📘 CHAPTER FOUR — THE WINDOW

I didn’t move.

Not straight away.

The voices stopped, but the words didn’t.

They stayed there, repeating, quieter each time but somehow heavier.

“…he saw it.”

Good.

Exactly where it needs to be.

I swallowed, but it didn’t do anything. My throat still felt tight, like I’d been holding something in without realising.

“No,” I muttered quietly. “No, that’s not—”

I stopped.

Because I didn’t even know what I was trying to deny.

I looked back at the window.

Empty.

They were gone.

No Ethan. No James. No Oliver.

Just the street, still and normal like nothing had just happened.

Like I’d imagined all of it.

But I hadn’t.

That was the problem.

I stepped closer anyway.

Slow.

Careful.

Like something might still be there if I looked properly.

Nothing.

“…right,” I said under my breath, a small, dry laugh slipping out. “Yeah. That makes sense. That makes total fucking sense.”

It didn’t.

None of it did.

I turned away from the window, running a hand through my hair, pacing once across the room before stopping again. My head felt loud now. Too loud. Everything overlapping—what I saw, what I heard, what it meant.

If it meant anything.

“They just need enough to start filling in the gaps themselves.”

I let out a sharp breath.

“Shut up,” I said quietly.

Because that’s exactly what I was doing.

Filling in gaps.

Making connections that might not even be real.

But it didn’t feel random.

It felt placed.

That was what made it worse.

I stopped pacing and leaned against the wall, staring down at the floor.

“Why would he say that?” I muttered. “Why would he say that like that?”

No answer.

Obviously.

But the question didn’t go away.

It just sat there, heavier now.

Ethan.

Oliver.

James.

Me.

All of it felt too close together now.

Like it wasn’t separate things anymore.

Like it was one thing.

I pushed myself off the wall and walked back toward the window again before I could stop myself.

Looked out.

Still nothing.

“…fuck this,” I muttered.

I stepped back properly this time, like I was actually choosing to leave it instead of getting pulled back again.

But my head didn’t follow.

It stayed there.

Outside.

With them.

With what I saw.

With what I heard.

I moved out of the room, slower now, like I wasn’t fully there anymore. Back into the hallway. Back toward my room. Everything looked the same, but it didn’t feel the same.

It felt off.

Like something had shifted slightly and I couldn’t put it back.

I sat down on the edge of my bed, staring at nothing for a second.

Then longer.

Then too long.

“Alright,” I said quietly, like I was trying to convince myself. “Alright. Just think.”

But thinking didn’t help.

Thinking made it worse.

Because every time I tried to go through it properly, it came back to the same point.

That smile.

That tone.

Those words.

Good.

Exactly where it needs to be.

I shook my head slightly.

“No,” I said again, quieter this time. “No, that’s not about you. That’s not—”

I stopped.

Because I didn’t believe that either.

My hands clenched slightly without me noticing.

“If this is some fucked up joke…” I muttered, trailing off.

It didn’t feel like a joke.

It felt controlled.

That was the word.

Controlled.

Like something had already been set up before I even noticed it.

Like I’d just walked into the middle of it without knowing where it started.

I leaned forward slightly, elbows on my knees, staring at the floor again.

“…what the fuck is going on,” I said under my breath.

No answer.

Just silence.

But not empty silence.

The kind that sits there.

Waiting.

Like something’s going to happen next.

And you don’t get a say in when

📘 CHAPTER FIVE

Return to School

The school felt normal in the way broken things sometimes do when you stop staring directly at them. Everything was in the right place, just slightly out of alignment, like someone had nudged reality and nobody had noticed the shift except me.

I got to class early without meaning to. That was becoming a habit now — arriving before anything could happen, like timing might stop things from forming properly if I caught them early enough.

Flora was already there.

Not sitting with me.

Not sitting anywhere in particular.

Just there.

At the wrong end of the room, half-turned away like she had already decided she wasn’t part of anything.

She didn’t look at me when I walked in.

That mattered more than it should have.

I sat down in my usual seat out of instinct, then realised halfway through doing it that it didn’t mean anything anymore. No one had claimed anything in here. Not really.

The teacher arrived a minute later, scanning the room like they always did, ticking off names without actually seeing anyone.

Then they stopped.

“Liam,” they said, glancing down at their list again. “And… Flora.”

Flora didn’t respond.

“I said Liam and Flora.”

