Jessica and Sophie were already in the dining hall, so Blythe went there to find them.

  Students crowded the space, either walking with trays or sitting at tables.

  Jessica was twirling a lock of her hair as she spoke to Sophie, who was eating what looked like yogurt with blueberries in a small bowl. The pulled pork sandwich on Jessica’s plate was half-eaten.

  “Hey,” Blythe said, sitting down next to Jessica with her tray of food and drink. She’d gotten a plate of chicken stir fry over rice and an electrolyte drink.

  “You’re here!” Sophie cheered, beaming at her. “You finished unpacking so quickly.”

  “Yeah, my servants were very efficient.”

  “Welcome to the dorms,” Jessica said with a smile of her own. “We can eat dinner together from now on!”

  “Yeah, I’d love to.” Feeling her stomach start to lament its sorrows again, Blythe placed a spoonful of food in her mouth. The chicken and vegetables had the perfect combination of tenderness and crunchiness in her mouth.

  Sophie lifted her spoon in the air as if to make a point. “And since His Highness is going to become a boarder as well, you’ll be able to see him more often too!”

  At that reminder, she stopped chewing for a second. The whole point of becoming a boarder to begin with was to have a good reason to avoid Magnus in the mornings. But then he’d turned around and made an effort to be friendly, and she hadn’t received any drops in favorability since Tuesday. She understood that he was trying to be level-headed and reasonable since he decided to trust that she truly wanted to become a better person, but …

  How long would this sense of goodwill last? Wouldn’t his impression of her become even worse than before if she was forced to harass Daisy again? She wished he hadn’t bothered trying.

  Dread sank its claws into her shoulders again, and she tried to shrug it off.

  With a start, she realized Jessica and Sophie were staring at her in concern. She must have been too lost in thought.

  “Yeah,” she replied with forced cheer. “I’m looking forward to it. So what were you talking about before I got here?”

  Jessica straightened up, “Oh, we were talking about Lucia and Elliot. Earlier this morning, they were talking outside the library building when Leopold stormed up to them and challenged Elliot to a duel …”

  Blythe listened with great interest to the drama that the student body in Novalbus apparently never ran out of. As she continued eating, the conversation shifted to their plans for tomorrow. Her friends had their respective work to catch up on, with Jessica mainly being preoccupied with finishing up her embroidery and Sophie intending to read ahead for her advanced botany class.

  When she heard that Jessica, who generally went back on the weekends, had chosen to stay at Novalbus this weekend because of her, Blythe instantly felt contrite for having wanted to rot in bed instead of meeting up with them. Apparently, they had both been waiting for her to contact them after unpacking.

  Once they returned their trays, they considered what to do next.

  “How about watching a play recording?” Jessica asked. “We’ve never had the chance to do that as a group.” The implication that it was because Blythe had always gone home after school or sought to spend more time with Magnus instead hung in the air between them, unspoken.

  “Sure.” Blythe smiled like she knew what Jessica was talking about. She couldn’t ask in front of Sophie, and she wasn’t planning on asking Jessica about every little thing anyway. She could guess that it probably had something to do with the recording slabs she’d come across in the library last week.

  After they arrived at the library, Jessica took the initiative to book an unoccupied viewing room at the circulation desk. Bookings were available in fixed time slots with one-hour intervals, and every student was allowed a maximum of two time slots per day. To maximize their use of the room, it was recommended to register in advance and show up on time.

  All that was required was for one of them to place their hand on the identification machine, and the librarian then filled out the identified name—Jessica’s—in a chart with other names in the two corresponding time slots they’d requested for.

  Upon collecting the ‘room tag’, an ultra-thin stone slab the size of a palm with ’VR04’ inscribed on it, from the librarian, they then went to Luscious Cocoa for drinks and snacks. To Blythe’s surprise, Jessica got a cup of hot chocolate and a slice of apple pie.

  “Having snacks makes watching the play even more enjoyable,” Jessica said with a knowing smile when she caught Blythe’s eye.

  Oops. She probably hadn’t been able to hide her shock.

  The employee proceeded to wrap their orders up in brown paper and stack them on a tray when they showed their room tag to him, reminding them that they weren’t to be eaten until they were safely inside the viewing room. Special ceramic mugs with ceramic lids for their hot drinks were provided.

  There were a few students seated on the armchairs in the Records Corner on the fifth floor, either reading a book or staring off into space. Only one other student was walking around, browsing the shelves.

