CHAPTER ONE — "Return"
I stepped into the classroom I once knew. The door creaked under my hand, and the air smelled faintly of chalk and dust, but nothing else felt familiar. The rows of desks stretched before me like strangers. My seat was there — my old seat — waiting. I sat. My back straight, hands folded neatly on the desk. My belly tightened in recognition, a strange ache in the pit of me.
The room was empty. Hollow. Quiet, but not comforting. Everything was the same, and yet nothing was as I remembered. The sunlight slanted through the windows differently, and the echoes of laughter and footsteps felt borrowed, distant.
Time passed slowly, measured by the faint hum of the fluorescent lights. Then the doors creaked again. Voices, laughter, the rush of bodies — students returning from a long holiday. Reunions, hugs, stories spilling over one another.
Recognition came in bursts. Three former classmates spotted me. Surprise, curiosity, faint confusion in their faces.
"Alicia? You're back?"
"We thought you transferred to boarding school… so why return?"
I answered quietly, deliberately:
"I had to… it's a long story."
The whispers spread, new students stared, old students speculated. And I remained the silent center, watching the shifting dynamics, measuring, reading.
Within hours, I understood most people. Predictable, transparent, simple. Everyone — except one.
Tessa.
She was a glitch in the system. The anomaly I could not decode.
She sat across the room, leaning back, one leg tucked under her. She smiled at someone nearby, a soft, easy curve of lips that seemed harmless, yet she had just shoved another classmate away from her side without explanation. Her hands wandered freely — brushing a friend's shoulder, flipping her hair at someone else — and yet when anyone else tried to touch her, she snapped: "Don't touch me. I hate physical contact."
The class tolerated it. They laughed. They excused it. If she was mean, it didn't matter. If she was sweet, it didn't matter. She existed in contradictions, and the world bent to her presence. When she stopped speaking to someone, the social ground shifted beneath them, almost as if she were gravity itself. Approval from her was currency, her disinterest a subtle punishment.
I watched. And I was fascinated.
Why was she that way? Was she genuine? Did she value people, or was it all performance? Did she even feel anything, or was she a puzzle I would never solve? How could she move so freely through people who had friends, bonds, connections, and leave no trail of hurt, no chaos? Was she real, or was this just the mask she wore?
Every movement, every word, every flicker of expression demanded attention. And yet I could not map her. I could not classify her. She was not predictable, not simple, not transparent. She was… something else.
And that was what drew me in. Not desire. Not envy. But fascination. A need to understand this living contradiction, this anomaly everyone else seemed to ignore or forgive. I wanted to watch, to study, to see what she would do next — how far her unpredictability stretched, how genuine she truly was.
The bell rang. Break time. Conversations spiraled around her, but I remained at my desk, watching. Even from a distance, her presence claimed the room. Every gesture mattered, every glance had weight. And I knew, quietly, that she would be the one I would try to understand.
Not as an obsession, not as a game — as a study.
As a fascination.
Then I noticed it. A glance — brief, fleeting — from across the room. Tessa's eyes met mine for a heartbeat. No words. No smile. No judgment. Just a look. A measure. And just as quickly, she looked away.