Beans discovered that the forest of Sage’s Island had too many stars.
Beautiful would have meant lifting her face, finding unfamiliar constellations, and feeling that there was some order in the sky. Some message drawn between distant points of light. Some childish comfort in knowing that the same kind of light existed above Earth.
That was not what this was.
There were too many stars because the night was too open.
Because the treetops did not close completely over the ruined stone structure where she had stopped.
Because there was no roof.
Because there was no door.
Because, if something found her there, she would have only a dull knife, a damp blanket, an old coat, and the stubbornness to keep breathing.
Beans kept her back against the broken wall and stared at the piece of sky visible between two trees.
She tried to recognize something.
Any trace of familiarity.
Nothing answered immediately.
The stars of that world had no obligation to comfort her.
She pulled the blanket up to her chin.
The stone beneath her body held the cold. The water in her bottle tasted of rust and neglected pipes. The bread she had eaten earlier still sat in her stomach like a mistake—not because of poison or magic, but because fear would not allow food to become strength.
The fruit remained untouched inside the folded cloth.
Do not eat anything you cannot identify.
The warning came in her own voice.
Or in the voice she used while playing.
The voice of someone looking at a screen, watching the protagonist being pushed into another absurd situation, and muttering as though commentary from a couch could prevent disaster.
“Don’t eat that, you creature. No, don’t pick up the glowing object in the magical forest. For God’s sake, this is literally the tutorial for dying.”
That had been the handle.
Not a majestic name. Not something dark, divine, or threatening. Nothing like VoidQueen, FateBreaker, MirrorWitch, or any other nonsense that would now have sounded like evidence against her.
Because the phrase sounded ridiculous.
Because it resembled the sort of food-based username someone created as a joke and then kept for years.
Because her friends had eventually shortened it to Beans, since no one wanted to say the whole thing every time they addressed her.
The terrible entity behind the screen.
The invader of destinies.
A woman whose username sounded like the filling of a dessert.
Behind her eyelids, she still saw the hall.
The way no one had spoken her name because no one knew it.
Because no one had asked.
Small, without enough strength to burn.
It was not clean anger. It was tangled with guilt, fear, and shame.
They had not asked because they had not wanted to.
They had not asked because a name would have complicated everything.
A name would have transformed the Player into a person.
A person required care, records, responsibility, and consequences.
A function could be hated without details.
— All right — she whispered.
Her own voice sounded too large.
The first decision was simple: do not return.
The second was more difficult: leave the island.
Sage’s Island could not be the destination. It belonged to the school, or existed too close to its influence. Even if she managed to remain hidden for several days, she would still be inside the NRC’s reach.
Any of them could take her back.
Royal Sword Academy might offer refuge.
But trusting the kindness of another magical school after escaping the first meant gambling that one institution would understand what another had preferred to turn into paperwork.
Besides, if the NRC warned them first, she would arrive as a problem rather than a person.
As a diplomatic incident.
She needed to leave the island.
Beans looked toward the sky again, as though the constellations might contain the public transportation map of Twisted Wonderland.
Magical mirrors were not buses.
If only a small part of the population could use basic magic and an even smaller portion reached elite levels, transportation mirrors would not be hanging on every street corner for undocumented people to use freely.
They would belong to institutions, wealthy families, governments, licensed businesses, perhaps expensive hotels or controlled stations.
And even if a public mirror existed, she would need money.
Hadn’t Ace and Deuce returned home during the holidays? In Book Four, hadn’t they used some ordinary form of transportation? A train? She remembered messages, winter break, students leaving and returning as though the island were connected to the rest of the world by normal routes.
If ordinary students could leave, ordinary transportation existed.
— Then that’s it — she murmured. — Find money. Buy a ticket. Leave.
For half a second, the sequence sounded almost adult.
Then reality forced its fingers between the steps.
Who would hire a foreign woman with no documents, no family, no references, stolen clothing from an abandoned house, and an accent from another world?
Perhaps someone would not care.
Loading and unloading cargo.
The kind of work that paid little, demanded everything, and asked few questions as long as a person arrived, obeyed, and refrained from stealing anything too valuable.
But what if they demanded identification?
What if the island was more organized than it looked?
The image came quickly: climbing into a carriage, hiding, and hoping no one checked.
Beans dismissed it almost immediately.
It was not an adventure film.
This was a world with magic, strange technology, students capable of smelling lies, barriers, enchanted tickets, guards, sensors, and creatures that probably performed the work of security cameras with additional teeth.
The railway was too visible.
The thought arrived heavily.
The port might be better.
Ports had cargo, noise, too many people, too many smells, too many arrivals and departures. Ships needed hands. Kitchens needed people to wash things. Crates needed to be moved. Crews changed. No one watched everyone with equal attention when everyone looked exhausted, dirty, and busy.
