The silence that followed Alice’s revelation was different. It wasn't hostile or fearful, but heavy with a shared understanding. The dim desk lamp carved out a small, intimate world within the room, a temporary shield against the constant watching darkness of Blackwood.
Leon was the first to speak, his voice surprisingly soft. “They offered my family a seat on the Board of Governors the same year I was enrolled. My father refused the offer. But the offer itself was a message. A constant reminder that we are… being known.”
Alice nodded, pulling her blanket tighter to her chest. She looked from Leon’s ashamed, resolute face to Niles’s intent, analytical one. The fight in the salle had been stupid, but it had been real. It had burned away the tension and fury. These boys, for all their flaws, were now in the trench with her. She took a slow breath, deciding to trust them with the parts of herself she kept locked away.
“My fencing,” she began, her gaze fixed on a diagram of a parry on her wall. “It’s not just something I’m good at. It's a... language. I knew how to hold a fold before I learned to read and write. When I hold a foil, I don’t just see an opponent. I see lines of force, angles of attack, the micro-shifts in weight that telegraph a move a full second before it happens. It’s a living, breathing geometry.” She glanced at Niles. “That precision you mentioned? It’s not practice. It’s perception. I can never turn it off.”
She swallowed, the memory tightening her features. “At my old school, it made me a... freak. They would call me the ‘Fencing Freak’. I didn’t have any friends; I had opponents I could dismantle. The coach called me his ‘little prodigy,’ but the other girls called me a robot.”
Alice paused slightly before she continued. “They said I didn’t have a soul, that I was too perfect to be human.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Then, ‘accidents’ started. My gear would go missing. My water bottle was filled with vinegar. One day, someone had tampered with my mask. The strap was nearly sawed through.”
Niles felt a cold anger on her behalf. It was a different, more visceral version of his own exile.
“Alice...I'm sorry to hear that...” Leon tried to comfort her.
“Thanks, Leon. That's very kind of you,” Alice almost smiled, she continued and her knuckles white where she gripped the blanket. “During a practice bout, the strap broke. My opponent’s foil got through.” She unconsciously traced a faint, nearly invisible line by her right eye. “It was just a graze. But the look in her eyes… it was satisfaction. She was happy she’d finally made me bleed, proven I wasn’t perfect.”
She looked at them both, her eyes showing her vulnerability. “That’s when the headmistress called my parents. She said my ‘unique gifts’ were the cause of my ‘unfortunate social disruptions’. The next day, we got the package from Blackwood Academy. They said they ‘appreciate’ my unique talents.”
“And the no roommates?” Niles prompted gently, he was more interested in this ‘anomaly’ .
A bitter smile touched Alice’s lips. “I had one, before. Her name was Chloe. She was a pianist who could play a piece after hearing it just once. She was… lovely.” Alice’s voice grew thick.
“But she was also a very curious girl. She told me she noticed the warm stone, the whisper. She tried to record it on her phone.” Alice looked down at her callous hands. “One night, she didn’t come back. The next day, her side was cleared out. The faculty said she had a ‘family emergency’ and transferred out. No one ever heard from her again. After that, they stopped assigning me a roommate.”
The room was utterly still. Leon looked ill. The abstract concept of “disappeared” students had just been given a name and a face: Chloe.
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Seeing Alice’s and Leon's raw honesty, Niles felt the walls around his own history crumble. He had always framed his expulsion as a logical outcome. But here, he could admit the truth.
“I wasn’t just bored,” he said, his voice quiet and calm. “I was lonely. People were variables I couldn’t solve for. The bell schedule wasn’t a proof of concept. It was a cry for connection. I thought if I could make the entire school listen to something beautiful and complex, and someone would finally understand the way how my mind worked. That someone would see me.”
Niles let out a short, harsh breath. “They didn’t see me. Instead, they saw a malfunction. My parents... they never truly care for me. When Blackwood’s acceptance came, it felt like a lifeline. Now I know it was just a different cage.”
For a long, quiet moment, no one spoke. The three of them—the fencer who saw too much, the rule-keeper haunted by his elder brother, and the genius who just wanted to be understood—sat together in their shared truth. They were all anomalies. Broken, and also too sharp.
Niles finally broke the silence, his voice firm and determined. “We can’t play their game. We can’t neither fight their system head-on, nor hide from it forever.” He first looked at Leon. “Your knowledge of their rules and history,” then at Alice, “your perception,” then back at himself, “and my capability for pattern recognition and systemic analysis… if we combine them, maybe we can find a way out. Not to break the rules, but to find the loophole they never intended anyone to see.”
A new resolve and determination settled in the room, fragile but tangible. The cage was still there, but for the first time, they were no longer rattling the bars alone. Under Niles's cool and logical direction, they were beginning to reverse-engineer the lock.
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and then Add to home screen.