another girl's feelings

  That was cute. It was cute, the way she just fell asleep. It had been cuter when Nina, ardent against the enemy, had clung to Emilie, but this was cute, too.

  Nina had seemed so tired when Emilie had first met her. Her eyelids were a little puffy. She spoke quietly in that cute voice, so slowly, too. As if she were tired of everything...

  Not that that was a bad thing! Emilie didn't mind. It was cool!

  Emiliya Senklerova had learnt to be modest. Mama had always taught her to not be immoderate, see. Emilie shouldn't be selfish. Emilie didn't have to be passionate, as long as she didn't trample over what others needed from her, Emiliya Senklerova.

  Emiliya. After she had done the ritual, when something had chosen to remake her, the boy Emiliyan Senklerov, for some reason she didn't get, because of some miracle... she had wanted to change it.

  To what?

  Iphigenia sounded nice. The nicknames 'Effy' and 'Genny' and 'Nia' were in vogue, and those sounded nice too, although Emilie had always preferred longer, more ornate names. Mama had told her to stick with the name Mama had given her. She had said something terrible to her sweet baby bird Emiliya, really. Then she apologised.

  It was unseemly, of her. She had disgraced her family name in the public eye. Don't be like Mama, Emiliya. You shouldn't reach out and—

  "You're messing up her hair..." Emilie said.

  —just take what you want! Yet.

  Aine Hunlun was ruffling Nina Inoue's hair.

  "She's actually out cold. This is crazy," Aine said. "She's like in the top percentile of sleepy girls. There are billions of girls she's more sleepy than."

  "If there are sixty billion women in the world, this is the case for fifty nine out of sixty women," Sophie said.

  "Spoilsport."

  Aine and Sophie really seemed to have hit it off. Emilie admired that. It could be really hard to participate. It was as if some secret distance had always kept Emilie away from others…

  A barrier. It made it harder for Emilie to just be herself. It would be nice, right? Going all the way. Ruffling Nina's hair. Telling her that she had done a really good job. Asking if she could try her strawberry-scented lotion… Aine seemed to really enjoy herself, with everything she did.

  It was funny that Aine felt so free, considering that she—

  Emilie stood up.

  "Huh, Emi, where are you going?" Aine asked.

  "Just to the back," Emilie said.

  "Oh. Okay. Can you ask Marzena about..."

  Ugh. Did she have to? "I will," Emilie said.

  She should pretend to forget. She wouldn't, but she should! It would make things a little easier. Every little bit helps, right? Maxine—her Maxine, not the one on the bus, had told her so. Emilie shouldn't foist obligations onto herself. She should act more willingly and wantingly.

  Sorry, Max. Her words of advice became just another order that wasn't to be obeyed.

  Sorry…

  Emilie moved past Sophia. She stopped once she was in the aisle, next to Nina.

  She looked so peaceful. She was anything but, right? With that type of magic. Did she suffer in crowds, like Emilie? She still tried to get along with everyone, though. She always tried.

  She slipped away, then. Her shadow slipped away, too. Do as you please, Aine.

  She made her way down the bus, trying to keep her balance. First she passed the other Maxine, who pretended to sleep on Young-hoon's too broad shoulders. She said nothing, but Young-hoon said "hello," and beamed.

  "Hi," Emilie said.

  "Is Nina doing well?"

  "She's napping."

  "When do you think she'll be in tip-top shape again?"

  "I don't know," Emilie said. She wished she did, but she didn't.

  "Oh, okay. Just thought the doctor was in the house."

  "D-doctor?"

  She touched her left breast pocket. She felt herself, and the embroidered imprint.

  The company logo. Senklerov Biomedical Corporation.

  Emilie should describe it, shouldn't she? Blazon. Mama and Papa had made sure Emilie knew heraldry. Her sisters had been taught it too, but it was more important for Emilie to learn it, given that it formed part of the education required to take over the company... not that that mattered anymore! She had been given over to Haze House, and a miracle had happened, and Emilie wouldn't inherit. Probably! No obligations! Probably.

  In English, it would be... Quarterly, I and IV argent mullet of eight points gules, II and III azure three nymphs or.

  Emilie would struggle to draw it, just from the description. Her teachers—and Emilie did not like teachers, sorry, Young-hoon!—said that the coat of arms that formed the company logo was quite simple, too. If she could barely do this, how could she withstand the greater symbols, with convoluted blazons, so supercharged (pretercharged?) with meaning.