  Jessica headed straight for the singular bookshelf labeled ‘Plays’.

  “What should we watch?” Sophie asked. “Blythe, what do you think?”

  “Uh, I’ll let you two decide. I’m not particularly in the mood for anything specific.”

  Jessica and Sophie picked out a slab each before quietly discussing which of the two they should choose. In the meantime, Blythe skimmed and entertained herself with the little description cards stuck to the shelf under the slab as whenever she picked a slab up. They mostly consisted of two-liners briefly outlining the contents, and they all sounded like fictional plots that ranged from romance to murder mysteries. They were completely unlike the dry and technical descriptions used for the educational slabs she’d examined the other day.

  Eventually, her friends managed to decide on one, and they entered the room labeled VR04 by pressing the room tag to the door access control. The glass door acted as a window into the room, so anyone passing by would have a full view of everything going on inside.

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  Three rows of six armchairs, separated in the middle into an aisle, faced a plain white wall from several feet away. Through the dim lighting in the room, Blythe made out the light blue color of the remaining three walls. Equally small stones that emitted a soft glow lined the top of the four walls in one singular row. The air was cool despite the lack of windows in the room, strangely reminiscent of air-conditioning. Blythe glanced around and noticed the same blue stone she’d seen inside the student kitchen fridge embedded in four corners of the ceiling.

  The students in this school were seriously living it up.

  Jessica strolled up to the small table in the aisle between the row of armchairs closest to the wall and placed the recording slab into a shallow notch in its the center. Sophie hovered around the armchairs, staring at Blythe expectantly.

  Figuring that she was likely waiting for her to pick a seat first, Blythe sat down on the armchair at the end of the first row. Sophie promptly took the seat adjacent to hers, setting the tray piled with all their snacks and drinks onto her lap, and then Jessica sat beside Sophie. Jessica pressed a button on the slab, and it projected a video onto the white wall, reminding Blythe of her accidental misstep in the library last week.

  As it turned out, a play recording was literally a recording of a play, which made this whole thing feel like the equivalent of shows in her original world. There was no title screen, only a narrator at the beginning announcing the play’s title, and there didn’t seem to be any editing cuts whatsoever—it was a full-on regular play, with all the scene changes and closing of the stage curtains included in it.

  It started with two men clashing swords, moving deftly about as they sought to land a hit on their opponent. Sophie’s soft squeal made Blythe turn her head. She was staring at their fighting with stars in her eyes, not even looking at the pastry she was nibbling at.

  Blythe relaxed into her armchair, sipping at the hot chocolate from her mug. If her old high school had home—or was it ‘school’?—theaters like this, she would’ve been there every day during lunch.

  The play was about two brothers who had fallen out over a woman they both loved and sought to impress her by becoming wealthy in their own ways. They ended up in a duel to the death when they realized she couldn’t decide between them. The woman stopped them by declaring that she’d fallen for some new guy who started frequenting the tavern she worked at. Determining their shattered relationship to be irreparable, the two brothers parted ways, never to see each other again.

  After the recording automatically shut off once it ended, everyone sat in silence staring at the now empty wall. Blythe was pretty underwhelmed by the play itself, but she hadn’t known what to expect anyway. She’d enjoyed the food and drink and the cool atmosphere of this room. Conversely, her friends were wearing unhappy frowns.

  Jessica was the first to break the silence, and she did it with a groan. “That was awful. Isn’t this a new play? Who wrote it?”

  “I cannot believe Mr. Payne acted in such an awful play!” Sophie seemed to be on the verge of tears. “I’ve heard that the new director who took over for their studio was trying his hand at playwriting, but I never imagined he would be so terrible at it.”

  “There, there,” Jessica said sympathetically, patting her back. “I’m sure the poor reception from the public will make them be more careful with their next play.”

  At a loss, Blythe imitated Jessica and patted Sophie’s back as well.

  So it was a sucky play. It wasn’t that big of a deal. Whenever she watched a show that didn’t meet her standards, she would just never watch it again. It certainly wasn’t cry-worthy in her opinion.

  “But now Mr. Payne’s name is going to be dragged down by this terrible play,” Sophie said, a trace of despair entering her voice.

  Blythe wanted so bad to ask if this Mr. Payne was related to her in some way. She pressed her lips together to keep the question from escaping.

