“I have feelings for you.”

Selina shifts in her seat, her lowered lashes trembling like soft reeds in a night breeze. She looks full of words that must be said, a flood behind a dam, yet her lips don’t even quiver, and she lets me drown alone in a whirlpool of awkwardness.

After a long while, two lines break the surface almost together:

“Professor—”

“S-sleep!”

My voice climbs higher than Selina’s, just to cover the heat in my chest, and I end up cutting off what she was trying to say.

The room settles into a hush, and the sounds outside lose their edges, fading like watercolor in rain, everything sinking into a quiet that feels no different from a dream that lost the chance to wake.

The light goes off with a thunk, a stone dropped into a well.

I lie in the dark, a scratch in my throat scouring away sleep like sandpaper on silk.

I should get a sip of water, but the cup’s in the living room, and Selina’s lying there like a moon on the couch.

Her unfinished words are a feather that tickles the heart, and it’s strange: friends only need good talk to be together, laughter like sparrows with no fear. But one step further, and you’re asked to swap hearts like lanterns in a night parade.

And we failed.

It’s like a play reaching its crucial beat, the actor pours out lines with blazing feeling, a piano surges like a river breaking a levee.

The audience holds their breath like moths before a lamp.

The actress across the stage doesn’t respond at all.

The whole scene freezes into ice!

You turned me into a shy, crumbly pastry of a person!

I toss and turn, my hand drifting to my cheek on its own, and heat blooms there like a sun behind clouds.

Awkwardness would’ve been enough to deflect, but my blush for Selina is undeniable, a lantern lit in a closed room. She knows what’s on my mind.

And my feeling—call it a swell of affection—feels more like a bodily fever, a summer storm caught under the skin.

She knows, so she keeps quiet?

I circle my way through the maze of feelings I have for Selina, complex and fine as spider silk, searching for a straight path, when my thoughts snag on footsteps coming closer, like a drumroll across empty halls.

Creak—

The spring frame of the bed sings a low, unique note under extra weight, a wire drawn tight.

My heartbeat snaps into a sprint, recalling the moment before, timid and guilty like a child hiding a broken vase.

“Are you asleep?”

Her words move through the dark like a stream through reeds, and no answer rises.

“I heard you turn over.”

Silence thickens in the room like river silt.

Selina strokes my hair, each pass of her fingertips a careful combing before a festival. Then she loops an arm around my slim waist, her fingers ghosting over my taut belly like moth wings.

“You’re not asleep, are you?”

She breaks the silence more directly, a blade through paper.

Selina leans to my pale nape and touches it, a dragonfly kiss on water.

“Wait...”

I finally speak, trying to slip free of the ribbon.

“Are you uncomfortable?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I’m not good with words. I didn’t reply earlier. Your heart must’ve hurt, right?”

I feel the drum in my chest thudding, and keep my mouth shut like a sealed envelope.

Selina nestles her face into my soft, gray-white curls, and in the dark she traces me with invisible ink.

Is it possible for humans to skip sleep completely?

From lights-out to opening your eyes, and it’s just day, like a curtain pulled to dawn?

It seems like a coma, but coma is a sudden cut of the cable after a heavy blow.

So far, humans can’t skip sleep.

We can’t enter some coma-like state to replace sleep’s necessity and function, like a counterfeit coin passed in a market.

But I did.

Time slid from night into day like a shadow crossing a courtyard.

It’s biased to say it like that. Normal sleep cycles polish memory, temper learning, calm emotions, feed the immune fire, and repair flesh like careful craftsmen.

And me—though I seemed to step past sleep for a special moment—the eyes I opened did not find the bright vigor I expected, only a drained well.

This is a bone-deep fatigue, the kind no catnap can rinse away.

I lie on the bed, my limbs heavy as lead ingots, and even lifting an arm turns into dragging a net through mud.

My eyes barely open; my eyeballs roll in their sockets like gravel on a dry riverbed, and my vision fogs with a gauzy veil.

My brain is a machine over-revved, rattling toward a break, thoughts sluggish and shy. Each idea squeezes into the gap of awareness like a seed through a crack in stone.

My throat is dry and sore, each breath carrying a scorch like desert wind.

Bones shiver under the skin, and an acid ache spreads inside me like sour wine.

“You’re awake?”

Selina stands by the bed, watching me like a nurse with a calm beam.

“What time is it?”

“Four in the afternoon.”

“I’m this late?!”

“It’s okay. A call came to the house—I helped you get leave.” She speaks, then checks herself with a soft apology. “I’m sorry.”

I turn my eyes slowly, staring at the irregular marks on the ceiling, and last night’s gentle embrace, the whispers at my ear, the electric tremor of skin on skin—all of it sharpens into bright reality.

“Are you feeling okay?”

“Don’t... do that again...”

“I didn’t consider your strength.”

I yank the quilt and wrap myself tight like a cocoon, then bury my face in the soft cotton cloud.

Selina apologizes again. Seeing I don’t answer, she leaves the bedside. When she reaches the stairs, a voice drifts from the depths of the covers:

“Experimental failure is common. Only through overturning it a thousand times do we get closer to the right answer.”

“Really? You won’t blame me?”

“Mm...”

After that, Selina would wait at the door when I got off work, pleading for tales of the Academy’s sights and sounds, tossing questions like pebbles into a dried-up well.

What I told sometimes felt dull as chalk, sometimes lively as market chatter, sometimes a parade of complaints under drizzle.

Every time, I did my best to spin it out, and I’m good at stories. I can make the ordinary vivid, so when the eyes close, streets rise, houses stand, voices carry, and you can feel that slow, steady breath of student life, unchanging yet real as bread.

“Today was fun too.” Selina sits on the sofa, her eyes bright with hope, her tone innocent with a touch of pleading. “Can I enter the Academy?”

I listen in silence and lift the cup to my lips, thoughts rippling like wind over a lake.

On one hand, I know Selina’s never tasted Academy life. On the other, if she truly steps inside, our bond must change, and we can’t be intimate anymore, two stars forced apart by daybreak.

Plus, I’m still a Professor.

In what role could Selina enter the Academy?

Definitely not as a Dark Realm Investigator.

Principal Bruns knows someone lives at my place; last time he called to confirm, Selina answered and helped call me off.

An assistant?

I teach five or six classes. The principal could assign me teaching staff, like adding a hand to a loom.

But then I couldn’t resign.

“Stratford’s ‘weekend’ means tomorrow.” I sip lukewarm water, the taste flat as stale bread. “After we get back from the Dark Realm Research Institute, I’ll think about it.”