"Don’t be shy, Mademoiselle Alarie. Show us what you’ve got!"

Professeur Dupont might as well have asked me to stand on my head and belt ‘Hello’ by Adele. I sure wouldn’t have felt any more nervous and incapable than I did right now, frowning at the gardening bench of mostly-dead sprouts, while the Advanced Magi-Botany class stared me down.

This class pretty much held the plot of Love Blooming together, so all the love interests were here…and so was Antoinette. Étienne was at my shoulder—he was the one who talked me up to Dupont, the jerk. Rémi shot me eager grins from his table. Louis was doodling, pretending he wasn’t paying attention.

And Sylvain, the fourth love interest who I'd avoided this morning, revised his notes quietly with Antoinette, long black hair hiding his expression.

Antoinette's blue eyes flashed to me as everyone—including me—waited for something to happen.

1. Stand back, everyone! One, two…THREE!
2. Can you repeat the instructions?
3. I don’t need to show off like a circus monkey.

My voice squeaked even without Marie’s influence, but the tug at my hair was all her puppeteering. "Can you repeat the instructions?"

"Bring whichever plant back to life. Even a little sprout will show me all I need to know. Here," Dupont gestured to the first two brown plants, "are a lily and a daisy, very peaceful plants, eager to respond to even the smallest hint of magical ability. These are the Bright Lady and the Silverbriar, modified by magic for medicinal purposes. You’ll find they’re a bit more stubborn! But I hear you’ve got great talent."

Talent? Marie’s power was more like when you stuffed a pack of Mentos into a two-liter of Coca-Cola.

Nervous as I was, I knew Dupont meant well. His cartoonish video game avatar translated into an equally cartoonish living man. He had a caterpillar-like bushy white mustache that obscured his mouth, hair parted so neatly it looked like he’d done it with a ruler, and wire-rimmed glasses that made his kind brown eyes look twice their size. He wasn’t singling me out; any students with magical aptitude had to do this test in September. He was giving me a chance to impress my classmates. Little did he know…

Étienne said under his breath, "This class will help you. Relax."

I hovered my hand over the dead daisy. I thought of the way the game’s narration described the magic…and then thought of the way fanfic writers did.

I thought of stacistar, who was one of my few fellow Marie x Antoinette shippers. She’d written a meta essay about how Marie’s magic was so uncontrollable and untethered at the start of the game because she had to learn to anchor her identity into something productive. Marie was capable of bringing goodness and healing to the other characters, but she didn’t understand that about herself.

Was I "Marie" enough for that to work?

I guess I was nice enough. Sort of. And I brought brightness to the fandom with my fic and metas. Well, the Antoinette fans, at least. Some people really hated me, I had to admit. Like, really hated me.

I’d bring healing to Antoinette’s life. That’s what I could do.

I directed my magic into my hands. Just a tiny bit. Enough to perk up the plant and attract no attention. That’s all. My magic is a faucet and I can turn on the tap just a liiiiittle–

Yeah, right.

Étienne pulled me away from the table. I’d played this part of the game a half dozen times. So I wasn’t entirely dumbstruck when taking in the mess I’d made.

Every single plant had grown, that was for sure, and they wouldn’t stop. The table was covered in squirming green vines, leaves stretching to the size of my hands, flowers of all colours exploding in a rainbow flurry. The plants had burst right in the prof’s face and now his hands had little scratches all over them from the Silverbriar’s thorns.

The faster my heart beat, the faster the plants grew. They slithered off the table and into the first row of desks. Antoinette smacked her textbook on a vine crawling into her pencil case. She stomped on another that was twisting up her calf.

Dupont plunged his hand into the mass of monster plants. The plants glimmered for a second, then turned greyish-brown and withered like worms dried out in the sun.

“Sorry,” I managed.

"Well!" Dupont barked a boisterous laugh. "One can’t say you failed to bring them back to life!"

I was burning up like a torch. Students were whispering. Rémi cackled, brushing dead daisy heads off his books. Antoinette plucked at a tear in her nylons and grimaced at me.

Dupont brushed off his hands, smearing them with a little blood from those shallow cuts. "Find a seat, Mlle. Alarie. Phew! Nothing like a bit of excitement to start off our Monday, hm?"

Étienne said, "May I send for a nurse and someone to clean this up, sir?"

"No, no, Your Highness."

"Sir, I insist."

"Monsieur Chapelle? Run to the office, would you? Thank you so much."

Louis darted out of the room, picking dead petals from his ginger curls.

Rémi called, "New girl’s a firecracker! Dibs on her for any experiments!"

Étienne walked me to a table in the middle row. My hands felt kinda like after you’ve been mowing the lawn for a long time—like they were vibrating even when I trapped them under my thighs.

While the prof’s hand was bandaged and a janitor cleared the room of dead plants, we all got out our notebooks and pens. The lab was full of plants–lining the walls, hanging from the ceiling, trailing down the corners. Would I turn the room into a greenhouse of doom if I didn’t pay attention?

I had to keep calm.

Yeah. Sure. Easy.

