Despite his insistence, Étienne’s butlers didn’t let him help me bring in all my boxes. So by the time I was done, Louis told me that Étienne had been swept away by some teachers keen on rubbing elbows with the crown prince.

“I don’t have anything going on until noon,” Louis said, hugging his clipboard. “If you want, I can show you around campus?”

Antoinette had returned to her whitewood desk, noting new listings in her planner for this month: October. She had said nothing besides when I started to open the closet on my side of the room, “Oh no, you don't. My things are in there.”

Girl, it was my closet.

I tore my eyes away from Antoinette, now pretty reassured that she wouldn’t vanish in a puff of smoke if I didn’t stare at her forever and ever. I took a deep breath to clear the awkwardness of the whole morning from my system. Closing the closet, I turned back to Louis. “Sure, lead on.”

“Wait, um.” Louis asked, “Antoinette?”

“What now?”

“My sister wants to meet you before dinner in front of the auditorium. She has something to give you.”

The first sign that if you wanted to romance Louis, you’d have a bigger challenge than just winning him over.

Louis and I headed into the hall. The superficial similarities between Louis’s “real” self and game self were all there—including the specific-to-him uniform with the knee-length shorts and colourful pins on his tie (clipboards, pens, pins, indoor plumbing…the anachronisms never stopped!). But a dose of reality sure got rid of the uncanny parts of his original design, like the huge gooey eyes and the adolescent thinness to his limbs.

Antoinette was sorta-friends with his twin sisters…despite an incident in their adolescence when she, um, pushed them into a lake. That gave me an in, if I decided to pursue Antoinette and Louis together. She always had more of a sisterly protectiveness over him. Maybe that would be easier to leverage than romance?

True to his word, Louis gave me the whole tour. This part was skimmed over in the game, replaced by a slideshow of graphics and a vague paragraph, so I was happy to take in all the details.

The campus was split into four ginormous buildings—the classrooms, the dorms, the administration and laboratories, and the sprawling tower of a greenhouse. I couldn’t place their time or location, but I could marvel over the intricate detailing in everything from the cobblestones to the doorframes to the stained glass windows. The rivers of students were split by statues of Love Blooming’s Demeter and Persephone stand-ins.

Potted plants grew flowers and released bubbles of glowing seeds when students laughed and smiled on their way past. I was hoping they wouldn’t react to me like the lavender pearls when I bumped into Louis.

He’d frozen, pointing to our left. Phasing through my forehead was another box.

1. [Rec fields]
2. [Library]

Right…these paths led you to one of the remaining two love interests, and you couldn’t circle back before Marie’s free morning was up.

1. Without a doubt.

If there was one character I didn't want to meet yet, it was him…

Louis led me along the winding, tree-lined paths with ease. Students didn’t even notice my existence now that the prince was gone. We were nearing the courts when—

“Heads up!”

WHACK!

Something banged hard off the side of my head, nearly toppling me over like any good, self-respecting, clumsy protagonist.

It strikes me. A frightening memory.

A masked face.

A blunt object swinging at my head.

They pursue me, trying to drag me into the dark with them…

Embers choke my lungs…

Marie's disjointed memory swept in on a tidal wave of terror and trauma that actually landed me on my ass. I blindly swept for a tree to catch my balance. My hands scraped on the rough bark. Someone I didn’t recognise was running towards me.

The hit hasn’t taken me down yet. I use all my strength to run through air as hot as tar. The masked person swings again…

Magic burned through me. Without asking, and definitely without my control.

I opened my eyes and screamed almost as loudly as Rémi, the third love interest, as a tree branch caught him by the ankle and yanked him off the ground.

The players on the volleyball court rushed him. They were all college guys though, so obviously they weren’t worried: they were practically falling over themselves with laughter. Louis, meanwhile, looked like I'd just told him to swallow a roach.

“What did you—?!” he squeaked.

“I don't know!”

Rémi, upside down, folded his arms over his chest and hit me with a cocked eyebrow, perfectly cool as always. A slick, sly, delinquent type, right there.

“Now that,” he said, “is a foul.”

“Don’t hit a girl in the head and not expect some revenge,” I retorted. I got shakily to my feet.

Despite my embarrassment, I felt some kinship with Marie. It was her terror that flooded through me, making my (our?) magic go crazy. In the game, the DS screen flashed black and gave off a tinny ringing noise whenever Marie recovered a memory. I used to turn the sound off because the noise was so annoying.

Guilt pinged through me. I hadn’t even been listening to her.

Well, no shit. She wasn’t real.

Luckily, another volleyball player (volleyball, very period-accurate, Love Blooming team) went up to the tree and touched it, and the tree let Rémi go.

Rémi landed like a gymnast off a crappy vault: safe, not pretty. The guy who helped him down (super lucky that a fellow magician was nearby; Étienne had told me they weren’t common) pounded Rémi's shoulder in that weird boy way to check if he was hurt.

Rémi swore.

But there was a laugh in his voice. That mix of ease and roughness was reflected in his look. He was the tallest love interest; his brown hair was swept back under a pair of glasses that he picked up off the ground and deftly replaced (sunglasses would be too period-inaccurate but god forbid we have a non-nerd wearing glasses). His uniform jacket was tossed aside, the button-up rucked up around his elbows, and clearly he’d been diving for the ball: now that his appearance wasn’t limited to some stock assets and whatever the exposition could give me, he was free to have grass and dirt stains all over his forearms and white shirt.

Rémi reached for the ball, which had rolled near my feet. “You girls call this kinda thing a meet-cute, huh? I’m Rémi.”

“Chloé. And this is—”

“Louis, yeah, Duke Chapelle’s kid. The underachieving one.” He smirked at Louis. “You can tell your scary sisters to ease off me, by the way. I’m a changed man. No trouble this year, I swear.”

Louis looked unconvinced.

“Besides, we have a new troublemaker in town.” Now he smirked at me. His face was so animated, especially now that he wasn’t, uh…animated. “So, what was all that about? Do you have it out for me or something?”

“No, promise. I’m no good at controlling this stuff.” I wiggled my fingers like a cartoon wizard.

“Shouldn’t you have learned all that as a kid?” He sounded genuinely curious.

Marie was shy. I’d gain nothing from being shifty. “I got into some freak accident and I lost my memory about everything, including how to cast properly. I’m hoping being at university will jog something. And teach me a little about magic.”

Louis blurted, “The prince brought her in.”

He laughed at my frankness, studying me like I was extra fascinating. “Not the backstory I was expecting. If you need some extra tutoring, you just let me know, Miss Chloé.”

With that, he jogged back to the court with the volleyball in hand. He gave me one last wink over his shoulder before tossing the ball to his pals.

“They’re always messing around here before and after class,” Louis said self-consciously. “I mean, if you really do want to talk to him again.”

Rémi didn’t interest me. His design wasn’t pulled off that well in the game and his flirting was stiff and kinda cringe, so he was usually disregarded by the fanbase. However, so many “underrated Love Blooming opinion” posts extolled his virtues that I’d played his route to see if they were right. I found his scenarios to be the most bonkers…and Antoinette was her most animated and fierce when she was competing with Marie for Rémi’s affections.

Hmm…another contender enters the field…

Louis said, “Now that you’ve seen the courts…how about the library?”

There was one last guy who I could potentially match with Antoinette. One who I wanted absolutely nothing to do with.

Sylvain Laflamme.

The aloof, smart type. Tragic backstory. All-around asshole. Fandom’s favourite, because yeesh, is fandom dumb sometimes.

“No,” I said before the dialogue choices could shut me up. “Let’s get to lunch.”