  "Oh, um... we do hire doctors, but our main role is research and development!"

  "Don't worry, I'm only joking!" Young-hoon said.

  Emilie laughed. The other Maxine laughed.

  The old Emil's a doctor bit! A classic. A total non-sequitur…

  "Tell her to speak to me when she's up, okay?"

  "Okay," Emilie said. She was probably going to forget.

  Next she passed Aria and Leuce. They were arguing about... a show, or maybe a musical performance? They said something about playing instruments. Emilie could play the piano and the violin. Her performances weren't anything to write home about, though Mama and Papa wanted to know, quite a lot, really hectoring her tutors about it.

  (Tutors were like teachers. Emilie wasn't really fond of them, either.)

  The conversation seemed a little more involved than Emilie's ability to follow, though.

  "Oh, hi, Emi," Aria said.

  "Hi!" Emilie said. She was curious, but she didn't know how to ask, and didn't want to intrude, really.

  "Did you know that Haio is short for Heidi?"

  That wasn't what Aine had found on the London intranet? Heidi was already a nickname, anyway, short for Adelheid or Adelaide...

  "I didn't," Emilie said.

  "Yeah, I looked it up," Aria said.

  "She did," Leuce said.

  "Are we sure?" Emilie said.

  "Yeah? What else could it be."

  "Haenel."

  "That's not even pronounced the same way as Haio. Hi, yo. Her name's a greeting. You know, Leuce, there was this show Tam—that's to say, the fucking secretary girl I told you about, there was this show that she liked to watch, and there was a girl called Ikuyo, which means—"

  "'Let us go.' I have seen it," Leuce said. She sat pretty in a frilly dress.

  "Oh. Is it good?"

  "I enjoyed it."

  Emilie started to walk off, but Aria called back.

  "Waiiit," she said. "Sorry. Um, I know you didn't want to bother her, she said, but I did 'cause fuck it you only live once, and she's totes less sad and scared about everything than before."

  Aria pointed with a knuckle to a little behind her. Haio Elspeth was asleep, like Nina. That was also cute. She slept against the window.

  Hm. She had said not to bother her. Perhaps a question about something light would put her off less? She'd know where her name came from if Aria and Aine didn't.

  Well, Emilie should try her best to listen to her. She kept walking.

  Sarai, Tabitha, Judecca watched something together without headphones or earphones or neural uplink or telepathy at the back of the bus. What a racket. Lady Haze or Kaninchen read a little book, beside them. In the space between those four and Emilie was—

  "Marzi." Emilie said it correctly, though the girl insisted that everyone else said it wrong, for her nickname. Maji. Or Masi? It was a weird little sound to talk about in English. There had been that phonetic chart that Emilie had to learn along with their heraldry but didn't and in any case Emilie could speak English and Russian and German fluently and she was quite good at Polish and Bulgarian, so did the symbols really help her? Emilie didn't have to master every aspect of every single subject…

  "Morning."

  Marzena did not look up from her phone. Didn't that display the correct time? It was past noon, now.

  "Um."

  Muttering wasn't conversation. That was Marzena's opinion, anyway.

  "I don't want to annoy you, or trouble or hurt you in any way by asking this, but…"

  "Spit it out, Senklerova," she said.

  "Marzi, during the battle, everyone saw you hurt yourself on the door. You scraped and really cut yourself, even though there were no sharp edges."

  "On the—thorns... I'm fine."

  "Sophie had to heal you."

  "Why are—why ask about this? It doesn't really—matter! Entrust everything to our teacher."

  "I'm sorry. I was just a little worried. It's important to check up on everyone, right?" Emilie touched the company logo, out of instinct. Do no harm. "If something's still bothering you, or you feel weird and woozy."

  "It was just a cut."

  "Okay. I'm glad you're alright!"

  Trying to be cute and positive was fun! It was a more fun way to fulfil the Senklerov ethos than whatever Emilie had been obliged to do before.

  "Enjoy yourself."

  "I... had a silly thought. You brought out that weapon after, didn't you?"

  "My zjawa."

  She said it as if Emilie should have known what it meant. It was a Polish word, though one Emilie didn't know.

  The first time she heard it was when Marzena brought it out. Looking at it was, "do no harm" repeating insincere, the basement her older sisters shared as a workspace, the memory of that. Marzena had said zjawa then.

