The days passed like the turning of pages, one after another, carrying with them the dry, faintly brittle scent peculiar to old library paper. Zola's life had settled into a few clearly demarcated sections: her internship at the foundation, her art history lectures, and the nights she spent alone, confronting an immensity of texts and images.
Studying for an art history exam bore little resemblance to preparing for any other subject. It was not simply a matter of accumulating facts or committing words to memory; it felt more like a painstaking exercise in visual archaeology. She spread color printouts of key works across her desk—Rembrandt's dense shadows, Vermeer's silence by the window, Mondrian's composed grids. Beside each image, in small, meticulous handwriting, she noted the artist, the date, the medium, the movement, the essential points of formal analysis. Visual memory and textual memory had to lock together perfectly: a flash of cobalt blue in a folded skirt must summon Vermeer at once; a contorted, burning brushstroke must lead unerringly to Van Gogh. The printer paper vanished at an alarming rate. She felt a mild, irrational regret each time she refilled the tray, yet the act of rendering abstract knowledge tangible gave her a peculiar sense of control.
When grappling with dense scholarly texts, she applied the method her professor had taught: begin with the abstract and conclusion to secure the central argument, then dismantle the author's reasoning, theoretical framework, and visual evidence as one might take apart a painting. Occasionally, there came a moment of revelation—a passage on how Caravaggio's theatrical use of light subverted the conventions of religious painting would suddenly reconfigure her understanding of a contemporary portrait she had glimpsed in a gallery the week before. In such moments, the words on the page and the images in her mind collided with a dull but satisfying resonance. The pleasure of learning flared briefly, like a small, carefully tended flame, casting a temporary glow over the otherwise colorless desk.
She even began to plan a future trip to Europe. She imagined herself standing before the vast surface of The Night Watch, feeling its spatial force press against her body across centuries; or lingering at the edge of a wheat field in the small town of Auvers, attempting to understand how the burning lines in Van Gogh's paintings corresponded so precisely to the turbulence of his inner life.
Gradually, art history ceased to feel like a collection of distant stories. It became instead a prism through which she understood the world—and, by extension, her own position within it. She saw how the Mona Lisa's smile had been layered over with endless modern interpretations; how Michelangelo's David had shifted from a heroic emblem into a scrutinized specimen of the male body. She came to recognize that "beauty" and "meaning" were nothing more than fragile sketches produced by specific historical conditions and power structures, endlessly redrawn, overwritten, and revised. This awareness lent her a cooler, faintly detached way of observing everything around her—relationships, hierarchies, desire itself.
The internship continued. She locked the dark gray business card deep inside a drawer, as one might seal away a dangerous riddle. Alex never contacted her again, as though the invitation offered that night in the alley had been nothing more than a meaningless draft of air. She did not dial the number. A combination of timidity, decorum, and a low, persistent unease restrained her. The rumors on campus about Coco and the missing girl gradually subsided, dissolving into a kind of shared, unspoken background noise. Still, whenever Zola caught sight of Coco—now increasingly vivid, increasingly ostentatious—a flicker of chill passed through her, quickly suppressed.
Emily, meanwhile, grew busy in earnest. Her replies became brief, delayed; their scheduled coffees were postponed again and again. A familiar loneliness settled over Zola, thin and pervasive, like mist. She reminded herself that Emily had her own life, her own gravity. They had never been meant to orbit one another indefinitely. This slow widening of distance, she told herself, was simply the natural condition of adult friendship. She filled her schedule more densely, using work, reading, and solitary museum visits to stave off the hollow spaces.
Then, on an afternoon so unremarkable it scarcely warranted notice, she encountered Mike on the narrow path behind the university library.
He was walking beside a girl. Her arm was looped through his, her body inclined toward him with a casual intimacy. She was laughing at something he had said, her head tilted back slightly, sunlight lingering in her honey-colored hair as though reluctant to leave it. Mike looked at ease—genuinely so—in a way Zola could not recall having seen before.