Still nothing.

The teacher sighed like this was already too much effort. “You two, just sit together. We’re not rearranging the entire room.”

That was it.

No discussion.

No choice.

Just consequence disguised as organisation.

Flora finally looked up.

For a second, I thought she might argue.

She didn’t.

She just stood up.

Walked over.

And sat down next to me like she was accepting something she didn’t agree to but didn’t have energy to resist.

The space between us felt wrong immediately.

Not hostile.

Just unfamiliar.

“I don’t need you to talk to me,” she said quietly.

“Good,” I replied. “Because I don’t know what to say anyway.”

That almost got a reaction out of her.

Almost.

Across the room, James was already there.

Of course he was.

He wasn’t looking at us directly, but I could feel it anyway — that awareness he had of everything happening without needing to acknowledge it.

Warren sat beside him.

Closer than before.

Too close in a way that didn’t feel normal, but didn’t look obvious enough for anyone else to comment on.

Warren laughed at something James said.

A beat too late.

Like he was catching up to a script he hadn’t fully read.

Sarah came in after them.

She stopped when she saw me and Flora together.

Not surprised.

Just… tired.

She sat down slowly, but not near us.

Not near James either.

Somewhere in between.

The lesson started.

It didn’t matter what it was about.

Nothing really did in rooms like this.

Flora didn’t speak again.

Neither did I.

But I could feel her awareness next to me, like she was constantly recalculating whether this proximity was accidental or intentional.

At one point, she leaned slightly closer without looking at me.

“This isn’t normal,” she muttered.

“I know.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “I mean… him.”

She didn’t say James.

She didn’t need to.

I looked up slightly.

James was talking to Warren again. Low voice. Controlled posture. Nothing dramatic. Nothing visible enough to be questioned.

But Warren wasn’t the same Warren I remembered.

He kept nodding too quickly.

Like agreement was safer than thought.

The bell eventually came.

The room broke apart into movement.

Chairs scraping. Bags zipping. People leaving like nothing had happened.

Flora stood first.

She didn’t wait for me.

That felt important.

I followed anyway.

We ended up in the corridor without speaking. Just walking in the same direction without agreement.

That lasted until a teacher stepped out of a nearby room and saw us.

“Actually,” they said, pointing vaguely, not really looking at either of us properly, “you two stay here a second.”

Flora stopped instantly.

I stopped a half-second after her.

The teacher didn’t explain. Just gestured back into the classroom.

“Sit. Talk. I don’t care. Just don’t stand in the corridor.”

Then they left.

And that was how it happened.

We were put back in the same space again.

Not chosen.

Not repaired.

Just positioned.

Flora sat down slowly.

I did the same.

The silence this time felt different.

Heavier.

Like it had been assigned.

“I don’t like this,” she said eventually.

“Neither do I.”

A pause.

Then, quieter: “Do you think it’s always going to be like this?”

I didn’t answer immediately.

Because I didn’t know what “this” even meant anymore.

Before I could speak, Sarah appeared in the doorway.

She wasn’t supposed to be here.

That was obvious from her expression.

She’d heard something.

Not everything.

But enough.

Her eyes moved between us slowly.

“You two are together now?” she asked.

Flora let out a short laugh. “We’re not anything.”

Sarah ignored that.

Her focus shifted to me.

“You’ve been talking about James again, haven’t you.”

It wasn’t a question.

Flora stood slightly.

“That’s not—”

Sarah cut her off without raising her voice. “He’s not doing anything.”

That line landed wrong immediately.

Not because it was loud.

Because it sounded rehearsed.

Like it had been repeated enough times to become automatic.

I stood up too now.

“Sarah,” I said carefully. “You’re not seeing it properly.”

She looked at me properly for the first time.

And something in her expression tightened.

“Or maybe,” she said quietly, “you’re just seeing things that aren’t there.”

That silence after that wasn’t empty.

It was divided.

And somewhere in it, I realised something I didn’t want to accept yet.

We weren’t all looking at the same situation anymore

📘 CHAPTER SIX

Fault Lines

The next few days didn’t feel like anything had changed, which was usually how I knew something definitely had.

School carried on in its usual way — the same bell, the same corridors, the same half-hearted noise that filled the gaps between lessons. But underneath it, everything felt slightly misaligned, like the structure of the place had shifted while I wasn’t looking.