  Emilie had looked it up. Not on the black web. That was new technology Emilie had no clue how to use, not as well as Aine, anyway. Just conventionally, on the restricted networks. She had London's intranet because she was physically there. A few other intranets too: Riga, Daugavpils, Sofia and Senklerov-Sofia, Sverdlovsk, Leningrad-Haze, and Montreux-Haze. She had earnt a few thousand external queries on the Adelaide intranet just by being there, but she didn't want to burn them away. Adelaide had been fun. She wanted to keep a line there, as a good memory.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  In English, zjawa meant... spirit or revenant?

  She could find a few etymological connections between archaic Bulgarian and Russian words, but they didn't mean anything. There was little related to the magic of the heart. The uses of zjawa in a preternatural and supernatural context she could find on the intranets weren't things Emilie could easily understand, but they didn't seem relevant to what Marzena was doing.

  Max always told Emilie that she was allowed to just guess. It wasn't guaranteed that she'd be wrong. It was better than asking an online oracle, which generated text from tokens through a stochastic process. That information was easy to taint. An internal power, then. Heart, spirit, soul. It was awakened, manifested on the exterior. She held her spirit in her hands.

  That thing was her spirit? Revenant was apt, then.

  "It only materialised when you were hurt... I was just thinking, maybe your blood helped?"

  "In," and Marzena paused as if Emilie did not know what she was going to say next, that visual novel whose name slipped out of history (or maybe maybe Marzena just did not want to share it), a visual novel that nobody else had played or manage to find, something so integral to her identity, her only moral guide.

  Marzena couldn't say it. She reoriented herself. "Ac-according to the contemporary research, while zjawas may manifest at a moment of moral dilemma, illusory peril in negative probability, your hypothesis is—absolutely incorrect! The so-called—red blood—has nothing to do with it!"

  'Zjawas'? Zjawy? 'Illusory peril in negative probability'?

  "Can you help me find this contemporary research?"

  "It's private company data."

  "Can you tell me which House or city this company is affiliated with?"

  "The Thirteen. Trzynastka." She got that right, at least. Chi-nast-ka.

  "That doesn't— no, I... remember when you mentioned it. You said it was near Gdańsk?"

  "It's the capital of—Poland. Built after Gdańsk was abandoned."

  Don’t speak like that. Do not. Even Emilie knew that the fate of humanity depended on it. Gdańsk was whole. Should it… in accordance with Marzena’s fantasies, should it burn away? Nuclear bombardment or ultrablue fire, rebar revenant repelling all life, the sweet city nothing but God or a landmine girl’s playground?

  Shut up, Marzi. She made Emilie sick, like ‘Michiko’ did.

  These people, they shouldn’t…

  "I see," Emilie said. "I don't think I'll be able to find this research."

  Emilie hated thinking about such things, but Marzena... she didn't believe in the real line of history. That was a sin, right? A fundamental sin. Her body changing suddenly had been a miracle. It was nice. The power to transform things was nice. It had medical applications. It was usually forbidden, healing being restricted to the restoration of one's 'proper form' or 'own body', because evil things sought to creep into human flesh. Other worlds wanted to creep into this one.

  Other worlds.. Marzena, if she kept thinking like she did—what would happen? You usually kept such girls in a safe house away from everyone. Asylum.

  Haze House allowed her asylum, though. Safety, redemption. Here. With the rest of them. She had a wish. Emilie should be fine with it. Emilie belonged here less.

  She had no wish. Mama and Papa wanted glory for Haze House, so they offered her here.

  She hadn't even been a girl, right? She hadn't even thought about it. She had been given a body, she lived with it, she hadn't even thought about changing it. Then the miracle did. Then it was into all this, and...

  "You wouldn't be allowed to, yes," Marzena answered.

  "I understand. Thank you, Marzena."

  "...have a happy not-life, Senklerova! In negative entropy—may you escape the Russian realm..."

  Escape the Russian realm? What was she even talking about? Make it make sense.

  Emilie tried her hardest. Nina was trying to get along with everyone, so shouldn't Emilie?

  Something in Russia Emilie wanted to escape. Um.

  In Russia, or Dvinsk, which had been in Russia in one vision or version of history or another, there had been a certain dark room. Emilie's big sisters Karolina and Margarita (Charlotte and Margarethe in Dünaburg) had used it to develop photos.

