Romy spent her Sunday brooding.

The curtains were drawn despite a beautiful sunny winter day, her hair coated in an oil mask, and a tub of Coaticook ice cream in her hands. Romy had spent her morning half-watching the television. Her mind was preoccupied with many things, but all of them made her want to never set foot outside her home.

She hadn’t had any contact with Ezia. Not a word. Their friendship hadn’t even had time to blossom before she messed it all up, once again. Just like she had blown a thousand dollars. By Aloys’s thirteenth call, Romy had decided to block the number, and her strategy was to erase her Friday night from memory. Ignore her problems. Eat them with a bit of vanilla ice cream.

Then she remembered that the only reason she could hole up in her apartment was because it was Sunday. And that she had assignments due by 8:00 a.m. sharp on Monday. So her afternoon, already difficult, was spent trying to focus on her readings. But even then, the movement of her pen across her notebook couldn’t hold her attention far from what occupied her that morning.

That evening, after finishing her work, of which she wasn’t particularly proud, Romy realized in the middle of a bite of pasta, that tomorrow she’d have to go out and attend class. The one she shared with Ezia. In the building where Aloys worked.

So, Romy ended her Sunday in bed, buried under the covers, chewing her nails in dread of the day to come.

***

Romy knew her day would be long when she opened her eyes fifteen minutes before her alarm.  

Fifteen minutes less sleep felt like a hammer blow. Mechanically, she got out of bed, limbs still asleep, washed up and got dressed, decided that breakfast would take too much effort, and settled on just a cup of coffee in a travel mug.

Before leaving, she made sure to put on her headphones, without music, just to enjoy their noise-canceling effect. Romy stepped out of her building, greeted by light snowflakes whipped around by the wind in a frantic dance. She took a sip of her coffee, warming her throat, and watched the flakes melt on her oversized wool coat. It was getting chilly, and she pulled the coat tighter around her frame as she made her way to the metro. 

Five minutes of silence to feel the thin carpet of snow crunch under her soles. Romy preferred taking the narrow alleys between  small brick apartment buildings, parallel to the main road bustling with the usual Monday morning rush. Instead, the alleys offered her a moment of mental preparation for the day, testing civilization with the tip of her finger, like a visitor from another planet.

She pushed through the heavy metro doors, the air draft sent her hair flying and tangling, and a groan escaped her lips. The metro, as usual, was packed, and squished between two shoulders and a back, she couldn’t help but wonder who among these people might belong to Ezia’s cult. Maybe that old woman with the garish scarf? Or that man in a suit who probably handed out flyers in his spare time? Or that blonde woman in her thirties, bundled up in her puffer coat up to her chin, who was looking at her strangely. Romy tried a polite half-smile, but the woman didn’t respond. She must be French.

When the doors opened and Romy continued her way to the university, each step bringing her closer to the cursed building, anticipation twisted her stomach. She climbed the stairs heavily, her backpack bouncing on her back to a rhythm that became her own funeral march. She couldn’t bear the sight of the elevator and chose the stairs instead, despite the nausea rising within her.

So it was panting and a little disheveled that Romy crossed the threshold of her usual classroom. Her brown eyes scanned the room, the tables still formed a hollow square, and the other students were chatting softly as they settled in. No sign of Ezia. Her shoulders dropped. She picked a seat on the side, next to a girl she’d vaguely spoken to before and greeted her. Close to the door, she could see who came in. She placed her backpack down, took off her coat, and pulled out her laptop in seconds. Her headphones rested on the table next to her still-hot coffee.

“Is this seat taken ?”

Romy looked up at the voice, and a pair of eyes stared at her attentively, waiting politely for an answer but gripping the back of the chair with intent. She wanted to say no, to trap Ezia into sitting beside her as the last remaining seat, but she couldn’t say no. Student honor code. Saying no to a clearly empty seat was basically asking to be ghosted for the rest of the semester.

“Be my guest.”

The chair legs scraped the floor as Benji pulled it out to sit. The keys clipped to his pants with a carabiner made a metallic clink that echoed through the room, and Romy looked around, expecting annoyed expressions, but everyone was too busy chatting away. She wasn’t really surprised. 

She vaguely knew Benji, they had exchanged a few hallway hellos, and he was always surrounded by people. Still, they had started the same semester, both in political science, and it made her feel a twinge of jealousy at his unnaturally high level of sociability. Maybe it was his looks, warm caramel skin and black hair often styled in cornrows that fell to his shoulders. 