  Jessica must have caught the bewilderment on her face, because she stared hard at Blythe as she said, “I’m sure Mr. Payne’s many other fans will write in to the studio and make their opinions known. He is one of the most popular actors in Beryllia right now. I’m sure they won’t stand for it. You can send in a letter too, Soph.”

  Something clicked in her brain. It was starting to make sense now. She shot Jessica a grateful smile, to which Jessica winked.

  Sophie raised her head and nodded at Jessica. “You’re right. I should write in too. They can’t get away with doing this to the handsomest man in Beryllia. His acting was the only thing that made the play watchable!”

  Okay, it definitely made sense now. Sophie had the biggest celebrity crush on this guy. Blythe remembered staying up late at night, writing angry vent comments about her favorite characters being done dirty by the storyline in fan discussion sections.

  Abruptly, she was hit with an incredibly painful sense of missing the internet. She missed the reading responses from fellow fans who would either validate or disparage her for her points. She missed reading posts made by other fans about their opinions, eager to see if they felt the same way or if they would point out something in the story she’d missed. She missed the stupid and often hilarious memes in reaction to other fan comments that dominated those spaces.

  Blythe drew in a deep breath, trying to pull herself together enough to pay attention to what Jessica and Sophie were now saying. She’d have time to mourn her loss of all those things later.

  “He looked so cool fighting with Mr. Lyon,” Sophie said, cupping her own cheeks in her hands. “As expected of a former knight!”

  Blythe’s eyebrows shot up before she could stop them.

  Jessica’s eyes flitted to her before darting back to Sophie’s face. “It’s such a pity that he got that leg injury, otherwise he wouldn’t have needed to retire.”

  Sophie’s eyebrows drew together. “Yeah, we’ve talked about that many times. I mean, the only good thing that came out of it was his acting career, but that’s a little … random of you, Jess.”

  Resisting the urge to cover her eyes, Blythe lowered her head and silently thanked Jessica for her sacrifice in her heart.

  “It just came to me again,” Jessica said, sounding unperturbed by Sophie’s judgy words. “I couldn’t help but think about what a shame it was. He was almost as well known as Sir Arcturus when he was still a knight.“

  They moved on to discussing the play in general, with Sophie gushing about how dashing Mr. Payne was with his swordplay and passionate acting. Jessica gave a more level-headed assessment of the story events. When they both looked at her, Blythe tried to throw in her two cents, which was that she didn’t think much of it.

  Her friends nodded in agreement, declaring that they should watch a better play recording next time.

  As they filed out of the room, Blythe noticed a man standing by the side of the door with a cart full of what looked like cleaning supplies. He acknowledged them with a brief ‘good afternoon’, and Jessica and Sophie did the same, clearly unsurprised by his presence. Blythe copied them.

  With that, he pushed his cleaning cart into the room they’d just vacated. The door closed behind him.

  Blythe suddenly recalled the dining hall cleaning staff clearing up the mess ‘she’ had made when flipping her tray of food over Daisy.

  Students here really were living the good life. It seemed the only cleaning they needed to do was taking care of their own dorm room, but even that was limited—cleaning staff would check in on their rooms every week and do some cleaning as necessary.

  The desire to sleep had returned now that she no longer had a show to distract her. Citing her need to rest, she parted ways with her friends, who sounded disappointed but were understanding, at the dormitory building.

  “We’ll see you at dinner!” Jessica called out, waving at her.

  “Yeah! See you!” Blythe waved back at them before turning away.

  Given the amount of things she had to do, she couldn’t afford to sleep for too long. She hadn’t finished her embroidery work for Magnus yet, and there was still a lot of past years’ material to read up on, and she had yet to complete her homework. Her brain was starting to fray with all these considerations running through her head.

  She held the small alarm clock she’d brought from home, turning the alarm hand with a knob on the back. Suzy used to set it for her, so Blythe asked her to ‘remind’ her how to set the alarm again before the move.

  The only difference between it and a regular analog alarm clock—not that she’d used those; she’d only seen her dad use it—back in her original world was that it had a small component where a tiny pink bird would burst forth from behind two doors and chirp annoyingly until someone pressed the sole button on the back of the alarm clock.

  Finally able to relax, Blythe lay down in bed. She thought about memes and all the things she missed from having a phone, but didn’t get too far in her thoughts before slumber laid claim to her consciousness.