  A room so dark, if Emilie stepped into it (though she shouldn't have...) she could see the redness of her eyes.

  A room so dark it became red. A red room, connected to some network or another. An urban intranet? The black web?

  Her big sisters' livestream.

  Everything was better with bonds, and the magic of the heart! That was what they said, when Emilie was given over, when Emilie half-read the pamphlets half-paying attention, knowing reading or not reading wouldn't do anything, her fate would still be the same.

  Lottchen. Gretchen. You…

  Her older sisters hadn't given Emilie a straight answer, when she asked about the magic of the heart. Emilie knew, though. The truth! Why things worked for Marzena as soon as she bled.

  She said her blood should be black, as in the visual novel. Bullshit. Emilie knew the truth.

  She was split on whether or not Nina knew. Nina was smart, but she was honest and ardent and honourable. She had an ability Mama warned her was evil, though it was good! It was a coin flip, right. Aine and Sophia didn't know, though! They didn't know anything. Aine wouldn't ask such stupid questions if she knew.

  Did Marzena know? She shouldn’t taunt Emilie… that wasn’t nice.

  It was probably nonsense. Emilie was working herself up.

  It was back up the aisle again. Nina still slept. Her cheeks smushed the pillow separating her from Aine.

  "Well?" Aine asked.

  "Nothing conclusive," Emilie said.

  "Oh. Okay. We've been... the map is playing up," Aine said.

  "She's very anxious about this," Sophie added.

  "The M1 is quite a fortified road, isn't it? It's stabilised by the Republic of London's weight. Nothing bad should be able to lure us in," Emilie said.

  "Emi, there are many things we're not supposed to be able to do. You're not supposed to be able to control curses. You're not supposed to be able to bring raw masses of enmity into large cities. There's not supposed to be powers on the same level as the Nobility: but all of these things have happened. All of them," Sophie said.

  "I don't think we should complain. We can't do anything about it until it's confirmed we're trapped." Not that Emilie would know what to do once she fell out of reality.

  "I dunno, Emi. Before I got here, I got my driver's licence," Aine said.

  "Oh. That's cool?" Emilie said.

  "I'm not licensed to drive buses, though."

  "So you can't drive us..." Sophie said.

  "Sure I couldn't. I'm cute, so it's fine, as long as we don't get pulled over. Even if we get pulled over, it's fine. I could totally convince the traffic cops to just let us go. With my wiles. And my magic. Magic for convincing people."

  "Emi, don't let her drive the bus," Sophie said.

  "Got it," Emilie said.

  "What. I'm literally trustworthy?"

  Emilie sat where she had before, behind Sophie. Sophie giggled at her.

  "Trustworthy. We're all very trustworthy."

  "I can trust Aine," Emilie said. "But everyone needs to trust you equally, if you want to drive."

  "I don't! I was joking. And Sophie, I'm not... I can get everyone to trust me! If I keep trying! I have leadership qualities! Promise."

  "I wouldn't trust anyone who played with my ribbon while I was sleeping," Sophie said.

  "It's just a hairpin! I put it back on her hair."

  It was quite a generic hairpin. It was a black octagram, empty inside, split through the diagonals in quarters. Emilie looked over. It was, as Aine said, back on her hair.

  "Our trustworthy black web expert wouldn't be planning to do anything with the artifact or ring-type terminals, would she?" Sophie asked.

  "What!"

  Sophie laughed. "You're being so loud."

  "I'm being loud 'cause I'm not guilty! And I'm not guilty 'cause you're on my side!"

  "Do try not to make her stir, Anny," Sophie said. "Anyway, it'll enthuse her, probably. Knowing that we want to hide within her shadow. I'm sure she'll be glad to hear all about it."

  "'We'," Emilie said.

  "You haven't stopped Aine. You agree with her logic, right?"

  What were they all talking around?

  When Nina had used the silencing spell for House sycophants (not that Nina was a sycophant! Nina was cool...), she had placed her phone down somewhere, absentmindedly. Nina had fought the entity that the Political-Theological Council of Society's Therapists summoned to harangue them or convince them that their mission wasn't worthwhile; the rest of them had been sealed within a black pall.

  A shroud had covered them. Within it the coach was impenetrable. Outside it their fates became indeterminate in darkness. What would become of Kaninchen? She would live, humiliated. What about Nina? They could only see it dimly.

