A trembling hand retrieved the paper and the precious bracelet. "Dayo." A torrent of tears took possession of Luna. Memories, her memories, their memories. Marked in indelible ink, pieces of the past intruded on the young woman's memory.
Trying to regain control of her emotions, the paper in one hand and her bracelet in another, Luna gathered her last strength. "No one must know." The trembling, brittle voice continued. "Whoever you are. I've moved on."
With one hand Luna wiped the tears from her eyes and with the other trembling hand tore up the piece of paper. Perhaps it was her old friends who were out to get her again? No, Luna had changed, she was different, she was strong, courageous.
Climbing the stairs to her apartment, the young woman made the painful decision not to tell anyone about what was going on. She probably hoped that her tormentors would grow weary, as they had years before.
One last thought ran through Luna's mind as she pushed open the front door of her apartment. "How do they know I live here?"
It was a cold night. The day had been relatively warm, but the evening was in stark contrast to the day. Unovis was a huge, modern city.
Wishing to get as far away as possible from Lumin, her former home in southwestern Unovis, Luna had moved to another district. Luna had settled in the Prism District, the city's largest district to the east. At the gateway to the small town of Echelon, the building was in one of the quietest parts of Prism District.
Cara had also recently moved in, and her meeting with Luna had come naturally at the start of the school year. Both entering their fourth year of study, the two friends had chosen very different paths.
It was on this day, a few weeks ago when Luna was still living in Lumin, during the integration day organized by the university, that they got to know each other. It didn't take long for Cara to introduce her new friend to her friend Taho.
Taho was a charming young man of average height, and his kindness was matched only by his sincere love for Cara, which only Cara didn't seem to see.
The result was a shy group of three friends who gradually bonded together, giving Luna the sweet taste of what she knew for a time: friendship.
However, there was another variable to take into account: Emi. Emi had been Luna's friend for many years. A stranger to the conflict and Dayo's tragic death, Emi had followed what had happened to her friend from afar, without really being able to help or console her. Perhaps the brunette's greatest regret was that she had never been able to protect her friend.
In a surge of hope and a desire to find a united group as she had once known it, Luna had one day decided to introduce Emi to Cara.
"I'm not feeling it, Luna." Emi sighed later in the evening following the coffee the three of them had had together. I don't know," She said. "Isn't she... too perfect?"
"Is it a flaw now to be perfect?"
Emi sighed again, not wanting to get into a conflict with her friend, and ended up changing the subject. It was sometimes very difficult to change the mind of a Luna who was still full of hopes and desperately wanted to know again a friendship as precious as the one she had experienced with Dayo.
As Cara didn't seem to have any bad feelings for Emi, Luna decided that she would see each of her two friends separately. In any case, since Emi had also moved to Unovis, just on the north of Little Street, Luna no longer had any ties to Lumin.
Everyone had moved on, in their own way.
"It's been a while since I've seen her..." Luna sighed, trying to organize both her bag for class and her thoughts, which were far more tangled than her class notes. "Maybe I should send her a message?"
The young woman pushed open the door to her apartment, then with a turn of the key double-locked everything.
Her university was quite close to her apartment, so Luna could get there in barely ten minutes. Further west in the capital, in the Nova Point district, the great Unovis University towered over the whole of the small Nova Point neighborhood.
The class began and Luna started taking notes on her computer. It would have been wrong to say that the latest events hadn't affected her. Nevertheless, Luna had promised herself not to talk about past events. She didn't want to talk about them either to Emi, who knew about her past, or to Cara and Taho, who were now part of her present.
No one knew and no one would know.
The class passed rather quickly and with the sun at its zenith, there was plenty of time left for Luna to kill before her day came to an end.
"Ready to study?" Luna tapped your phone before sending it to her group of friends.
"I get off at 7!"
"I don't have class until 4pm."
"Well, my dear Luna, that will be between you and me." Luna laughed to herself. When the urge suddenly struck her to send Emi a message, Luna reminded herself that Emi was probably at her sick mother's bedside and would surely have better things to do than play bookworms with her friend.
Time passed quickly enough, it was already 5 p.m. and the library was beginning to get restless. Luna looked up from her screen to see a group of excited students talking so loudly that the librarian was running around. The sight made Luna laugh and she immediately understood why.
Eoghan was a much-coveted young man. Not only by women, but also by his ability to turn everything he touched into gold. "Silvered success", they called him at university.
That day, as usual, Eoghan blew his eyes skyward, pushing back his silver hair to hide his grey eyes. But that day, something else caught the young man's eye.
A tall, ocean-eyed blonde was laughing as she looked in his direction. What caught Eoghan's attention wasn't that he soon found the young woman to be very beautiful. No, what caught Eoghan's attention that day was the sadness in her eyes hiding deep distress through a laugh.
"I have to go." He tried to make his way through the mass of young female students who seemed to constitute his "fanclub". This was the first time Eoghan saw Luna, and something about her intrigued him.
When he finally managed to make his way through people, the young blonde he'd seen was gone. The office was empty and all her belongings were gone.
"Who was that girl over there?" He asked his friend at his side.
"A girl?"
"You know there was a girl. A blonde with short hair and blue eyes."
"Got a new target, Eoghy?" His friend laughed as he watched the others exclaim with him.
A slight chuckle appeared on Eoghan's face as he looked further into the courtyard. He saw her cross the entire university and join what seemed to be one of her friends.
Eoghan laughed and looked up at his friends with a blank expression. "I don't know." He laughed again. "She intrigues me, I've never seen her here." He then sat down in the very chair where Luna was a few minutes ago. "I'll probably forget her."
Luna joined Cara in the university's main courtyard, taking advantage of her break to say hello. The weather was even better today and Cara was as radiant as ever. Luna sometimes felt "too much" in front of her.
Luna was quite a tall young woman, her features more mature than those of her friend's nuanced greatly from one to the other. For all the times people thought Cara was younger than her age, Luna always looked a little older.
"You look beautiful today, Luna!" Cara said, looking at her friend with a big smile. It was as if she'd taken the words right out of her mouth.
"You too, Cara, of course!" Luna smiled. "Any plans for tonight?"
Cara looked thoughtful, then replied, "Yes! Taho suggested we go to the movies!"
Luna laughed. "And you're still friends?"
"Of course!"
Luna was back to the library to do some revision and settled into a slightly quieter seat than her previous one. It was less crowded, with probably only a few people left in the whole library. Luna loved this peaceful calm.
"Ma'am? Excuse me, we're about to close, you'd better go home." The librarian woke Luna. She didn't realize it, but she'd fallen asleep so quickly. Recent events were still echoing horribly in her mind.
Greeting the librarian politely, the blonde left the room. Night had already invaded the beautiful blue sky of the day, and the air had turned cold again, which surprised the young woman.
A strange shiver ran down her spine, like a warning or perhaps something even stronger. For an instant, Luna felt her doubts arise. Just as quickly, they were buried deep inside her.
Out of the university grounds, Luna now faced the road.
"Come on, just ten minutes or so and we'll be there!"
That evening, her fears, doubts and worries were put to the test once again.
That evening, in the cold of the icy night lulled by a tornado of silence, Luna received a message on her phone.
And you, have you forgotten me? D.
Faced with cold and fear, a multitude of questions and a man.
It wasn't his emerald eyes or his mysterious look, but the smile on his lips.
That smile made Luna's blood run cold, and without being able to move, as if paralyzed by fear, the young woman saw the man cross the road that separated them.