Still Falling THE GU TWINS
Day two after the gate and whatever the Silver Cross had meant on paper, Val crossed into Highschool A with yesterday lodged under his ribs—weight without a name he could hand anyone else. Wax and wet wool hung in the corridors. Students pooled in knots he skirted without joining, chin level, stride even, as if a normal Monday could scrub out a morning only he still carried from before the rewind.
Ahead, where the main corridor forked, Dawn stood with two girls he knew from yesterday's gate chaos—Mei and Xian, twins who had moved like the pavement belonged to them. His stomach knotted. Another round of ranks and associations was the last thing he wanted. Val angled away on purpose, picking a longer route through the building, pace picking up as if distance could pass for no.
Footsteps hammered behind him. He was almost at a side stairwell when a hand caught his sleeve—or his arm—and yanked him to a stop.
"HELLO." Dawn's voice hit bright and impossible to ignore; she'd closed the gap in one burst.
Defeat landed before he finished turning. One tug had undone the whole escape plan. His shoulders dropped despite him, and he dredged up a reply—polite, thin, the social reflex he couldn't kill even when he wanted to vanish again.
Mei and Xian walked over and boxed him in with Dawn. No one was hostile—only smiling—and that made slipping away harder than a shove would have.
Mei pinned him with a look—irritation with curiosity threaded through. "Hey mister rude — why did you just leave yesterday?" The barb stuck because she was right: he'd bolted from the gate exit at speed yesterday without a word. He had nothing clean that wouldn't pry open every door he kept shut.
He still didn't know which twin was which—only that she was one of them and that she remembered his rudeness. "Uhmm… hi?" Apology and nothing else, all he could offer.
Xian snorted at Mei's tone, then stepped in before the hallway could freeze. She introduced herself, then named Mei so the hallway stopped being a guessing game. Names clicked onto faces; the ambush softened into an introduction he hadn't earned on his own.
They talked until the bell. Dawn, Mei, and Xian kept pressing which association he belonged to, as if every student had to wear a faction label in the open. Val answered as best he could, aware of eyes and voices without turning the corridor into a show.
He kept saying he had none. He'd told no one which club owned him, and he wasn't naming Silver Cross between classes. They might not believe him; he didn't budge. None was the only answer that didn't lie the wrong way.
When the bell drove everyone toward classrooms, he wasn't relaxed—yesterday's gate and today's tug still sat heavy—but he was a little less wound than when he'd first turned away. Dawn had pulled him in without asking; Mei had cut straight to the truth; Xian had laughed and made the hallway survivable. He wasn't ready to call them friends. The word flickered anyway.
Lessons, desks, teachers—the ordinary rhythm of Highschool A. Val moved through the schedule without drama; the morning standoff sank to background noise while he did what every other student seemed to do: survive until the next break.
Lunch found him at Dawn's shoulder while the rest of the table buzzed around them—part of the crowd, not its center. Trays and gossip replaced association talk; for a few minutes the day almost felt normal.
Mei and Xian wandered over and dropped into empty chairs like they'd always belonged there. Nobody had invited them; Val didn't leave.
The afternoon kept rolling—classes, corridors, the slow drain toward going home. Associations stayed unanswered; his sprint away from the gate yesterday stayed unexplained. Under that, something else: a whole day with Dawn, Mei, and Xian close enough to touch—and him still there at the end of it, not running.