  The coach was impenetrable, right? Yet... Aine had noticed that her phone was fine, but that Nina's phone radiated darkness. Was it linked to its owner? It didn't seem so, in any way that Aine could tell. Still, it was corrupted.

  It was a nascent corruption. That was what Aine's telepathy told her, anyway. Something new had been uploaded. Something wanted Nina to connect to the black web.

  The black web emerged sometime in 2063, four years ago. It had been created to put communication networks in human hands again. Emilie didn't know all of the details, but it was like... the intranet system was created to stop humans from communicating with outside concepts, and destroying themselves and others. The entire modern edifice of information hygiene was designed to protect that. It was all very annoying, but if everyone gave up on it, everyone would die. The black web was about... going on the offense? Papa seemed enthused by the concept, though he didn't understand the technical details.

  It made enmity safe to handle. Since psychic and magical power were the result of interfacing with the supernatural, or everything outside of nature, and negative emotions were the easiest interface for the supernatural, something the black web had to do was let people control enmity.

  This was very difficult to do, unless you were Nina. Emilie didn't know, because she wasn't anything special, but her older sisters who called themselves 'psychic and magic' said that there was a reason everyone used indirect paths. The indirect paths were human. Enmity was inhuman. Enmity was going to kill you and your family and everyone ever.

  (Charlotte and Margarethe shouldn't shy away from it, given everything... but even they did.)

  Well, it had been difficult. Then researchers in the Second City came up with the black web, and it was a little less difficult. Emilie didn't understand how much less difficult, but again, Papa was enthused by it.

  It was a controversial technology. It was really potent, though. That was Aine's opinion, anyway, and Aine really made sure that everyone heard her voice.

  The ritual didn't seem to be as easy to access as Haze House had advertised. When Nina came back, blemished with some alchemical, unconscious, but integral and apparently not even wounded, Aine became... frustrated?

  Something like that. Emilie couldn't be sure. She seemed to hate the part of her that gave up immediately, that accepted that there were forces in this world that turn the Nobility into ragdolls. If you ignored her oddnesses, Aine was just an average girl. She was part of the newer generation that didn't really revere the Nobility, except when they interceded on their behalf—Emilie was the same.

  It wasn't because the Nobility hadn't proven themselves divine, unlike the God of the Old Faith, who in Emilie's opinion had never ever shown up. It was more... there was so much going on. Life could be so awful. Better to shut down.

  Nina stood for things. She suffered for things! And... she could do anything.

  Everyone else could tell that Society's Therapists had sent something really powerful, instinctively. Emilie had to use her mundane reasoning. Kaninchen was a Noble, so you needed powerful magic to do so much as toy with her. Everyone but Nina cowered against that magic.

  Aine had realised, then, perhaps there was something inspiring about Nina? Something that could kill the part in them that cowered? She didn't want to steal it from her. It was more piracy. Copying it, without asking.

  Maybe that was why she picked up Nina's phone in the first place. It had been connected to the black web, anyway, and that presented an opportunity for Aine to do…

  Aine didn't know, either. Emilie knew that Aine wanted to turn it into a proper black web terminal, but she was becoming convinced that Aine didn't know where to start.

  "I... it's bad to decide things without people," Emilie said.

  "Um. She's right here?" Aine said.

  "She's asleep," Emilie said.

  "What if she uses her really powerful ESP to have clairvoyance while dreaming?"

  "Then she'll chew us out when she wakes up?"

  "What if she doesn't? What if she thinks that I'm," hand on heart magical, "absolutely and utterly right, and agrees that we need a powerful form of magic to defend us against Society's Therapists et cetera and that the ritual doesn't seem to be working as painlessly as it should."

  Painlessly. "The thing with self-sacrificing girls is that they just hold things in," Sophia offered.

  "That's crazy. I'm sure she'll speak up once she starts figuring things out," Aine said.

  "We can just tell her," Emi said.

  "Oh okay. We'll just tell her. Tell her about how much you hate her childhood friend too. Go on."

  "I..."

  "Sorry," Aine said. The magic spell to make everything better. "Um. What do you think her deal is?"

  "Michiko?"

  "Yeah."

  "Apart from the anger management issues, I mean."

  "Um..."

  "You didn't react well to getting cursed out, right? It'll be therapeutic."

  "She..."

  "We're here for you."

  "She's just a bitch," Emilie finally said.

  "Ooh. Harsh."

