The sun had set over the sky of North Wing, cascading its last light across the campus. A beautiful scene, a fusion of red and orange to create coquelicot. Yet, someone wasn't enjoying it.
Jane's head bowed to the ground while her eyes aimlessly stared at the shiny leather shoes. Following her surprise at Ms.Kelsey's act of kindness came a deep confusion — about herself.
Was she the problem all along?
To be fair, Ms.Kelsey hadn't done anything bad. Jane just couldn't shake off the fact that they sent someone out to prepare for Jim while she got nothing.
"Where're you heading, pretty?"
A teasing voice traveled with the soft wind to reach where she was standing. And among all the other noise of the campus, it was fated that she caught it.
Arlo.
Jane hesitated, her legs pinning themselves to the ground when they should have moved since she first saw him.
Too late.
Their eyes met. She forced the tension out of her eyebrows and the corners of her mouth, while he glanced and disappeared down the path.
The direction they were taking could lead to many places. But went straight ahead, turned left, passed the garden, and descended the hidden staircase — would be the underground club.
Jane pulled her gaze back and walked toward where she had intended to: the classroom.
Sitting at the spacious desk, her brain divided into two. One dealt with atoms and particles, while the other drifted to unnamed relationships.
She wanted to be angry. She wanted to be the one looking at him and walk away, but Jane couldn't. A ball of grievance and helplessness stuck inside her chest. And without knowing what he had done, she had no way to kick that ball.
The same applied to why she hadn't exploded and confronted Ms. Kelsey of the mistreatment yet. Jane didn't know the full story. What if they had a reasonable excuse, and she looked like an unreasonable child.
Jane hated this frustration, this dissatisfaction, and this confusion. It felt like pulling on multiple strings to realize none of them would untie the huge knot.
With a heavy sigh, Jane made up her mind. When she reached a dead end like this, there was only one place left: sleep.
A black and thick space that stretched out to infinity. There was no starting point, no end, only her standing in the absolute dark.
"Hello?" Jane called out into the distance. Nothing answered to her, not even an echo.
Strange…
Her "dad" should have been here.
Jane didn't stand still to question it for long. Her feet struck forward, even though she had no idea what waited for her in the void. There was one thing she knew for sure about this place — it was her own mind.
Time worked differently in a dream. Jane had been walking since forever, dragging her body and mind through the unchanging scenery.
Drop… drop…
The sound of dripping water traveled to her ears.
Jane stood still. Her senses stretched outward to locate the source; her ears twitched like a cat catching the faint ring of its bell.
Drop.
The tip of her nose was damp, struck by an unknown liquid.
Jane looked up into the "sky". There it was: a floating sphere in the middle of nowhere.
It had the shape of a half-moon pie with a flat top surface. Dripping down from every curved edge was water — blue and beautiful water that evaporated mid- air. Yet, one got caught in her nose.
"Come up," a soft, crystalline female voice appeared.
Jane flinched at the sudden sound. She took a few steps back, trying to see over the crest of the sphere, but no matter how hard she shifted the angle, the perspective never changed.
"How do I come up?" she asked.
"Flying, climbing… anything you can think of," the voice coming down from above. "It's your space."
Right. It was her space.
Immediately, a water escalator materialized, connecting the floating sphere to the dark floor where Jane stood. She looked down at her feet. Tiny, glowing beads of water rested on her leather shoes like a silent invitation.
And she accepted.
Her body glided up the stream, drawing closer to the flat surface.
The current remained a clear blue, flowing toward the edges and splitting at one singular point. A girl sat at the end of the sphere, surrounded by a bed of various red flora. Her skin was a stagnant, clear white, and her hair shone with the color of the faintest yellow.
"This is your new form?" Jane's mouth parted in a mixture of shock and disgust. The entity no longer wore the skin of her dad. It had taken hers — a blonde, exquisite version of her.
"I've grown," the girl said. "So have you."
They stood face to face. Their eyes locked at the same level, their shoulders squared symmetrically, and their arms dropping to the same point on their thighs.
"Why don't you have clothes?"
"Why do I need clothes?"
Two identical voices spoke in questions, but one carried an unchangeable certainty.
"What's your name?"
"Jane."
"But then how do we differentiate?"
"Why do we have to differentiate?"
"Ah… you're right," she murmured. Her eyebrows relaxed and her eyes softened with ease.
"Do I have my own sphere—"
"Why are you here?"
Jane tilted her head. "I was looking for something ...," she said.
Suddenly, a gentle gleam of light touched the corner of her vision, sliding through the layers of her hair and illuminating her body.
A gate had appeared — a lonely metal gate that protected nothing.
"You're not going with me?" she asked.
"No, it wasn't in my power."
The girl smiled gently and tucked a red flower behind Jane's ear. Jane reached up, curiously pulling it down from her hair to see. The petal felt as fragile as tissue paper, but its color was orangy red — the hue of blood.
"A gift," the girl said. "Go."