Flora still sat near me in lessons, but not with me. It wasn’t friendship. It was just proximity forced by circumstance. We didn’t talk unless we had to, and even then it felt like every sentence had to pass through something heavier first.

Sarah had stopped sitting near us entirely.

That wasn’t surprising anymore.

What was surprising was how quickly it became normal.

James, though, hadn’t changed position at all. If anything, he felt more central now, like the rest of us had been subtly repositioned around him without anyone agreeing to it.

Warren was always near him.

Too near.

Not in a friendly way. Not in a casual way. It looked more like Warren had stopped deciding where he stood and just started following wherever James paused.

I noticed it properly one afternoon outside the science block.

James was talking, low and controlled, and Warren was laughing at something that didn’t look funny. Not loudly. Not obviously. Just enough to confirm he was still aligned.

Then James said something else — quieter — and Warren’s expression changed slightly. Like he’d been corrected without anyone else hearing it.

It shouldn’t have bothered me as much as it did.

But it did.

Flora noticed it too.

“That’s not normal,” she said under her breath.

“I know.”

“You keep saying that,” she muttered. “But you’re not doing anything about it.”

I didn’t answer straight away.

Because she wasn’t wrong.

But the problem was I didn’t know what “doing something” even meant anymore. Everything I tried to fix either made things worse or proved I was imagining patterns that might not fully exist.

That was the part I couldn’t shake.

Not whether something was wrong.

But whether I was the only one seeing it wrong.

⸻

It happened properly later that day.

I saw Oliver near the end of the corridor, standing slightly apart from Ethan.

They weren’t arguing yet.

But they weren’t okay either.

There was distance where there hadn’t been before.

Ethan looked tense — not angry, just unsettled, like something had been said to him that didn’t fully belong to him.

I didn’t mean to get involved.

I really didn’t.

But I still walked over.

“Can I talk to you?” I asked Oliver.

He looked at me like he was deciding whether that question was safe.

“About what?” he said.

I hesitated.

Because saying it out loud made it real.

“James,” I said.

That name did something immediately.

Ethan shifted slightly at the mention of it.

Oliver noticed that too.

“What about him?” Oliver asked carefully.

I lowered my voice. “He’s been… saying things. About you. About Ethan. About stuff that isn’t—”

Ethan cut in before I finished. “He hasn’t said anything wrong.”

That stopped me.

Oliver looked at Ethan quickly. “What?”

Ethan didn’t look at him properly when he answered.

“He said you’ve been confusing people,” he said. “That it’s not fair on them.”

I felt something tighten in my chest.

“That’s not how it works,” I said quickly. “That’s not even— that’s not a thing he gets to define.”

Ethan frowned. “He wasn’t defining anything. He was just explaining it.”

Oliver went quiet for a moment.

That silence was worse than anything else.

Then he looked at me.

Not angry.

Just tired.

“Liam,” he said slowly, “why are you always in the middle of everything?”

That landed harder than I expected.

Because I didn’t have an answer that didn’t make me sound like the problem.

Ethan stepped back slightly.

“I think I should go,” he said.

Oliver didn’t stop him.

Neither did I.

And just like that, the space between them widened in a way I didn’t think I could fix.

Not because something exploded.

But because something quietly stopped holding.

⸻

Later, Flora found me near the back of the school, where the noise didn’t reach properly.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said immediately.

“I was trying to stop it getting worse.”

“It is worse,” she replied.

That was the thing with Flora — she didn’t soften anything. Not anymore.

We stood there for a moment without speaking.

Then she added, quieter, “He’s good at this, you know.”

“James?”

She nodded.

“He doesn’t push people,” she said. “He just… changes what they think they already know.”

I didn’t answer immediately.

Because that was exactly what it felt like.

Not force.

Not control.

Just direction.

Like someone adjusting the angle of a conversation slightly and watching it move on its own after that.

⸻

That evening, I saw Warren again.

He was alone this time.

Standing by the edge of the field, looking at his phone without really interacting with it.

James wasn’t there.

Which made it feel wrong in a different way.

Warren looked up when he saw me, then quickly away again.

He looked like someone waiting for instructions that hadn’t arrived yet.

And for the first time, I realised something I didn’t want to fully think through.

James didn’t need to be present anymore.

Not all the time.

The structure was already doing the work.

And I was starting to understand that I wasn’t watching it happen.

I was inside it