  "I can't just say that to Nina. It's not... there are things you don't see about people you grew up with but other people do. And when someone new complains, you get mad at them, because of course. I don't... I don't want Nina to dislike me. But she did something screwed up, right? To Nina. She won't admit it. She wants her dear friend back. Who wouldn't?"

  How could she say this, knowing Nina could stir or wake up at any moment? When had Emilie become so free? An idiot about her freedom, too, imprisoned by her own feelings.

  "I... she's scum," Emilie continued. "Scum. The call felt... weird! Like something was... it was wrong. Maybe she's just a loser pervert. If she wasn't so guilty, she would have been nicer! She would have been nicer. About anything. I don't want to do anything evil to Nina."

  "You don't," Aine said. "I, um. I'm not planning to do anything evil to her. Nothing that hasn't already happened anyway. Her device is already 'online'."

  Emilie made this weird awkward huff.

  "We should be careful with her," Emilie said.

  "Black web terminals, care? Are we progressing from string theory to ring theory?" Sophie said.

  "Huh?" Emilie said.

  "You and that fucking ring story. I'm not going to marry her," Aine said.

  Sophie was making this awkward reference to this weird rumour about the black web. Used improperly, it could cut someone away from the world? That was why people avoided turning their personal devices into terminals. The black web's advocates, Society's Therapists included, presented the black web as a neutral technology, totally malleable to human will. Those who were slower on the uptake thought of it as something that lured humans in deeper, had its own will. Its users would see the world darken through a polarised lens. Or, it'd twist their relationships.

  The thing Sophie had said earlier—taking a trinket from someone and turning that into a terminal, even though it logically didn't have any computing power, or giving someone a ring—that was a joke based on one of those rumours. A girl gave the person she loved a terminal for their birthday, hoping that they'd fall away from the world.

  Stupid. It was a story you would hear at high school. In the 2010s, too, when reliable text generation was new, nobody knew whether it belonged to standard computer science or preternatural computer science. Children, left alone while their parents dealt with the Babylon War, tried to find any sort of affection they could. There was so much concern about things getting in. It made the issue worse, since the abyss preyed on fear.

  It became a normal part of the world. The fear remained. It'd been impressed on Emilie that losing yourself and your reality was scary, so scary!

  Wasn't the world scary? Wasn't it scary to be yourself? Was being cut away from the world really the worst?

  If you were being crushed by your connections to others, and you couldn't call for help, wouldn't you want someone nice to come along and help you?

  Nina had come along. She'd been very nice to Emilie. She had already promised to help Emilie become a girl. That was a huge ask, and she took it upon herself for no reason. She defended Kaninchen from Society's Therapists, who wished to disgrace her. If Society's Therapists could do what they would to the Nobility, what hope did the rest of them have?

  Nina had taught them that they weren't nothing, and that they deserved hope. Didn't she deserve something in return?

  "Oh, okay. You're not going to marry her, Anny. Stop ruffling her hair," Sophie said.

  "Bweh? I already did?" Aine said.

  "This is just what girl friends do, I hear," Emilie said.

  "You say that as if you don't—oh, oh yeah."

  Sophie laughed at Aine.

  "Stop!"

  "If you stop deflecting comments," Sophie said.

  "I've never deflected anything in my life, ever," Aine said.

  "Oh. Okay. Well, Emilie..."

  "We should just tell her. We don't want to force her into anything, right?" Emilie said.

  "Right..." Aine said.

  "Good. It's good to be moral, I think."

  Thanks, Sophie.

  They looked at Nina, still-sleeping, then each other.

  Nina was worthwhile, right? Aine had an unfair advantage, but Emilie didn't need telepathy to tell that Aine thought that, given how she spoke about her. Nina was utterly worthwhile.

  If someone was worthwhile, then maybe it was best for them to stop repressing themselves. If they had an affinity, shouldn't they be given the chance to use it? Even if others called it 'evil'.

  If someone was worthwhile, then maybe it was best for them to be parted from the things holding them back? Girls who hurt Nina and then cried about how awful Emilie and Aine the other girl were.

  What was she even thinking?

  Emilie should put her hand over her mouth. Emilie should repress such thoughts. But Aine, Aine was able to speak freely. Aine could vocalise it for her?

  Aine could vocalise her own thoughts for her own sake. And then, Emilie would be…

  Emilie should appreciate the nice moments while she had them.