They were already too close for avoidance.
When their eyes met, Mike paused, just briefly enough to register recognition. Then his expression adjusted itself into a familiar shape: polite, composed, faintly distant.
"Zola," he said, nodding. "Long time no see."
"So it has," she replied. The words emerged dryly, as though they had been stored too long.
Only then did she notice the books in his arms—introductory textbooks, their covers glossy, their spines uncreased. The realization arrived belatedly and with an oddly disproportionate force. After all those shared parties, all that casual proximity, she had never known that Mike attended the same university. Nor that he was only a sophomore.
It was not the fact itself that unsettled her, but the ease with which she had constructed an entire version of him without it.
"This is my friend, Lisa," Mike said, turning slightly.
Lisa smiled. It was a pleasant, efficient smile, practiced and complete. Her eyes flicked over Zola with a brief, unembarrassed assessment.
"Hi," Zola said.
Nothing further was required. They exchanged a few inconsequential remarks and passed one another. Zola did not turn back. She remained where she was for a moment, conscious only of the paired footsteps retreating behind her, and of a sweetness left suspended in the air—too mild to offend, too distinct to be ignored.
The afternoon sun felt suddenly excessive, almost impertinent.
Somewhere within her, in a corner she had carefully neglected, something stirred. It was not pain, precisely. More a fine, persistent sourness, like the embarrassment of having knocked over a glass of lemon water that had already cooled—enough to dampen the fabric, not enough to justify alarm, yet leaving a faint stain that resisted removal. She found herself lingering on details she had no use for: the girl's hand on Mike's sleeve, the easy way his body had inclined toward hers, the unremarkable certainty with which they occupied the same space.
She understood then that a certain possibility had closed. Not dramatically. Not tragically. It had shut with the quiet efficiency of something that had never been promised, yet had been privately assumed all the same.
She drew a slow breath and hugged her art history book to her chest. The hard cover pressed against her, offering a small, indisputable sensation. Inside it, centuries of artworks spoke calmly of permanence and change. Her own life continued forward through an uncertain present, carrying with it minor disappointments, unresolved questions, and the blank space of a next chapter she would have to face alone.
The corner of the library by the window—where the light was thinned and fractured by towering shelves—had become a tacitly claimed territory. Zola preferred to wrestle with her most difficult readings there. Over time, she noticed a handful of familiar faces who appeared with migratory regularity, occupying the nearby tables. They rarely spoke. When they did, it was in whispers so low that their lips scarcely moved, their eyes sweeping the surroundings with an alertness that suggested some private transaction.
At first, Zola assumed they were merely an unusually diligent study group. Then one afternoon, as she passed by on her way to the restroom, she glimpsed one of them swiftly slip a small foil packet—its printed design indistinct—into a pencil case. The motion was so quick it nearly escaped notice. Still, the excessive caution lodged uneasily in her mind.
Later, from fragments of their suppressed conversations, she pieced together information that unsettled her. They were not discussing Foucault or Derrida, but comparing the effects of Adderall and Ritalin in different contexts; debating how to remain "focused without excessive anxiety" during all-night writing sessions; speaking of "precise dosage control" to improve information-processing speed before mock exams. Their tone was calm, technical, almost academic—as though they were discussing instruments, not substances.
Coco's presence occasionally hovered at the edge of this circle. She never sat. She leaned against the shelves, immaculate, her gaze sweeping across the pale, concentrated faces like a scanner. Sometimes she passed along a small, nondescript envelope, or offered a glance. A student would rise quietly, follow her into the depths of the shelves, and return shortly thereafter with an expression combining fatigue and a peculiar alertness, before resuming their work.
Only then did Zola connect the rumors she had heard—of "academic enhancers" circulating among elite law and pre-med students; of art students seeking a final burst of inspiration before deadlines. The pressure was real. The competition merciless. And a seemingly straightforward shortcut, coated in the language of efficiency and calm, had slipped quietly into place.
