Shards of Memory [English - Under Revision]

Chapter 4: The One I Couldn't Keep

Blaise

I never woke up planning to hurt her.

Every time I did, it felt like stepping on my own chest and pretending the crunch was someone else's bones. But it was the only plan that left her standing if the day came when families tied knots in boardrooms and called it future—the kind of alliance match that starts as a whisper and turns into a calendar hold once donors and directors begin saying inevitable. No one has asked me yet. Dad hasn't promised me away—he wouldn't. He wants me happy. But I've learned to prepare for the machine, not the man I love.

So I did the thing I'm best at: I complied in every way that looked like compliance and subtracted myself everywhere else.

And then I'd see Skylane with Ryder—Ryder with his loud laugh and his soft hands and his decision to be better for her—and jealousy would split me neatly down the center. I told myself she was safer there. That he would never leave. I told myself a lot of things that didn't help.

Sometimes I ended up at a bar after school, drinking exactly enough to sand the edges. Never more. I wasn't going to give gossip the satisfaction of calling me a cliché. I never let girls near. None of them were her. None of them had ever been her.

My phone buzzed—two messages that didn't need names.

Mom: Don't forget, love—Angel Reyes' birthday tonight, 7 PM. Family's invited. Black suit is hanging in your closet. We'll swing by the venue together. 💙

London: I heard you'll be at Angel Reyes's party tonight. Behave.
You wouldn't want it to happen twice, do you? :)

The smiley wasn't cute. It was a folded knife.

I left the principal's office with two things fighting in my chest: guilt and a thin, stubborn thread of hope.

My aunt—technically the principal, practically the only adult who still looked me in the eyes—had stared over the rims of her glasses when I asked. "Back to the Advanced? To Blue Diamond?" Tap of a pen. "That's for the top twenty-five, Blaise. You know that."

"I know."

"And you've been... avoiding top twenty-five."

That earned the barest twitch at the corner of my mouth. You can sabotage your grades so precisely people think you're lazy. It's harder to make them understand you did it because shining attracted things you didn't want and pushed away the one thing you did.

"I just want to be close to her again," I said—"even if it's in the shadow, in secret. I might lose my mind if I wait any longer. I don't even know how I managed to keep up for two years." I hadn't meant to say it out loud. It came anyway, quiet and clean, like it had been waiting at the back of my throat.

She waited for the punchline. When I didn't give one, her shoulders dropped. "You'll have to earn it. Yesterday's exams." Folder. "Score high enough, and I'll authorize the transfer. Publicly—'provisional placement pending qualifying scores.' I'll post it on the Blue Diamond board and notify the council under Bylaw 3.2. If you don't hit the mark, you move back next rotation. No exceptions."

"Good," I said—and meant it.

I took the tests in the adjunct office with the dusty fern and the broken stapler. Answers arrived like muscle memory—circuits I'd already wired, proofs I'd done in margins when fun was still a word. Desperation sharpened the pencil. Want is a good tutor.

When she told me it would take a day to process, I nodded like I had time.

I didn't.

On my way downstairs, the main stairwell was a current, bodies pouring up and down. Then the crowd thinned and I saw them: Ryder's hand folded around Skylane's. Her fingers twitched—muscle, reflex, startle—and then stayed where he kept them. His grip tightened, the way you steady someone on a slick step.