake. The shadows on the ceiling looked like a thin layer of ash. She knew sleep wouldn't come. She knew the world wasn't fair. But what hurt more was not knowing how to become "better." She had pushed herself to her limit—and it still wasn't enough.
In that moment, she felt like a tiny boat stranded in the cold northern sea—no light, no wind, only the slow, relentless waves sanding her hopes down to nothing. She hated this world. Hated how everything felt stacked against her. The wind was too strong, the waves too high, tossing her little boat around like it didn't matter.
And her little boat, where was it even heading? Where was its harbour?