Northbridge (english version)

That day, the sky seemed to be holding its breath. It stretched above the mountains in a blue of almost unreal clarity, a blue so calm that one might have thought even the wind itself had given up blowing for fear of wrinkling its surface.

The train slowly continued on its way through the Swiss landscapes, gliding along the tracks with that hypnotic regularity peculiar to long journeys, while the windows occasionally reflected the silvery flashes of the lakes scattered between the mountains. The mountains passed one after another, majestic, silent, like the guardians of a world cut off from the rest of the country.

I could hardly tear my eyes away from the window. With every tunnel, my reflection would fleetingly appear in the glass before disappearing beneath the return of the light, as though I were still nothing more than a hesitant visitor caught between two existences. Then, as we rounded one final bend, I saw it. Northbridge Boarding School. Almost too perfect to be real.

Proudly nestled atop a lush green hill, it overlooked the entire valley with a quiet elegance that inspired as much respect as it did a slight sense of intimidation. Its tall, ancient stone façades bore the marks of time without having lost any of their nobility.

Gothic turrets rose toward the sky, enormous windows caught the morning light, and the slate roofs formed a silhouette that evoked more the image of a forgotten castle from an old fairy tale than that of a school. Northbridge. The name alone brought to mind the yellowed pages of an old English novel, something noble, timeless. And now... I was going to live there. The train gradually slowed before coming to a stop with a faint metallic screech. The silence that followed seemed almost deafening to me.

When I stepped onto the platform, a gentle chill immediately brushed against my face. It carried with it the damp scent of trees, stone, and grass still heavy with the morning dew.

A few dozen minutes later, after the journey to the estate, I finally passed through the imposing wrought-iron gates. They were so tall that they gave the impression of separating two worlds.

Northbridge was not simply a prestigious private boarding school. It was the kind of institution where the children of the wealthiest families were sent, families who regarded culture as an inheritance, carried with grace, confidence, and a great deal of money. Here, one did not simply learn subjects. One cultivated a certain idea of excellence.

Foreign languages, fine arts, philosophy, literature, theatre... every discipline seemed to take part in the construction of an elite destined to move naturally through drawing rooms where people discussed a painting just as easily as they discussed a philosophical treatise. Everything seemed beautiful, refined, demanding.

Me... I did not come from this world. I had spent my first year at a private art school in France. I had worked tirelessly there, more out of passion than ambition, until one of my teachers had decided to submit my application for an especially selective exchange program. I had never truly believed I would be accepted. Yet, a few months later, here I was. At Northbridge. The thought almost made me dizzy.

I lowered my eyes to my clothes, more to occupy my mind than out of any real need. My short black jacket contrasted with the pale morning. Beneath it, a brown turtleneck rose to my neck, radiating a reassuring warmth that kept me from feeling completely exposed. My black trousers fell impeccably over my carefully polished leather shoes, but they could not conceal the invisible weight that made my steps feel heavier.

Everything seemed to be in its place. Except me. Every step I took across the cobblestones felt a little heavier than the one before. It wasn’t Northbridge that frightened me.

I would have felt the same way at any school. I would have had the same knot in my stomach. What tightened my insides was this particular position of being the new student. That role you never choose, but wear like an invisible sign pinned to your forehead. The one whose name nobody knows yet.

The one everyone notices before he has even opened his mouth. The one who will have to learn everyone else’s habits while everyone else already knows their own.

A soft voice interrupted the course of my thoughts.

“Hello... are you looking for something?”

I immediately raised my head.

A young girl was standing in front of me. Her long chestnut hair was gathered into a carefully made braid that fell over her shoulder. Her smile was not intrusive. It was the polite smile of someone accustomed to seeing lost students on the first day of term.

I took a second too long to answer.

“Yes... uh, room A77. For literature class.”

She thought for a brief moment before nodding.

“Room A77? Yes. If I’m not mistaken, that’s Richard’s class, your homeroom teacher. Second floor. Turn left at the top of the stairs, and you won’t be able to miss it.”

I thanked her awkwardly, then climbed the dark wooden staircase.

The building was even more impressive from the inside. The old wooden floorboards creaked softly beneath each of my steps, as though the planks were still whispering the names of those who had walked upon them before me, without ever breaking the calm that reigned through the corridors. A faint scent of wax, old wood, and books lingered in the air.

When I finally arrived in front of the door bearing the inscription “A77”, my legs slowed on their own. I stopped. My heart was beating so hard that I felt as though I could hear its pulses in my ears.

That copper plaque, with those three simple characters engraved into it, was not impressive in the slightest. One letter. Two numbers. Anyone would have walked past without giving them a second thought. I felt as though they weighed a ton.

