Nikola

The university hallway in the middle of a major break resembles a swarming beehive. It is loud, stifling, smelling of vending machine coffee and cheap perfume. A stream of students rushes past a wide windowsill where a girl is standing. She has short black hair with a sharp, striking white streak framing her face. She is frozen, staring into her phone screen, but the moment a familiar laugh reaches her, her fingers go still.

Nicolle turns around, her eyes following the figure disappearing behind the backs of people near the stairwell turn.

And it is at that exact moment that a foreign voice cuts through the hallway's hum. Not a shout, no. But it carries so much icy, ringing steel that the group walking ahead involuntarily falls silent and turns around.

— Hey. Kid. Stop right there.

That old, half-forgotten nickname hits like a physical blow. Nicolle stands by the window, arms tightly crossed over her chest. There is no joy on her face. No smile. She still carries that same angular, sharp manner of holding herself, though her gaze has grown older and much heavier. She stares intently, as if pinning you to the spot, and slowly, deliberately, hammers out her words:

— I know you can hear me. Turn around and look at me. Don't you dare pretend there's a mosquito flying around instead of me.

The crowd around seems to part, sensing the tension. Nicolle takes two steps forward, pulling away from the windowsill. Her fingers grip her backpack strap so hard her knuckles turn white, betraying her completely. She glances at the hushed students, then shifts her icy gaze back forward.

— Four years, her voice trembles imperceptibly, but she immediately pulls it back under control. — Four years of silence. Do you know what I thought? I thought you were dead. That something happened to your family. I thought all our days together had become useless and were tossed into the trash of your memory.

She swallows a bitter lump in her throat, taking a heavy breath of the stale hallway air. People are whispering around her, but she couldn't care less about the entire university. Perhaps she had imagined everything herself and the circumstances were just a coincidence, but right now, resentment was screaming inside her.

— And today, you just walk right past. In your new, cool life. Laughing, telling jokes, looking at me as if I'm just a stranger. As if we're nothing. As if everything we had was just a joke!

Nicolle takes another half-step, closing the distance. In her eyes, just beneath the mask of proud invincibility, that same wounded girl from the old courtyard flashes for a split second.

— There won't be a scene, I've grown up. Just tell me to my face, right now. Do I even mean anything to you at all? Are you really not seeing me, or is this just an act? Answer me.