News of the girl who had collapsed spread one gloomy afternoon. Not through any official channel, but through whispers lowered still further.
"…Not the hospital. She was sent straight to a facility."
"What kind of facility?"
"…Detox. Mandatory."
The air seemed to pause. No one asked for further clarification. From that moment, the word acquired a colder resonance. It no longer suggested rest or retreat, but failure, loss of control, and an unspoken form of punishment.
Zola sat nearby, pretending to concentrate on Baroque Art and the Counter-Reformation. Her fingers had gone faintly cold. She understood then—not through knowledge, but through a near-instinctive fear—that the rope which appeared to offer ascent might just as easily drag one into darkness. Beneath the grand dome of this institution, certain corners were quietly cultivating a self-consuming poison.
She closed the book and stood. The movement was abrupt enough to draw a few wary glances. She did not return them. Holding the book close, she left quickly, as though escaping air saturated with secrets. Outside, the light had dulled to gray, pressing down on her shoulders. Beneath the surface of a full yet solitary academic life, the sound of hidden currents was becoming unmistakable.
And beneath the ornate surface of this elite institution, another form of violence was writhing—older, subtler, and far more refined. Coco's presence was equally active there.
She was not the protagonist. The protagonist was Sophia Laurent.
If Coco was a hyena adept at surviving in the gutter, then Sophia was a Persian cat strolling languidly beneath crystal chandeliers. The surname Laurent branched unmistakably through the genealogies of several old-money families on the East Coast. Sophia required no overt declarations of status; the minimalist platinum bracelet on her wrist was enough to silence those who knew how to read such signs. She was the kind of girl who sat in the front row at charity auctions, yet never needed to raise a bidding paddle herself.
Her bullying was like bespoke haute couture—immaculately tailored, its seams carefully concealed. The target might be an Asian male student whose remarks in seminar were a touch too incisive, or a "civilian" girl who happened to be privately dating a basketball captain Sophia had set her sights on. Sophia never raised her voice. At a sorority luncheon, she would merely toy with the quinoa in her salad using a silver fork and remark, unhurriedly, "I heard David's been spending a lot of time with that Megan girl lately. How… courageous." Or, upon hearing a professor lavish praise on a student's paper, she would lift her finely shaped eyebrow just slightly: "Oh? That one… I seem to recall hearing that the first draft was polished by a graduate student."
The rest would be handled, flawlessly, by Coco and her cohort of followers eager to edge their way into the inner circle. Perhaps a carefully prepared exhibition opening would suffer a sudden "system error," its electronic invitations mysteriously lost. Perhaps a handful of ambiguously framed photographs, accompanied by malicious captions, would circulate overnight through anonymous social media accounts. Or perhaps, at the final moment, a crucial letter of recommendation—the very thing sustaining the target's future—would be met with "gentle concerns" raised by an alumnus who happened to be on friendly terms with the Laurent family.
Zola had once witnessed the aftermath.
At the annual art school exhibition, a sculpture student—brilliant, but perpetually short of money—found himself in trouble because his work had been placed more prominently than that of a friend Sophia had recommended. Throughout the exhibition week, a faintly sweet, cloying stench hovered around his piece (it was later discovered that someone had secretly splashed it with spoiled syrup). On the final day, the rough, vital clay sculpture was found with its face slashed open by a sharp instrument, the gash deep and deliberate, like a silent, grinning wound. And Sophia, her arm linked through the dean's, stood at the other end of the gallery discussing the public function of contemporary art, her laughter crisp as wind chimes.
Coco, in all of this, was the blade that never saw the light.
She would "coincidentally" emerge from the shadows on a target's solitary walk home late at night, lean against a lamppost, light a slender menthol cigarette, and say nothing—simply watch—until the other person fled in panic. Or she would deliver a smiling aside through her discreet pharmaceutical network: "Sophia doesn't like seeing people wear her favorite perfume brand… oh, and that unusually strong exam you turned in last semester—the rough drafts were quite interesting, weren't they?" The threat was never articulated, yet it chilled the marrow far more effectively than any insult.
