Sorry for the late ass update! My family decided to bless and screw me over at the same time these holidays (love ya Mom), so now I've got to: spend 80% of my free time with family, find a new job, move all my shit to a new place in two weeks (gotta love my stupidly compulsive grandparents :), make travel plans for Japan AND Thailand in January, and prepare to move back to Canada in February (°◡°).:｡
Do people actually read these notes? Why has this book become a mini journal of my life? Why are all my updates freakishly long? Where did I put my favourite reindeer socks?
In other news, this update is a THICCCC 7000+ words.
Enjoy!
*not edited*
"Of all the times that dead fish decided to do something, it had to be now."
At the far end of a long mahogany table, in an isolated corner of the school's magnificent two-tiered library, sat a piping pissed off protagonist who was breeding thoughts of violence and murder in her perpetually churning cesspit of a mind. However, they weren't the usual anxiety-laced woes that had been the harbinger of her distress nor were they her fear-mongering terrors that had been the mother of her nightmares.
"Why is that walking beluga the fucking dean?"
Sandwiched between two colossal bookshelves stocked to the fringe with thick volumes of gold-foiled texts and leather-bound volumes, Violet sat at an empty study desk, quietly spitting death hexes at the Mesozoic-era dinosaur fossil who had forced her to be the after school tutor of one of the school's "academically inept" students.
To put it lightly, for two days a week after her classes were done, she had to babysit a fucking idiot for a whole semester. While she was hunting down her living ghost of a reanimated boyfriend (Gin). While she had secret afternoon war meetings with her French-speaking English Lit teacher (Gabriel). While she halfheartedly fished for her White Walker of a step-brother (James) so she could get into his loose Armani dress pants and his tighter frozen heart.
Great.
"Why's this got to happen to me?" she whined, crossing her arms over her chest
Why did Ms. Tediosum decide to do something about Violet's frequent "absences" from her classes when such an irrelevant plot thread was never an issue in the past novel?
When Violet was skulking around the abandoned arts ward waiting for her Lover Boy to return to his favoured decrepit retreat, she had been reprimanded by Mrs. Tediosum at the room's obstinately locked door for "eschewing" her classes for the past two weeks.
"I understand you are not yet familiar to our school's code of conduct as you are a recently received entrant to our institution," Mrs. Tediosum told her after the hag had dragged her bewildered butt to her antiquated, Victorian-era office. "But breaches of our rules have consequences. And those consequences are a part of the educational system here, Ms. Leigh."
Now, seated at 'TABLE 12-E', waiting for an insignificant side character who might have a crumb of significance to the plot, Violet thought of all the times she could've broke into his dorm room or hideout when the opportunity, timing, and freedom had been available to her.
Why has he been so hard to find?
Her dearly unavailable Gin wasn't the only CP who had been giving her a hard time with their absences. James, "the overly obsessive one", the "villain" that everyone from Gin to Dingnuts had been grilling on throughout the entirety of the previous novel, was avoiding her.
A character, who everyone claimed was disturbingly obsessed with her, was actively doing his utmost best to avoid her.
Her. The "step-sister." The one being "obsessed" over.
Now, Violet was very understanding of James' plight as she knew that the boy had to screw a tight cap over an explosive bottle of suppressed emotions--and for good reason--but Violet was getting fed up with the more aggravating symptoms of that suppression and that included his over-the-top method of avoiding her.
Whether it be at the student body president's office or at the doors of his advanced uni-prep classes, James' loyal lackeys would tell her--like the snooty brainless puppets that they were--that he was somewhere else, was somewhere else doing something else with someone else, or wouldn't be around for some time because he was somewhere else doing something else with someone that someone like her should not bother asking about and never should.
Was this what Gabriel meant when he said James' route was difficult? Not only did she have to deal with James' unfair resentment towards her, but she had to go through a freaking obstacle course of unreliable schedules, pompous bottom feeders, and dimwitted school bullies to get a mere glimpse of his semi-styled platinum blonde hair as well?
Wonderful.
When she had grown accustomed to seeing Gerard's (a.k.a. "Discount President's") half-priced imitation of James' blisteringly icy glare, Violet did manage to see the real thing by chance as she was being harassed by a triad of mean girls in front of a wall of lockers.
"Who do you think you are, Leigh?" hissed the girl who'd viciously slammed her into them.
I don't know, a corporeal RL human being? What do you think you are? Do you believe that artificially created entities deserve human rights? Are you open to a philosophical debate on the matter?
As Violet bit down the sass sizzling on her tongue, her eyes scoped out the three girls that had boxed her in.
You girls aren't Jennifer and co. (LETALIS: It's Tiffany, Vi. TIFFANY.)
In place of the three angry blondes who had put Violet in a previous position in the previous novel, two analogously unremarkable brunettes flanking an equally unremarkable "ringleader" with waist-long, raven black hair took their roles. Violet pressed her lips together to smother a smirk when she saw that the ringleader's hair looked "surprisingly" similar to hers.