Like a soldier sent on the battlefield, Jane pushed through the gate. Beyond it, she was once again accompanied by darkness. She walked and she walked, her legs marching in a steady, rhythmic parade, until finally, she reached the lights.
Pastel bubbles and particles welcomed her, and she followed their drift.
In front of Jane were three hovering objects.
To her right was a school test paper. To her left was sleeping Amelia floating in the air. And in the center was Jim, unconscious in the same position.
Jane hovered to the test first. The date on it read 8/12, and the content was familiar.
[The Van Pollen satellite was launched into sage.. ]
A memory she had already collected.
Jane stepped away from the paper and immediately, it was pulled into the void.
Two options remained, both she held no favor for. Amelia with her head bowed to the left like a broken doll. Jim with his eyes almost covered behind the curly hair.
Jane put her hand on her stomach. There was a burning sensation when she looked at Amelia. It pulled her in and dragged her back whenever she thought about choosing Jim.
So. She picked Amelia.
"Aww. Poor Jane… but I warned you, didn't I?"
The sun was so bright and the wall was so rough. The air smelled like mixed perfume and the ground shook with laughter.
"She couldn't even last a month! Hahaha"
" That's what happens when the frog wants to climb to the prince."
There were eyes watching her. Overlapping voices surrounded her ears, buzzing and sharp like a cloud of mosquitoes.
"And this is what happens when you try to touch my ex-boyfriend."
Slap—
Every sound in the world collapsed into a deafening ring. Jane's vision swung violently to the right and a few strands of loose hair brushed against the immediate burning sensation blooming on her left cheek.
Instinctively, her hand twitched, intending to cover her face, when she realized her arms were pinned against the brick wall by Amelia's followers.
"Did your new boyfriend know you came to find me?" Jane taunted. The corner of her mouth moved upward a few inches, defying the rumbling pain on her skin.
Clearly not, she heard herself thinking. Who would fucking choose this time to corner someone.
"Did your mom know you're such a backstabbing slut?" Amelia spat back.
Crack—
Like something was broken inside of her, or perhaps it was the sound of her hair being tearing from her scalp as she lunged forward, escaping the hands of her captors, to grab Amelia.
"Did your mom know you came here to sell your body? Or is that why she gave birth to you?"
Ouch. Jane's stomach growled watching herself seizing Amelia's head with both hands. The insult was too much, too belligerent, too unlike her. But it was still better than the next part.
"Fuck&₫&!@/bitch₫!&die:&"
Cursing and swearing followed one after another. Jane aware her favourite word was fuck, but she never knew she would say die too.
"Let me go!… You crazy—"
Slap—
The hit was efficient enough to shut Amelia's mouth, but not hard enough to make her world spin. It might have, if Amelia's friends hadn't been dragging her arms back.
Finally, Jane was let go. She stumbled back a few steps to look at the mess Amelia had become. Jane's clothes were disheveled and her hair went through the same treatment, but she was smiling. The last thing Jane saw was a clump of blonde hair clutched tightly in her fist, and Amelia's friends surrounding her…
"!"
Jane jolted upright in her bed. She sat there for a few seconds. Her chest felt heavy, her head burning and aching as though she hadn't slept at all. Then, Jane grabbed her pillow, and stuffed her face into it.
Suffocating, but couldn't have been worse than the reality of what she had done. Jane still could not believe she had beaten Amelia up. She was always calm, never been in a school fight over a few petty provocations.
Or maybe… everything was truly a dream.
Click.
A faint sound shone on her hope. It came from the living room, precisely, it was the sound of Amelia's bedroom door clicking open.
In one long, hurried motion, Jane rolled out of her bed and rushed to the door. Her toe struck the corner of the bedframe, forcing her to crunch down and soothe the throb with her fingers. which didn't help, so she hopped the remaining distance to the door.
Jane caught a glimpse of Amelia before she fully went into the bathroom. A bald spot was visible, but it blended almost seamlessly into the rest of her blonde hair, and her face was still recognizable. Until Jane realized she didn't slap Amelia on her right cheek during the fight.
Jane sighed. There was no need for an awkward confrontation. Amelia disappearing from class for the last two days was the confirmation she needed.
This solidified the dream, too. It wasn't that Jane didn't believe in the supernatural, but she had never possessed the kind of luck, or instinct that every gambler dreamed of.
Back at Jane's old school, she was a legend. People would come up to her before exams and ask:
"Which topic do you study?"
"I don't know, probably the first one… Although it could be the third..."
"All right. Thanks!"
As it turned out, people didn't ask her because they believed in her judgement, they came for her ability to always guess things wrong.
"We just ask and go with the opposite of whatever you choose," one of them told her, on some random day at some ordinary hour.
"Didn't know I have such… unique talent," she replied with an awkward smile.
Jane had tried to work around it. She would think about the opposite answer, attempting to outsmart her bad luck, but it didn't work. Somehow, she ended up not even being able to narrow down the final two choices.
Even in sleep, she still picked wrong.
This time, however, Jane decided not to blame herself. Realistically, what did Jim have to do with all this?