Zola herself had felt the cold touch of that mechanism.
Once, in the library, she had accidentally knocked over a coffee cup belonging to one of the girls from the drug circle—though she was almost certain she hadn't actually touched it. The girl's face went instantly pale—not with anger, but with something deeper, nearly desperate. She looked at Coco at once. Coco, separated by several shelves, let her gaze rest on Zola for a few seconds, like twin ice picks. Then she shook her head, very slightly, and tugged the corner of her mouth into a curve that contained no smile.
The following week, Zola's application for a highly competitive interdisciplinary research grant was rejected in the final round. Listed among the student representatives on the review committee was the name Sophia Laurent. The rejection letter was courteous and vague, like a wall padded with velvet. Zola had no proof—but the chill seeped unmistakably into her academic life, like a damp, cold shirt she could never quite take off.
So bullying had never disappeared.
It had merely changed into a Ralph Lauren cashmere sweater. It had learned to write bloodless evaluations using the vocabulary of a perfect SAT score. It had mastered the manipulation of systems that appeared fair, only to crush those insufficiently "appropriate," insufficiently "compliant." Coco moved fluidly through it all—both a capillary of the pharmaceutical black market and an indispensable, silent cornerstone of this pyramid of refined violence.
Zola closed the art book.
Outside the window, the fog had thickened, pressing heavily against the Gothic mullions. The corner by the window, the murmuring pale faces, Sophia Laurent's radiant smile beneath the sun, and Coco's eyes—cool, appraising, never missing a thing—merged into a single image: a vast, ominous contemporary School of Athens. Except here, the scholars exchanged pills instead of philosophy; what they upheld was not truth, but hierarchy. And she—a cautious outsider—stood barefoot on the cold marble floor, seeing with sudden clarity how, through the cracks in the splendid dome of this temple of knowledge, a viscous, golden poison was slowly beginning to seep.
Zola sat in a dim corner of the library, her fingertips cold, gripping the heavy volume in her hands. On the page, the faces of saints twisted in candlelight and shadow, as though they too were enduring a form of torture she could not put into words. Yet her gaze slipped past the finely printed copperplate paper and fixed itself on the table where Sophia Laurent and her companions sat in the distance.
They were laughing softly, their voices kept low, elegant pastries from an organic café arranged neatly beside them—each item costing roughly what Zola spent on food for an entire week. Sophia lifted a hand absently to brush aside a fall of blonde hair. The minimalist platinum bracelet on her wrist caught the light and flashed once, like a cold, precise incision, effortlessly dividing the space—indeed, the entire world—into them and everyone else.
Jealousy? No. Zola found the word too light, too intimate, almost indulgent. What churned in her chest was heavier, darker—a coagulated mass of incomprehension, anger, and a vast, suffocating sense of absurdity.
She could not understand it.
These people. These Sophias. These pale faces sustained by Coco's supply lines. They already possessed starting points that others would not dare imagine over the course of several lifetimes. They lived in apartments kept at a constant, comfortable temperature year-round, with parks unfolding just beyond their windows. Their closets were filled with pieces from current runway collections not yet available for public sale. Their worries revolved around whether to spend spring break in the Bahamas or Saint-Tropez, whether the next internship would adequately reflect the family name, whether they should consume slightly fewer carbohydrates at lunch.
They did not need to know that in the northern regions of Country C, during winters so severe they cut like knives, there were people their age—children, even—who wrapped every thin layer of clothing they owned around their bodies, like fragile paper armor, yet still could not keep out the cold. They rode bicycles so old that everything rattled except the bell, pedaling through predawn fog toward chaotic markets. Their breath froze instantly on their eyelashes, all for the chance to secure a slightly better stall—one that might earn a few dozen more yuan. Converted into this currency, that amount wouldn't even cover the price of the latte Sophia was now sipping in small, delicate mouthfuls—infused with vanilla bean and Himalayan pink salt.