The corridor was almost empty. Somewhere, several doors away, muffled voices rose and fell with the rhythm of a conversation I could not make out. A slightly open window let in a breath of fresh air that made the curtains gently tremble.

I remained motionless, staring at the handle for several long seconds without touching it. And yet, all it would take was one movement. Just one. Then my hand slowly slid toward the handle. My fingers brushed against it, and I pulled them away almost immediately.

Ridiculous. It was only a door.

I simply had to open it. But once I crossed that door, I would no longer simply be a visitor. I would become the new student. I slowly let the air escape from my lungs.

What if things went badly? What if I didn’t get along with them? What if they were all unpleasant? Condescending? Closed-off? They had already known one another for a year. I was arriving halfway through the journey. How do you invite yourself into a story that began a year earlier?

Through the small, slightly opaque window in the door, I finally took a discreet look inside. The classroom immediately surprised me. It was much smaller than I had expected.

There were only a few tables, far fewer than I would have imagined for a classroom. A soft light entered through the large windows, creating a strange, almost hushed atmosphere.

In my field of vision, only two boys were visible. The first was sitting alone, completely absorbed in the book he was reading, its dark cover revealing neither its title nor its subject. Not a single unnecessary movement. Not a distracted glance. His long black hair fell to his shoulders with a natural elegance, framing a face of almost cold serenity.

His black turtleneck rose all the way to his chin, and a long dark coat simply rested over his shoulders, like a king’s cloak that he had not bothered to put on properly.

He turned a page. Slowly.With an almost ceremonial delicacy. For a fraction of a second, I wondered whether he was even aware that the rest of the world existed around him. His face was calm, impassive. He seemed to belong to another century. Everything about him screamed, Don’t bother me.

Finally, my gaze drifted toward the boy sitting beside him. The contrast was so brutal that it became almost comical. At first, I could only make out his back, shifting on his chair like a will-o’-the-wisp incapable of staying still, unlike the other boy. His chair was turned at an angle, completely oriented toward him, as though he were waiting for an answer to a conversation that only he was carrying.

He moved constantly, his legs swinging from side to side, his feet lightly tapping against the floor. His hands were busy playing with the edges of his trousers, as though he could not settle anywhere for more than a second. Even through the glass, I could tell that he was talking without stopping.

Then, all of a sudden, he sprang up. With an abrupt, almost theatrical movement, he stood and darted across the classroom, with no apparent purpose, like a wild wind moving from one corner to another, an unrestrained burst of impulsiveness.

He crossed the room at a quick pace, turned around almost immediately, and headed back in the other direction, paying no attention to the space around him. He was still talking, his arms accompanying every word in an improvised choreography.

I realized I was holding my breath, and without even noticing, I had taken a step closer to the glass.

The boy with the book seemed to live behind an invisible wall. He remained seated, impassive. It was as though no word could ever find its way to him. The other boy could cross the room while talking, wave his arms, make his chair scrape against the wooden floor, or walk past him several times, yet nothing seemed to truly reach his concentration.

Only from time to time did his eyes leave the printed lines to follow a movement from the corner of his eye. A brief glance. Then he immediately returned to his reading with the same tranquility as a lake settling back into stillness after a leaf falls onto its surface.

It was only when the blond suddenly pivoted on himself that I finally discovered his expressive face. The energy that spilled from every one of his movements seemed to have gathered there. He did not look concerned about the space around him in the slightest.

His hair, cut very short, caught the light coming through the large windows. It was so pale that it hovered somewhere between blond and white, yet a few golden reflections continued to run through it whenever he moved his head, giving his figure a strange aura.

For a second, I found myself thinking that it might simply be an effect of the morning sun, or just the light playing across his pale strands, but there was something about his hair that made it seem as though he belonged to another world. He almost seemed luminous, as if the room itself had grown slightly brighter around him.

I could barely make out the exact color of his eyes. Blue? Gray? The distance blurred their nuances, but their movements were impossible to miss. They seemed to explore everything around them with insatiable curiosity, moving from one object to another before they had even finished looking at the previous one.

His cheeks were naturally pink, as though he had just come in from a biting cold, or as though a cool breeze had just brushed against them, adding a strange fragility to his appearance, as if the slightest breeze could make them drift away.

A lollipop lazily turned between his fingers. He rolled it around with distracted skill, as though each movement were an endless source of distraction. From time to time, he brought it to his lips, took it away, then started again without seeming to realize he was doing it. Even when standing still, he still found a way to move.

His white shirt had already lost the impeccable stiffness of a brand-new uniform. The sleeves, carelessly rolled up, revealed his forearms, while the collar was left open in a relaxed, almost carefree manner, and his dark tie hung crookedly as though it had given up any attempt at being properly knotted. On the back of his chair, a long, loose black coat rested elegantly, seeming to wait for him, ready to be put on as soon as the moment came, like a faithful companion.