Hmm. I wonder what she's angry about.
"You're not going to answer me?" the girl with the black hair growled.
"I bet she's a mute," one of the brunettes sneered.
"And a retard," the other brunette added.
I could be both the longer I'm around you three.
Summoning the spirit of Leonardo DiCaprio, Audrey Hepburn, and William Motherfucking Shakespeare, Violet lowered her head and gripped her white knuckled fist behind her back. I wish Gabriel could see me now, Violet thought, her eyes drawing tears. I need acting lessons? Bitch, I need a fucking Oscar.
"Ugh, such a poser."
"Does the retard think she'll get special treatment from James if she cried?"
"I can't believe James is related to this."
On the outside, Violet shrunk further into herself. In the inside though, she smiled. Hook, line, and sinker.
The "subdued pitiful virgin who'd been woefully tormented by sadistic bullies" continued running with her act like the "good and virtuous" protagonist that she was, only getting out of character for a nanosecond when the ringleader with hair like hers grabbed a stalk of her hair.
"Are you that obsessed with James that you have to copy my hairstyle?" growled the ringleader.
"Stop following James, freak," the flanker chimed in, grabbing another stalk of her hair.
Don't fucking touch--
All thoughts in her head grew silent when Violet saw one of the brunettes bringing up a large pair of garden shears to her hair.
Terrific.
"Know your place, you dumb bitch," the girl with the shears said as her hand closed the handles in.
Violet watched on in horror. "No," she mouthed. Damn, this reminds me I need a haircut. How long ago was it since I had a bob? Three years? Five?
"What's going on here?"
All four girls looked up from what they were doing and found the student body secretary hovering around the perimeter of their semi-circle like a scarecrow.
"N-Nothing," the girl with the shears said, furtively slipping them back into her blazer. A teardrop ran down Violet's cheek.
Aw, I'm actually disappointed.
Talis' face was intimidatingly blank as she regarded the girls. "You're blocking the hallway. Move it," she said to them before she walked around them in a wide arc.
A few feet away, a small crowd of James' followers who were spearheaded by the Ice King himself, walked towards them like a parade of bloated peacocks following the feather tail end of their mother goose.
"James!" gasped the ringleader, her raisin brown eyes glittering at his magnificent entrance.
Violet closed her eyes so she could freely roll them beneath her lids. Can someone die from disgust?
James was still tuned into his phone when Violet opened them, inattentive of the crowd behind him, the quartet in front of them, and the girl who stared at him as if he was a rain cloud after a centuries-long drought. Once he was where Violet was, James went on walking like his step-sister wasn't about to be initiated into a nunnery by a group of girls he clearly had relations with.
The girl who'd alleged that she was the one copying her, latched an arm around James' and smirked at her "poser" as James ambled by. All Violet could do was stand by and stare at them in "shock". Bitch, stop smirking he ain't yours either.
When the dust cleared and the pompous peacock parade disappeared, Violet's pitiful, tearful mask slipped off her face.
Am I supposed to be grateful he 'saved' me? she thought, her eyes drying and her face losing its softness. How laughable.
Violet knew what James was doing when he showed up in front of her, "indifferent" and "unconcerned" to her obvious suffering. In order to "protect" her and not expose himself to backstabbing frenemies lurking within his circle, James did what he did best and handled her situation without choosing sides, provoking dissidents, or even saying a single word.
Sly.
James did things subtly and he did them better than the finest actor at the peak of his artistry. Whatever he did was perfectly planned, perfectly timed, and perfectly executed--and all he needed to do was the bare minimum to have everything in his world fall in line.
She had to admire that about James; he could so easily dissolve issues without blowing them up, take his jealous mistress away like a bag of chips he absentmindedly snagged off a shelf, and cover up "accidents" like they were spoiled puddles of spilled milk.
Amazing. Wonderful. Astonishing.
If only she weren't incredibly disgusted by it all and by him.
"Take him," she said as she reclined against her hardwood seat in the library. Take him the Hell away from me.
She couldn't forget what he'd done to Jack, to Gin, to Mary, and especially Giselle.
Why're you so angry at the world? she wanted to scream at James' divine face. Why're you like this?
As Violet's mind focalized around her supposed "love rival" in the novel and how her absentee status was another red flag of concern, Violet's eyes picked up the silhouette of a dark-haired student from the corner of her eyes. Almost all of her leapt up from her seat.
"Gin--"
Her mouth slammed closed and she sat back into her seat when her eyes met the disappointingly generic face of a NPC.
"Where could he be?" she whispered, her chest sinking into a cold, empty void.