I was never the biggest fan of the fantasy aspects of Love Blooming, so I didn’t play with them much in my fanfics. If I had, would I have realized how scary it was to have powers that you couldn’t control? Would I have a better idea of how to control them?

At least my powers were connected to plants, and not lightning or fire or, like, necromancy…

"Are you alright?" Étienne whispered.

"Just…shocked."

"You’re very powerful."

I was comforted by how he intoned it—not with awe or encouragement. He sounded sympathetic.

I was glad to have Étienne. Except I’d have to play it safe so he wouldn’t fall for me…

Ugh, no! Calm thoughts, calm thoughts!

The professor stood at the chalkboard, beaming at all of us. "Miss Alarie, you joined us on a very exciting day! I'm thrilled to announce a rare opportunity that has never been given to the students of La Belle Lavande!"

Here it was. The real plot of Love Blooming was about to kick off.

"Teams will work until the end of the school year to create a prototype product that fits the Aconitum Corporation’s mission. While all students will earn credits for completed products, one very special group will be chosen by M. Delphine himself…to partner with the Aconitum Corporation and make their product a reality!"

Murmurs burst around the room, bringing the students to an excited simmer. Now that I was sitting smack in the middle of it, I saw how important and aspirational Antoinette’s family company was. Like Amazon or Google before people got wary of their all-seeing and all-knowing AI.

Even though their name was a huge red flag. Aconitum. AKA aconitum napellus. AKA wolfsbane. AKA purple-blue sleigh bells that can kill you instantly.

I remember the tremors of excitement that went through the fandom when someone finally looked up the name. If there’s one thing all fans love, it’s a name with a hidden meaning.

"You’ll present your projects anonymously."

That made sense. I’d never seen a group of people more at risk for conflicts of interest.

"And Mlle. Delphine, you, of course, will not be in a group. We don’t want someone getting an unfair advantage, yes? Instead, you’ll earn credits by providing guidance to all your classmates. You’ll stop them from heading down the wrong path, but you’ll still keep your family secrets close!"

"I’ll try my best."

From an aisle over, I heard a girl whisper, "I’d rather take no help than her help, heir or not!"

They weren’t wrong. In the game, Antoinette made a full-time job out of sabotaging Marie’s ideas.

Not this time.

Dupont clapped his hands; I could practically see the anime sparkles in his eyes. "I’ll give you all a minute to sort yourselves into groups of five or six…"

Étienne and I looked at each other immediately. I doubted I’d be able to influence how the groups shook out in the game, and besides, I didn’t want to. If I wanted to match one with Antoinette, I needed to keep an eye on the guys and their every move.

I scooted close to Étienne so everyone would know the prince was taken. (Cue students rounding on him…and then their faces falling. No one wanted to be in a group with the ‘firecracker.’)

Louis gave me a shy smile from his table and mouthed, "Do you wanna…?"

I waved him over and he blushed fantastically, gathering up his things. Honestly? This was a nice feeling. I’d always been too shy to pick anyone but my closest friends.

I eagerly searched the milling students for my next mark. Rémi was chatting with a pair of blushing female students. They were pitching their smarts to him, but he kept toying with their hair, freezing their tongues.

Sorry, ladies.

I stood up and hissed, "Rémi! Hey, Rémi! We need another member!"

Classic Rémi one-shouldered shrug. Classic Rémi smirk, like he couldn’t help being soooo popular. Classic Rémi lope over to our table. He ignored the chair and sat on the edge of the table.

The room settled as everyone found their places. Antoinette hadn’t moved…and neither had Sylvain.

"M. Laflamme, have you found a group?" Dupont asked.

"I was hoping to work alone, sir."

Sylvain probably could, genius that he was. Plus, his surly mood would drag down the morale of anyone who was stuck with him. And guess who that was gonna be? Sigh.

"Unfortunately, that won’t do. How about you join…" He scanned the class. "Join in with His Highness, how about?"

Étienne made space at the end of the table for our new stormy rain cloud. Sylvain didn’t acknowledge him. Just turned right back to the professor.

Rémi shot me an eye roll and a smirk. Even though I had to be careful with tempting their affections, I couldn’t help giving him the same expressions back.

"Come back next Monday with at least a rough idea of your prototype that you can present to Mlle. Delphine and I. Best of luck, and, of course, have fun!"

This competition relied on a simple—but actually pretty neat—combination of player scores. The higher you scored on class exams or "magic practice" minigames, the better your results would be. You could get bonuses depending on your approval scores with the guys, since they each had unique affinities that could help patch up a poor player score.

In my playthroughs, M. Delphine never chose me. And that was in a game where all I had to do was press the right buttons at the right time. This was the real world—well, as real as I could believe it to be without my brain totally breaking—and I needed to win this competition.

Because at the winner’s ceremony, an anonymous whistleblower would tell the world about the Aconitum Corporation’s dark past…landing a culpable Antoinette Delphine in prison with the rest of her family, kicking off the bad ending she didn’t deserve.

If I could get to the ceremony, would I have an even better shot at saving Antoinette?