Romy thought it was more his fashion: a poster child for Montreal’s thrifted fashion scene, in oversized canvas pants and vintage jackets clearly yanked from a grandpa’s closet, exuding cool without trying. She was sure his charm wasn’t supposed to work on her. But she couldn’t help it, she smiled back.

Her gaze was caught by a silhouette behind Benji, quick as lightning it passed behind Romy before she could even tell who had just entered. Still, the sight of dark hair and bare arms screamed Ezia, but before Romy could stop her, she was already out of reach.

Her new seatmate, who had watched the scene attentively, to Romy’s deep discomfort, gave her a look before speaking.

“You two aren’t friends ?”

“Not really… not anymore, I guess.” She mumbled, fixing her attention on the professor who had just entered.

“Shame. You seemed to get along well.”

At those words, her focus drifted toward Ezia. Even from several meters away and under the clicking of keyboards, Romy could swear she heard the click of her pen against her notebook. As if sensing the stare, the brunette looked up, and their eyes met. Romy immediately turned away, focusing on the professor’s words, drinking them in like a lifeline to keep the blood from rushing to her cheeks.

That’s when she realized that it wasn’t Professor Shepherd’s hard stare and salt-and-pepper hair in front of her, but a man in his fifties with pure white hair and electric-blue glasses. She had been so distracted she hadn’t even noticed the stranger walk in. Where was Shepherd ?

“Hey, psst,” she whispered to her neighbor, “this is bioethics class, right?”

Benji didn’t bother turning but leaned back in his chair near her ear and matched her whisper.

“Yeah… but weird, we didn’t get any email about a change.”

The man in front of them continued his rather passionate monologue, far more dynamic than Shepherd ever was, but that wasn’t saying much. He picked up a piece of chalk and began drawing shapes on the blackboard to illustrate his points. The white stick glided easily in his hand, then his movement quickened, his grip turned sloppy. A screech echoed through the room, so sharp and piercing that Romy let out a yelp, clutching her ears, pain shooting through her ear canals.

She only realized her eyes were closed when a hand touched her shoulder. Her vision was blurry, the white neon lights reduced to ghostly blurs, as if the wave of vibrations was still echoing in her and spreading through her other senses. She blinked, and her vision stabilized.  A line of wide-eyed faces stared back at her.

“You okay?” asked a muffled voice.

Romy turned to Benji, who was right next to her. She looked at him for a few seconds, her ears were still ringing, and every sound seemed far away. Bile rose in her throat, the familiar taste made her wince. She had just humiliated herself in front of a classroom filled with students from multi-departments, and now she was about to vomit too? Maybe not, though she felt the heat rising in her cheeks and neck, like a shield of shame. She had to get out.

“I have to go,” she managed to stammer, throwing her things into her backpack.

She didn’t know if anyone had said something, or if the professor had called her out, because the screeching chalk was still echoing in her eardrums, forcing her to focus entirely on getting out. Within seconds, she was already rushing into the hallway, awkwardly slamming the door behind her.

She managed to find her way to the stairwell. There, in the silence and dim light of the concrete walls, Romy was finally able to catch her breath. Something was wrong with her. Maybe what she had taken for a cold wasn’t one at all? The excruciating headaches on Friday, the sounds that had been shattering her eardrums since Saturday. Her mind couldn’t help but drift back to the lab. If only she had read the contract in detail! But even digging through her memory, nothing had hinted at any sort of invasive experiment. She hadn’t consumed anything, nothing had been injected into her, the electrodes were part of standard procedure, and she hadn’t been worried about them either.

So what the hell was going on ? Was she just going crazy ?

Her heart jumped when she felt pressure on her shoulder. Romy let out a small gasp of surprise as she turned around, but immediately relaxed when she saw who had followed her.

“You’re not well,” Ezia whispered. “Since when?”

Romy was grateful for the low tone the other used, her hearing still raw. Ezia had followed her, and she had noticed something was wrong, even though Romy had hurt her two days earlier. Despite their closeness, Romy couldn’t manage to keep her eyes on Ezia’s face. She was there for her. She still cared. I’m such an idiot, Romy thought, hurting someone that good. So, she decided to take the chance.