A life without her Gin was hard, with some days were harder than others. Some days she wanted to tear her hair out and scream until her throat or lungs gave out. Other days, she wanted to cry until she went blind in both eyes. On the really, really hard days Violet would sit in her mildew-crusted bathtub and not move for hours.
She wished she could have the time to cry without a phone call or message from her "therapist" reminding her to take her meds.
She wished she could stop seeing the same faces hanging around her to make her "feel safe", when the woman never felt safe for months.
She wished she could go momentarily crazy so she could breathe for once.
But she couldn't. Not when she had eyes on her, watching every little thing she did in real time. Not when there was the threat of being shipping off to a containment room if the eyes surveying her deemed her "a danger to herself."
So she had to keep it in.
She had to keep her emotions in a box and cover it up with an innocent smile or a heartbreaking frown or whatever face they wanted her to use to achieve their objectives, to reach their goals.
Violet breathed heavily through her nose to untangle the slip knot constricting her throat.
Once she won back Gin, outsmarted the smartest people in the world, and defeated Letalis in writing her own story, she'd be alright again.
She'd be 'okay' again.
Crushing her despair back into its cramped black box, Violet erased all vulnerability off her face and solidified her smug, obstinate "emotionally unavailable" mug.
I'll be alright, she told herself. I'll get back Gin. Just wait.
Re-consolidating her life's mission and keeping her volatile emotions in check, Violet distracted her slipshod head with the identity of her academically inept "student".
According to Ms. Tediousm's terse description of the student, he was a year below her, immediately disqualifying any of the CPs and, obviously, that guy from being the student. He had difficulties with Biology and Chemistry, two core subjects that genius-level gods like James and Gin and academically bright scholarship students like Jack were reportedly thriving in. Oh, and how could Violet forget; the student was Tediosum's great-nephew, twice removed.
Is he going to be a rotting fish like Tediosum? Violet thought, grimacing. Did she really have to tutor the relative of someone who reminded her of a beached porpoise?
Just when Violet thought he wouldn't show up, her periphery caught the silhouette of a tall figure standing in the middle of the aisle leading to her table.
Violet's eyes glanced briefly at the figure, not expecting anything other than the unremarkable visage of an insignificant mob character.
Oh how wrong she was.
In less than a millisecond second, Violet snapped her eyes back to the front of her. Oh no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no!
Panicking, Violet thought of some quick plan of escape, but her mind was distracted by the incredibly handsome face preventing her from thinking up something on the spot.
Fuck! Go away! Don't come here!
Thinking that if she didn't look at him or regard him in any way, the mouthwateringly handsome "NPC" would walk by her aisle and go his mouthwateringly handsome way the fuck away from her, but as she heard footsteps coming closer to where she was, Violet knew, just knew that Letalis was the biggest fucking bitch to have ever fucking lived.
Fuck.
"Are you my tutor?"
Violet flinched at the voice like she had been gutted in the stomach with a hunting knife.
Hesitantly, she raised her eyes from the desk to the tall, stupidly attractive male blushing bright pink from his sharp cheekbones.
What was his name again?
Staring at the NPC's remarkably striking features, luxuriously brown curly hair, and blue-veined amethyst eyes made Violet feel all sorts of confused; was he a secret CP? What was his purpose in the game? Why did she have to meet him again like this?
What was his name again?
"I-Is there something on my face?"
Without realizing it, Violet had been staring at his face with an intensity most people would not have when meeting someone for the first time. Shit, Violet thought, shifting her face away from him. Be more careful you dumb slut.
"You have your tutorship form?" Violet barked, keeping her eyes down while she raised her palm up. Don't look too long at his face.
"A-Ah y-yeah."
Violet grabbed the paper once it touched her hand and skimmed her eyes over the top of the paper.
"Trixie"
I forgot his name was Trixie. Wasn't he...
"You're Giselle's younger brother?" Violet said as her eyes flicked up to the strapping, younger character. Fuck, he looks good! Why does he look good?!
Trixie's face exploded in colour when their eyes met and he looked off to the side, rubbing the back of his neck as he did so. There was no way Violet was able to control the twitch in her eye. I am so fucked aren't I?
"I-I am. Y-You must be Violet? James' sister?"
"Step-sister," she corrected.
"Ah! Yeah..."
"Yeah."
When awkwardness began spoiling the silence around them, Violet mumbled for him to sit in the seat in front of her before dropping her eyes back to his form.
"RECIPIENT: Trixie J. Tristis"
Ice water coursed through her veins and fear, genuine fear, flickered over her eyes. What is the "J" for?
"S-So Trixie?" Violet asked after the boy seated himself. "Is that you're real name?" Please. Please no. Not another one.
Jacob flashed a stunning, but timid smile. "Uh, no, that's not my real name, that's just a nickname my buddies made up because they had a hard time pronouncing my last name, Tristis."
"So if your nickname's your last name," Violet said slowly, the memory of their first conversation presiding over her lips, "what's your actual name?"