They did not need to know that in some dim corner of a city, at four in the morning, the fires beneath street-food stalls were already lit. Greasy smoke reddened the eyes of the husband-and-wife vendors as they kneaded dough, fried breadsticks, and prepared the ingredients that would sustain them through another day. Their knuckles, thickened and deformed by years of labor, worked mechanically. Their child might be crouched behind the stall at a battered little table, reciting a foreign language—perhaps even this one—under a dim streetlamp, pinning a faint, distant hope of changing fate onto those difficult, slippery words and grammatical rules.
And then there were the high school students of Country C. Zola only had to close her eyes to smell it: the suffocating blend of fresh exam ink, sweat, and bitter tea used to stay awake. They were like precision instruments wound too tightly, grinding through day after day beneath the immense pressure of "a million soldiers crossing a single-plank bridge." From morning reading at five-thirty to late-night study sessions that stretched past eleven, their youth was compressed into standardized answers, their dreams quantified into rankings. Their world was no larger than a desk, yet it bore the crushing weight of an entire family's—and sometimes an entire lineage's—expectations.
And these people in front of her?
They enjoyed the finest educational resources available, yet turned the library's corners into shadowed sites of pill exchanges, using chemical stimulants to overdraft futures already abundant with possibility. They occupied enviable social positions, yet devoted their energy to devising ever more elegant, more thorough ways of crushing their peers' dignity and prospects. They stood at the apex of the pyramid, breathing the thinnest and freest air, and yet their eyes were so often filled with a deeper lack—a ravenous hunger for greater stimulation, greater control, greater pleasure in standing above and pressing down on others.
Zola felt a sharp surge of absurdity, so intense it nearly made her nauseous. It was like watching a group of children who owned an entire candy house, yet, in their scramble for a single more brightly wrapped chocolate bean in the corner, smeared frosting on other people's faces, hurled cakes at one another's heads, and even tore down the beams of the house itself, leaving the ornate structure trembling on the verge of collapse.
What, exactly, were they doing?
Even if they were to halt all of these grotesque games at this very moment, even if they simply lay back on the trust funds they had inherited and did nothing at all, the stability, abundance, and freedom of choice available to them would still lie beyond the horizon of what those pedaling through freezing winds, hunching over oil vats, or drowning in seas of test questions could ever reach—even at the outer limits of imagination.
Yet they refused to stop.
They were like the spoiled gods of ancient Greek myth, luxuriating in eternal pleasure atop Mount Olympus, yet still taking delight in mortal suffering, treating control and destruction as entertainment. Their "pain" and "pressure," when set against the true weight of survival, were as affected as the deliberate crackle etched into fine glassware—an expensive, decorative fragility.
Zola lowered her gaze. She looked at the worn edges of her fingernails, dulled from years of turning heavy pages, at the shirt she wore—slightly faded from repeated washing, but still clean and orderly. She came from a world saturated with the smells of sweat, dust, and hard-won struggle. Like a blade of wild grass blown by chance into this carefully maintained greenhouse, her roots still carried the roughness and resilience of her native soil. She could neither understand nor empathize with this kind of exquisitely poisonous "lack," one that flourished atop mountains of gold and silver.
The small flame of envy was gradually extinguished, doused by something colder: sorrow, and a growing sense of distance. She no longer felt angry. She felt only… profoundly tired, and profoundly lucid. She and they had never belonged to the same story. What they enacted was a dark fable trimmed in gold. What she carried was the necessity of proceeding step by step, never daring to misplace a foot, in the realm of practical survival.
She closed the book gently. The Baroque saints continued to endure their sufferings on the page. Her own suffering lay in remaining conscious and solitary as she walked this long road—its landscapes wildly different on either side, its ground equally cold beneath her feet. The library lights fell across her, stretching her shadow long and silent. She understood that some chasms could not be crossed by effort alone; that some worlds operated by logics she might never truly grasp. All she could do was hold fast to where she came from, see clearly where she stood, and continue forward.