“I’m really sorry, Ezia. For the other night. What’s going on in your life isn’t my business, I should’ve just shut up.”

“It’s okay. I forgive you. What’s going on with you?”

At those words, a weight lifted from her shoulders instantly. Her eyes met Ezia’s, worried, and she smiled at her. Ezia gave a small smile in return. That was enough for Romy to know that Saturday’s incident had truly been forgiven. That they could become friends.

“When did it start?” Ezia asked again, insistently.

Her question sparked a hint of concern in Romy. Why was she pressing so hard to know?

“My ears started hurting Saturday morning. When you dropped the ladle in the kitchen, it felt like someone stabbed my eardrums.”

Ezia grew visibly agitated, under Romy’s inquisitive gaze. A beat passed before she looked up, grabbed the backpack Romy had left on the floor with one hand, and with the other, firmly seized her arm and pulled her toward the stairs.

“You find any marks? On your body?”

Romy, who was now stumbling down the stairs behind Ezia, struggled to split her focus between not falling and processing what the brunette had just asked. Is there gas leaking in this university or am I actually losing it? What kind of question was that? Romy remembered that Ezia was doing a master’s in biology. Maybe she knew what was going on? Maybe Romy wasn’t just sick but had been poisoned by some Canadian insect?

“What kind of marks ?” She managed to pant between steps.

“Lupine.”

There had to be something in the air.

“I think I would’ve noticed if I fought a wolf in my sleep,” Romy said wryly.

Her soul nearly flew out of her body when her foot slipped on the concrete. She lurched forward, about to fall before she even had the reflex to grab the railing, until Ezia yanked her backward by the arm, steadying her.

“Damn, you’ve got a grip!” Romy muttered, rubbing her bicep.

They exited the stairwell to the ground floor and quickly passed through the university’s glass doors only to get smacked by a cold gust of wind. Romy could still feel the pressure of Ezia’s fingers etched into her arm. If not bite marks, I’ll at least end up with bruises.

A car engine roared nearby, and Romy couldn’t help but flinch, convinced that a vehicle was barreling straight toward them. But they were on the sidewalk. The SUV rolled several hundred meters ahead before disappearing at the next intersection. Romy groaned and buried her head in her hands, pulling at her hair roots, sure that the pain would wake her up from this nightmare. I can’t live like this, I’m going to lose my mind. 

Panic twisted her stomach. If her hearing kept intensifying, spilling into her daily life, she’d be unable to live normally. Having to flee a class because of the sound of chalk on a board was already a death sentence for her social life, but now if her hearing kept spiraling like this, her life as she knew it was over.

Even though the street was nearly empty, the distant honking still reached her ears. Quickly, she pulled on her noise-canceling headphones, but even with them, the chirping of birds, the two old ladies chatting across the street, the shuffling of feet on gravel, all felt too loud. Everything took up too much space. Too much. Too many sounds. Too loud. She groaned and shut her eyes.

Ezia grabbed her arm again, this time more gently, guiding her. Romy, too overwhelmed to think for herself, followed without asking questions. Instead of continuing down the street in front of the university, toward the main road and the metro entrance, Ezia led her through the campus. Behind the classrooms of Roger-Gaudry was a large open plaza where she liked to sit in the grass on sunny days. Around it stood several other department buildings. One of them, the library.

Silent and empty outside exam periods, they passed through the doors of that haven of peace, and Romy let out a sigh of relief. Six floors tall, the library was huge, always with some secluded spot hidden between two shelves of forgotten books. Ezia calmly led her toward the stairs, up to the fourth floor. There, Romy took off her headphones and was finally able to breathe. The sounds she could hear were no longer disturbing, pages turning, footsteps muffled on the carpeted floor. It was soothing for her raw eardrums.

They sat at an isolated table, between the international relations section and a collection of books in ancient Greek. Then they looked at each other for a moment, face to face, in silence. She didn’t know what to say. What could she possibly say in a situation like this ?

“Thanks,” Romy said simply.

“No problem.”

Then Ezia stood up. Romy frowned, and when the other walked past her, she managed to grab the hem of her T-shirt, stopping her dead in her tracks. Ezia froze and looked back, puzzled. How could she leave again, just like that? 

“Where are you going?” Romy instantly regretted speaking, her voice trembled, betraying her anxiety.

“To find some answers.”