All hope was lost for Violet when she heard his answer.
"I-It's Jacob. Jacob Tristis."
XOXO
Behind a teacher's desk in a darkened room, with his glasses pushed up his face, Gabriel was rubbing his eyes with his forefinger and thumb in slow, pressing circles.
"Your ass just had to attract the quarterback too," he hissed sharply.
"Your ass knows I didn't do it on purpose," she bit back.
"Stop talking. You're giving me a headache."
"Me give you a headache?"
"You're the cause of them 76.942% of the time."
Violet jerked back in her seat opposite to Gabriel's desk. Does he have a pie chart somewhere of every time he insults me?
While Violet and Gabriel held pleasant conversation about the school's possibly supernatural origins--something which Gabriel completely renounced as psychological priming/bullshit intended to misdirect users from the game's heavily reality-based storyline--Violet, in between their heated argument over the narrative implications of the founders' history, decided to break the news to Gabriel that she was tutoring a possibly auspicious threat to their plans. And lives.
Jacob "Trixie" Tristis.
If this game had been a normal romance sim and he had been available to "play" with in the beginning, he would've been the number two pick right behind pre-Gale Gabriel.
That was how dangerously likable Jacob "Trixie" Tristis was.
Star quarterback of Amantes' burgeoning football team and younger biological brother of the ethereally beautiful Giselle, Jacob Tristis was like a quieter, neutered version of Jack; he was extremely polite, never intrusive of her personal life or her physical space; he was attentive, always asking if she needed this or that if the girl showed the least bit of irritation on her face; and he was mind-numbingly gorgeous--the kind of gorgeous that could disarm and disable on-lookers no matter how long the gawkers acquainted themselves to his looks.
Jacob was an exceptionally attractive character--in both accounts of looks and personality. But that was what made him dangerous.
Violet wound a hand tightly over her pleated skirt. Was she going to be triggered by every hot male she sees because of this game?
"He fits all the criteria of a capture target, but he doesn't have a LG," Gabriel said after some time. His eyes were squeezed shut and both his hands had moved to either side of his head to massage his temples. More quietly, he whispered, "Why're there two jock characters?"
"No LG," Violet sourly confirmed. "I was blinking so much at him he offered me some of his eye drops because he thought my eyes were dry."
"How much do you know about him?"
"Not much," she said begrudgingly. Among the hundreds of thousands conversations Violet had with Gin when they were the last two people left in "his world", the topic of Jacob Tristis had hardly ever been brought up. To the Gin at the time, Jacob wasn't worthy of being talked about.
And if someone wasn't worthy of being talked about by the Gin, the person was either too meager an existence to waste thinking about or was not a threat. Violet suspected Jacob was the former in Gin's gunmetal gray eyes.
"So he was an inconsequential character to Gin?" Gabriel said, relaxing his rigid jaw.
"I guess so. How much do you know about him?"
"As much as you do. And that he attended an all-boys boarding school for five years before coming here."
"Anything suspicious about that?"
"Not sure. I have to do more digging on his character to get a clearer picture of his past."
Letting out a groan, Violet deflated over her desk, her cheek and arms splayed over its grainy, textured surface. "What is he?" she whispered. Was he a two-faced villain like the other awe-inspiring Adonises violently vying for her love and affection? Or was he a pretty background character who was only installed into the novel to stoke confusion and release red herrings?
What role did he play in this novel?
"You said you met him once in the previous novel?"
"Yeah," Violet sighed, propping her chin on the desk. "It felt like Letalis wrote him in as an afterthought than an actual character. There was no mention of his existence from anyone before that Christmas party."
"Not even from his sister?"
"Only after I met him."
Gabriel blew a stream of air from his lips, his eyes looking off to the curtained windows. "What do you think he is?"
He posed the question like a good teacher would: expectant of an answer that would satisfyingly acquiesce with his, but still generous enough to accept contrasting insights if there were any to share.
"Because I'm in James' route," she said, wrangling her grimace to neutrality, "I think he's a plot device used to generate romantic tension between me and James."
"The handsome brother of your love rival who happens to be a quarterback, who happens to require tutoring from you, who happens to meet an above standard level of attractiveness, who happens to come from wealth, who happens to have a name that starts with the letter 'J'. Like the rest of them. Classic case of shallow romantic conflict if I've ever saw one."
"Your saltiness is going to be what kills you one day," Violet warned.
"I'm French-Canadian, I'm naturally seasoned."
Standing up from his seat, Gabriel rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt, preparing for a fight or to cook something up with what they've got.
"From what we know about him currently, we can somewhat agree that he's not an immediate threat, yeah?"
Violet rolled her eyes. "Ouais." Snooty French asshat.
"But we can also agree that sometime down the plot, he might be something else?"
"Like what?" she said nervously.
"Could he possibly be...a second male lead?"