I realized that I had been staring at him for several seconds. Long enough to forget, for a moment, the knot that had been tightening in my stomach ever since I arrived.

I lowered my eyes to the handle. This time, I did not pull my hand away. The metal was cold beneath my fingers. A sharp click echoed through the silence of the corridor. Then the door began to swing open.

The hinges let out a faint creak, long enough to seem endless to me. For a fraction of a second, I had the impression that the sound traveled throughout the entire classroom, slipping between the tables and reaching every student before I even appeared in the doorway.

The blond was the first to react. His foot remained suspended above the wooden floor. The lollipop stayed motionless between his lips, and even his shoulders stopped moving. He slowly turned his head toward me, his eyebrows slightly raised, as though something infinitely more interesting than everything else had just happened.

As for the boy with the book, he raised his eyes as well. Unlike the blond, he showed no surprise. His gaze simply settled on me with disarming tranquility. Neither warm.Nor hostile. But with an almost cold lucidity, as though I were merely a detail he was adding to his surroundings.

I finally crossed the threshold. It was at that moment that I realized I had been completely wrong about this class. I had expected to find around twenty students scattered throughout the room, like in a typical classroom, but instead, the space seemed almost empty. Only a few tables occupied the room, leaving wide gaps between them where silence seemed to move almost freely. I counted the students absentmindedly.

Five. With me, there would be six. And I immediately noticed another strange thing. Not a single girl. Yet Northbridge was indeed a co-educational boarding school.

Barely had I crossed the threshold when I discovered that there were not only two of them. My gaze naturally continued its path across the room, sliding from one table to another, until it stopped near the large windows. Three other boys were sitting there.

The first immediately caught my attention. His hair was such a vivid red that it seemed almost unreal beneath the morning light. Not the discreet kind of red that hesitates between red and brown, but a bold, luminous, blazing color that caught the eye before one could even make out his face.

He had turned slightly toward the boys beside him, his elbow resting on the table, while continuing to watch me from the corner of his eye. His lips moved for a few moments, as though he had just whispered a remark under his breath. I was unable to tell whether he was talking about me or something else, but the mere thought was enough to bring back a flicker of nervousness.

The two boys sitting behind him left me with an even stranger impression. At first glance, I thought I was looking at the same person twice. They looked incredibly alike.No, it wasn’t simply that they resembled each other. They were almost a mirror image. Then I noticed the differences. The same dark brown hair, but one wore his hair shorter, while the other let it fall to the level of his ears.

Everything else seemed almost identical. The same face.The same jawline.The same cold blue eyes, so pale, almost metallic, that they seemed to reflect the light from the windows. Their resemblance was far too obvious to be a coincidence.Twins.They weren’t speaking, but they were watching me as well, without making any effort to hide it.

Their eyes remained fixed on me with an almost disconcerting patience. Neither hostile.Nor kind. It was more the kind of gaze that dissected you, evaluated you. That slow, precise gaze reserved for something foreign, an intruder, as though each of them were already trying to guess what kind of person I might be.

I felt my shoulders stiffen despite myself, with the unpleasant impression that I had ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. I almost wanted to close the door behind me and check the number on the plaque. Was this really my classroom?

I cast a quick glance toward the door, which had remained slightly open. A77.No.This was definitely the right place. I had no more excuses. They all already seemed to belong to something of their own. Their seats were not random. The way they looked at one another, ignored one another, and returned to their activities without needing to speak told the story of a habit that had been there for several months.

I alone seemed to have been added at the last moment to an already finished painting. A closed world that I was entering without having been invited.

I finally spotted an empty table at the back of the room. It was far enough away from the others to make me feel as though I would not disturb anyone. I walked toward it. The sound of my soles against the wooden floor seemed disproportionate to me, loud, and every step echoed in my ears like an out-of-place noise. The rustling of my jacket, the book clutched against my chest...Even my breathing suddenly seemed far too noticeable.

I slowly placed my book on the table, and the faint contact of its cover against the wood echoed in my mind like the strike of a hammer.

But barely had I brushed against the chair when the blond left his seat. I watched him without thinking. He took a few steps in my direction. I almost looked away as I swallowed with difficulty.No...He would probably walk past me. Yet he kept coming toward me.

He finally stopped right in front of me, completely unbothered. At that distance, his eyes were even harder to define. Blue and gray seemed to blend together with every slight change in the light.

He wasn’t smiling. He didn’t look angry either. Just...Curious.Like a cat watching a bird perched on a windowsill. I looked up at him. And what if the problems started now?