She sat up pin straight in her seat. Oh no. Oh god no.
"What's with that reaction?" Gabriel said after his eyes darted over Violet.
Like a castle made of straw, Violet crumpled over her desk, her hands covering her eyes. "I'm a sucker for second male leads."
"...You have second male lead syndrome?"
"Unfortunately," she groaned.
"What's the problem?" he said, confused. "Couldn't you ignore him or something? What's so appealing about second male leads anyway?"
Her hands dropped from her face like her face had been on fire. "They're almost always better than the male lead."
"But they never get the girl in the end."
"Which is a travesty!" Violet cried. "How could a sane girl not choose the guy who'd always been there for her? The guy who'd risk everything for the protagonist's feelings, dreams--happiness?"
"Pfft. Like anyone that self-sacrificing exists in RL."
Weren't you--
Violet clamped her mouth and mind shut before the idea was fully formed. He doesn't actually care about you, she reminded herself. He only cares about his job.
"Jacob Tristis could be a second male lead," she said, winding her hands together over her desk, "but don't you think his introduction into the plot is a little too...convenient?"
Gabriel shot down the idea before it peaked. "I call red herring."
"I call stalker."
"You mean 'secret admirer'. It isn't conclusive that the person who's writing these notes is a stalker yet."
Apart from their usual routine of confirming their safe words (and exchanging insults like greetings), Violet had been giving Gabriel her accumulating collection of "love notes" every meeting after she'd handed him that first bundle of notes. Naturally, there were a lot of these brief "confessions" as she would get on average two to three notes every "school day"; however, since none of them had yet to be discovered in less conspicuous places like her dorm room or--god forbid--her underwear drawer, "Team RL" couldn't decide if the notes were a clumsy attempt at cheering her up from an admirer who bore no ill intentions towards her, or if they were the omens of a debauched creeper who, like the rest of Violet's colourful heartthrobs, was batshit crazy.
"You can't deny that Jacob's appearance and the appearance of those notes have something to do with each other," Violet argued. "It's almost law that the stalker is a throwaway side character--"
"But there are stories out there that have the stalker as a main character."
"If that story is centered around a stalker stalking their victim," she countered. "Who knows, maybe what you said will turn out to be true later, but this stalker storyline is a side plot to a mainly romance plot."
"Romance-mystery."
"What is the main goal in this novel? It's not to catch a stalker and reveal who he or she is. It's to get James. And a shit author wouldn't sacrifice a main character like James, or the other CPs for the matter, to get screwed over or antagonized for a side plot."
"Alright," Gabriel said, planting his knuckles onto his desk, "if you staunchly believe this Jock Stock Character #2 is 'the stalker', where's your proof?"
The fierce conviction in Violet's demeanour faltered at his question. "I'm gathering it," Violet mumbled under her breath.
"You don't have any," he said, not as a question but as a statement.
Puffing air through her nose, Violet dug through her bag and fished out a chemistry test paper that was relentlessly scored with red ballpoint ink. "I copped an old test from him with the excuse that I 'needed to pinpoint his weaknesses.'"
Gabriel walked around his desk and plucked the test from her hand. "The handwriting doesn't match," he sighed as he skimmed through the test.
"I think the 'e's are similar?" she said weakly.
"And the rest of his cursive handwriting is identical? Is your avatar the one that needs glasses?"
"Maybe he's trying to throw us off?"
The sigh that escaped Gabriel swatted off Violet's assumptions like they were flies buzzing around his doubtful face. "Did you have the chance to look through his pencil case?" he asked afterwards.
Gloom spoiled Violet's expression further. "No red pens. When he asked to go to the bathroom I checked his bag and found nothing there."
"Damn. I should've made a bet with you before we started taking apart your weak as fuck theory."
"Do you have any leads, Reinhart?" Violet grumbled.
Before he answered her, Gabriel folded the test paper in quarters and stowed it in the pocket of his pinstripe dress pants. "Only one. The type of paper used for these notes come from a widely-used notebook brand that's sold exclusively in the school's supplies store."
"So that cuts down our search to about 600 suspects, including teachers and school staff who could easily purchase their 'stalker supplies' right next to the library that I'm going to be regularly at thanks to Jacob and his fucking great aunt. Bon."
Inside Violet's chest, a coil of frustration burned red hot and angry from the accumulation of stressors that had been piling up inside her bit by aggravated bit. If she wasn't being disrespected by Gabriel on the daily, she would be insulted and harassed by tactless NPCs in his stead. If she wasn't getting stalked by a stalker, she would be stalking a physically unavailable 'boyfriend' who gave her no chances to convince him to be her boyfriend. If she wasn't wasting her game time tutoring her 'love rival's brother', she would be wasting her time trying to attract a 'step-brother' who was just unavailable at all fronts.
Why wasn't anything going her way?
Why did she have to be treated like this when the burns she got from going through Hell were still tender?
The bitter frustration on Violet's face roamed freely and unrestrained before her teacher, and Gabriel, the keen observer that he was, noticed this and quickly neutralized his acidic stare.
"Keep a surface-level relationship with Jacob," he said, toning down his inherently antagonistic tone. "Right now we have no idea of where his true motives lie, who his allies are, or if his personality is his actual personality."
"If he ends up like you, I'm fucking killing myself."
Gabriel took another drawn out sigh out of Violet's eyeshot before he went back to his desk and retrieved his bag. Thinking that their meeting was adjourned, Violet grabbed her bag and bolted upwards from her seat, but she was stopped from leaving her desk when Gabriel stood in front of her with a comb and a pair of scissors in hand.
"Turn around and sit on the desk," he said, neither apologetic nor rude.
Angry at him, but not to the point of shoving him to the side and dipping, Violet agitatedly kissed her teeth and sat on her desk with her back facing Gabriel.
"Chicken feathers?" Gabriel sighed as he started to comb through the sticky, feathery mess a group of NPCs pulled on her before she met up with Gabriel. Recently, the bullying tactics had gotten more aggressive, more physical. Shoves and elbowing had become the norm and her hair, frequently pulled, sullied, and now feathered, had been the favourite target of a certain demographic of James worshippers who were never afraid to show how much they loved hating her.
"Just cut it all off," Violet mumbled, unperturbed by the sounds of scissors cutting off significant chunks of her tarred hair.
"You wanna become a nun?"
Snip.
"I might as well be with the face I have."
Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip.
"Can't you use makeup?" he mumbled after a short pause.
Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip.
"The makeup here's trash. No matter how much I use, it all comes off sheer."
Snip. Snip. Snip.
"Oh yeah. I forgot. Female protagonists don't usually conceal their 'natural beauty' under heavy makeup."
Snip. Snip.
"I find that unrealistic. Almost half of the people I know cake their face daily and they're all naturally beautiful too."
Gradually, the heat emanating from Violet's chest cooled from the periodic snipping of Gabriel's scissors, the pleasant sensation of his comb gently tugging at her hair, and the meandering conversation that didn't go in any specific direction. Her head eventually felt lighter as more feathers and hair were shed, the thoughts weighing down on her mind losing their burdensome load as well.
"I know you're disinclined to, but I think it's best if you befriend Jack," Gabriel said quietly as he cut lighter locks of her hair. "I can see that the NPCs have gotten worse."
"I'm not totally against it."
Gabriel's hands stopped moving for a second before they resumed freeing more of her hair from ruin. "You're not against using Jack for protection?"
As best as she could, Violet blocked the memory of the previous Jack from overwhelming her.
"That's not the only reason why you suggested that," she said, evading his question.
"And the other one is?" he asked, aloof.
"You want to change up our tactics and use jealousy to attract James."
Seeing as their plan to manufacture "chance encounters" with James had failed epically, making James jealous to get his attention was their secondary "plan B". All she needed to do was recreate the circumstances that had brought James--and Gin--out of hiding and she would be on her way to making some actual progress.
"I'm not asking you to seduce Jack," Gabriel clarified. "Interact with him like before things got complicated with him."
"Will events in the past novel repeat again if I become 'friendly' with him? Like before?" Violet said softly. She heard Gabriel place his scissors down next to her, but felt his comb still disentangling the salvageable knots that were spared from being sheared off.
"Expect some overlap," he replied. "The line between friendship and love is as thin as a hair with that guy so tread carefully."
Violet knew her impromptu hair appointment was drawing to a close when Gabriel's comb was running through her hair like a fish through water. After a few knot-free swipes, Violet felt the comb disengage from her.
"I'm not bald?" she grumbled as she examined the freshly cut ends of her hair. Is he a part-time hairdresser too?
"You can't become a nun until you've romanced Satan incarnate. Turn around."
Swiveling on her butt, Violet turned to Gabriel and found him on one knee with a folded up roll of palm-sized band-aids clamped between his teeth and an opened packet of moist toilettes held in his hands.
"What are you--"
Violet nearly let out a scream when the teacher pulled her right knee sock down, exposing the bruises and congealed blood that had been hidden under the fabric.
"Doesn't it hurt?" Gabriel murmured, the band-aids in his mouth flapping as he spoke.
"How deep are your pocke--"
She hissed the rest of her sentence out when the moist toilette in Gabriel's hand made contact with her damaged knee.
"Does it hurt?" he said, smiling up at Violet.
Are you a sadist or something? As she wasn't in the mood to fight with him, Violet shook off Gabriel's attention with a sigh and a hard nod. Neither of them spoke again until Gabriel, having finished cleaning Violet's wound, peeled open a band-aid packet with his dexterous fingers.
"It's best if you divide your attention to all the CPs," he said, taking the coated papers off the adhesive strip. "Ignoring characters with the intention of breaking ties with them can backfire on you."
"Are you talking about Jack?"
She watched as Gabriel placed the band-aid delicately over her knee, its length and size sufficiently covering the bruises and blood like a white blanket covering a mutilated corpse.
"He's been coming over my classroom for dating advice," he said calmly, his hands smoothing out the wrinkles and air pockets studding the edges of the band-aid. After he was satisfied with his work, he pulled up her knee sock and started the whole process again with her other banged-up knee.
"I think he's doing it to keep track of me," he went on, cleaning her other knee with a fresh toilette, "but I think it mostly has to do with you."
"Does he talk about me often?" she said quietly.
"He doesn't outright say it's you, but when I talk to him it's obvious that it's you."
"Why is he..." Was Jack seeking attention elsewhere because of her? How much had the story been changed?
"It could be a whole lot of reasons," Gabriel sighed as he tore open another band-aid. "His character might be more involved in 'Gabriel's' route. He might be suspicious of our relationship. Maybe he actually wants the dating advice because your blue-balling of him is making him more desperate.
"Desperate enough to stalk me?"
The hand that had been straightening out Violet's band-aid laid motionless over her knee. Violet fought desperately to keep her face colourless and emotionless.
"You're getting too paranoid," he mumbled simply.
"Then tell me something to make me less paranoid."
Keeping his eyes on Violet's knee, Gabriel kneeled on both of his and rested his hands over top his thighs like a samurai sitting seiza.
"I feel like you take everything I say badly," he said, the exasperation clear in his voice.
"Don't worry. I think I'm getting used to it." In a show that she was in good spirits, Violet crossed her half naked leg over her covered one and patiently awaited his news, smiling. Gabriel on couldn't reciprocate the sentiment and frowned instead.
"We believe," he said, measuring each of his words, "that the changes to this novel's story weren't because of you acting differently in the novel's intro."
"So the reason this novel is harder is because it's different?"
Gabriel shook his head. "Oh no. It is harder, but you're not wrong about it being different."
"How different is different?" Was the reason why Gin's lack of screen time due to a fundamental change to the novel's programming? Did Gin hate her in this iteration?
"The team reviewed the DMR's record of your 'entrance event' and discovered some inconsistencies that weren't in the previous novel's entrance event," he explained.
"But everything was the same as before when I entered this novel."
Gabriel shook his head once more. "But as you've experienced, there were differences. The most dramatic of them were the ones you couldn't see. Think of it as this; when you pressed that 'play' button for the first time a year ago, the DMR recorded a large chunk of random information that ran non-stop between the moment you pressed that button and the moment you immersed yourself into the novel. The same thing happened again when you decided to reset the game, except the random information that showed up in the DMR was different."
"So by the time I was actually 'in-in' the novel, the novel had spewed a shit ton of information?"
"It's like seeing a person's dating profile before meeting the actual person, but the dating profile is a mess of nonsensical coding input and the actual person is a random stranger that has nothing to do with the profile."
Was that analogy supposed to make sense?
"Before you even said a word in Vol. 2," he continued, "there was a line of coding that revealed a key component of Gabriel's past. It said a 'Mr. Galveston had died in a car crash.'"
"Mr. Galveston?" she said, the hazy ghost of a memory tickling at her brain. Where have I heard that name before?
"I'll give you a hint. He was your Chemistry teacher."
Violet's face twisted in confusion. "But I remember him being dead in the first novel too."
Before the 'storyline' of Lovers: Boarding School started, the teacher who was supposed to be Violet's Chemistry teacher had reportedly died over the summer break. That teacher was Mr. Galveston.
In the previous novel, Violet first heard of the news while she was attending her first Chemistry class with the previous novel's Jack. News of a dead teacher? In a class where her love interest was also a student?
Clue. Big fucking clue.
When she heard the news the second time--sans Jack--in the novel she was currently a character in, the news of the Galveston's passing passed through her ears and never bothered her ear drums again. Until now.
"Mr. Galveston died from a heart attack in the first novel," Gabriel reminded her. "In this novel, he died from a car accident."
"This information showed up in the DMR before I did anything?" Violet said, shaken. "So this novel was set up to be different even though I wished for everything to revert back into their original state? Did the game screw up my wish? Wait--why is Mr. Galveston so important?"
As Violet struggled to terms with this new revelation, Gabriel's frown cut deeper into his face.
"Mr. Galveston was the one who helped 'Gabriel' get a job here in this school."
Violet stared dumbly at Gabriel. Fucking Mr. Galveston.
"So his death was an important...clue." How many of these clues did she miss in the last novel?
"Don't think too much about it," he said to dim the growing panic that was set aglow in Violet's eyes. "You're not going to fuck the serial killer so this information isn't unnecessary. What is necessary for you to understand is that we're dealing with an altered storyline. The backstories and motivations of these characters might be ones we've never seen before. The characters themselves could be very different than the ones we've come to know in Vol. 1."
Was this Gin a different person than the Gin she had loved and lost?
Did Gin really hate her in this iteration?
No. He can't hate me. I'm the protagonist. He can't hate the protagonist.
"This really is like an otome game," she said, diverting her attention away from the deep seated pain buried inside her chest. "Depending on whose route we're playing, a character could be an angel in one route or the Devil in another."
"It looks like that's the case," he said grimly. "I thought with our past experience in Vol. 1 we could anticipate the characters' behaviours even if we were in a different route. Y'know, 'different scenarios but with the same characters'. But thanks to that DMR recording, that hindsight--that advantage--we thought we had has been made null. Useless."
"These characters couldn't be that much different than their predecessors." Please let what I'm saying be true.
"I don't know," Gabriel said softly, his eyes a league deep in thought. "On the surface they could be the James, Jack, and Gin we've met, fought--and for you--fucked before. But on a more profound level, they could be another person, another character, or maybe even another threat. These characters could be strangers to us and we won't know for sure until the bad things start happening."
An overwhelming cloud of emotions buried her head in a disorienting miasma of desolation, hopelessness, and confusion. It was a given that characters would act differently in different routes as they were forced to react in scenarios they had never reacted to before in other routes. It was a given that a different route would sometimes have a different storyline crafted to direct a player into the waiting arms of the intended capture target.
What made all of this different from the given and the expected was the fact that these characters had different histories.
Jack might've never pushed Violet off the cliff three years ago.
Gin might've never received that fatal call from Mary.
James might've never had that secret affair with 'Violet'.
Could the Rotting Man have been replaced?
"Gabriel, do you think this novel will have those monsters?" she said with a slight tremor to her voice.
"The Rotting Man?" Gabriel said, his full attention levelled on her. "Do you think they will?"
"When I was playing through the intro the second time, I saw a...person, a male student, standing below a tree."
In a snap, Gabriel instantly made the connection. "He wasn't supposed to be there. A Rotting Man should've been there."
Violet nervously nodded her head. "Well, it was more like a shadowy figure, but that feeling of alarm and fear he triggered in me was the same."
"So our biggest threat this time is a person. A human."
For a second time, Violet nodded her head.
"No wonder you were so worked up over your stalker theory," Gabriel groaned, his hands undoing the heavily tackled curls of his hair. "Why didn't you tell me this before?"
"I was angry with you?"
Slumped over his knees, Gabriel dislodged his hands from his disorderly brown locks and expelled the air from deep inside his lungs. For a while he remained in that position, only turning his head up to Violet when the girl started to shift over the desk.
"Let's be more cautious, shall we," Gabriel grumbled as he pulled up the rolled down knee sock that had bunched around her ankle. "As much as you dislike me, I'm here to preserve your life so please don't make mine's harder."
"How could I be so sure that you're doing this for my sake?"
Violet expected a snappy answer or a clever affront to her (okay) intelligence, her (flighty) character, or her (dumb) decisions. What she got instead staring down at the vivid green meadows of Gabriel's eyes, was frustration tinged blue with an underscore of disappointment. She was startled.
What's with that face?
"Befriend Jack," he said simply, patting strands of her hair off his pants as he rose to his feet. He stopped his ascent when he was at eye-level with Violet, locking Violet's eyes with his.
"If you can't make James jealous with Jack," he said, his face precariously close to Violet's, "then don't hesitate to use me."
XOXO
To all y'all who'd been finished your exams: YOU MADE IT! YOU'VE SURVIVED! YOU'RE FREE! YOU KILLED IT (((;◔ᴗ◔;)))
To the rest of y'all: HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!! ꉂ (′̤ॢ∀ ू‵̤๑))ˉ̞̭♡ CHUG DAT EGGNOG AND RIDE DAT SLEIGH ALL NITE LONGGGGGG
I've got a lot to say, but am strapped for time so I'll give it to y'all quick:
1) expect another update (or two) before the end of this year (and maybe a bittersweet, holiday-themed short story starring the Ice King himself ;)
2) a dumpster fire of a book half full of my bat shit crazy story ideas
3) news about my publishing (mis)adventures
4) my own website/blog
I want to thank everyone who'd given me the motivation to keep writing this story despite how slow and info-dumpy it is atm (IT WILL GET MORE EXCITING LATER I PROMISE, THIS MOTHERFUCKER IS FORECASTED TO BE 100+ CHAPTERS SO IT'S LIKE THIS FOR A REASON). My writing isn't the best and my chapters are too fucking long, but thank you for giving this story a chance and caring about it as much as I do ('；ω；')
You guys are the best Christmas presents I could ever receive <3
[PREVIEW: "Do you want to go to the Autumn Carnival with me?"]