But ports were also places where people disappeared.
Not in the way one knew something from a fantasy book.
She knew it from her own world.
She knew what happened to women travelling alone.
What men did when they noticed hunger, fear, youth, and the absence of anyone searching.
What could happen when a woman entered a place asking for work and everyone understood that she had nowhere to return to.
Beans tightened her grip around the knife.
The poor metal pressed against her palm.
She thought about warnings repeated since childhood, not as paranoia but as the minimum instructions required to survive.
Do not accept an opened drink.
Do not let them take your phone.
Do not tell them where you live.
Do not admit that you are lost.
Do not look like a woman, if you can avoid it.
The final thought did not arrive with nobility.
Beans remained motionless for a long time.
Then she brought the bottle closer and looked into the dark glass of the ruined window.
The reflected image was weak, broken by dirt and warped glass.
A short Black woman looked back.
Round glasses rested on her nose.
Two eyes of different colors watched her through the lenses—colors she knew more reliably from what other people called them than from her own color-blind perception.
Her dark curls fell far below her shoulders, threaded with naturally white strands. The pale areas of her vitiligo crossed part of her face, travelled down her neck, and marked some of her fingers.
Her shoulders were slightly broader than people expected.
Her mouth was held too tightly to resemble courage.
Fear made every plan honest.
— What a cliché — she whispered.
The crying came immediately afterward.
It came because cutting her hair was rational.
It came because rational did not mean bearable.
It came because survival demanded the surrender of small pieces before it demanded larger ones, and she hated that it made sense.
Beans pulled all her hair forward.
The curls fell over her chest like a heavy curtain. White strands caught the weak starlight among the dark.
For several seconds, she merely held it.
Remembered washing it at home. Complaining about the time it took to dry. Separating the curls. Applying cream. Braiding it. Pinning it up on hot days. Promising that one day she would have the courage to cut it and never doing so.
She remembered believing choices about hair were normal choices.
Choices made in salons, beneath clean lights, with a proper mirror and someone asking:
So she did not ask herself again.
She tied the upper section with a strip of fabric.
The blade pulled more than it cut.
It hurt in a ridiculous way, because hair contained no nerves and yet it felt as though she were cutting away a version of herself that still believed she could return home intact.
The first curl fell onto the blanket.
When she finished, the curls were uneven. Some ended above her shoulders. Others remained longer at the back. The white strands appeared more obvious now, broken across the careless shape.
It would have been unacceptable by every standard Vil Schoenheit possessed.
Beans gathered the severed hair.
She did not leave it scattered.
Hair was something Rook might interpret as a sentence written across the ground if he was looking for her.
She buried it beneath a loose stone and covered it with wet earth.
She did not perform a ceremony.
Had she done so, she would not have stood again.
Then she tore a wider strip from the inner layer of the blanket.
She looked down at her body.
Embarrassment came late and absurdly, because no one was present.
— Survive first — she said.
The words emerged more quietly.
Her small chest did not require extreme compression, and the slight breadth of her shoulders would help the illusion. Even so, she wrapped the cloth carefully around her torso, tightening it enough to reduce the visible shape without restricting her breathing.
She did not know how to do it correctly.
She knew that wrapping too tightly could injure her, make her faint, or damage her ribs.
Nothing there needed to be comfortable.
Folded the remaining blanket so it resembled a piece of carried cargo.
She looked into the broken window.
The woman in the reflection remained.
But she was less immediately obvious.
The uneven hair altered her face. The fabric changed the line of her torso. Her shoulders helped.
Her hips and thighs did not.
Her posture revealed even more.
Beans walked three steps.
The sway of her hips. The cautious placement of her feet. The manner in which she protected her body.
It was not a caricature of femininity. It was habit.
The habit of a small woman crossing dangerous places.
The habit of occupying little space without appearing to ask permission.
A habit that could get her killed in a port.
She tried opening her shoulders.
Tried taking longer steps.
She resembled a child imitating an adult.
Tried appearing excessively relaxed.
She remembered a television series.
Michael Westen explaining impossible things in a calm voice, as though everyone naturally knew how to construct false identities, escape surveillance, and disappear inside a city.
Beans nearly laughed again.
— All right, Michael. Help me out.
She did not need to “walk like a boy.”
She needed to walk like someone who did not wish to be approached.
Weight slightly farther forward.
Eyes passing over people rather than fleeing from them.
Keep the hand away from the chest.
Do not protect the throat.
If someone looked, meet their eyes for half a second and continue.
She practised inside the ruin until her ankle protested.
Her natural voice answered.
She needed a surname or title.
Something foreign enough to explain an unusual pronunciation, but not elegant enough to invite curiosity.
She thought of Planeswalker.
In French—or something close to the kind of French that existed in that world—it would be…
— Arpenteur — she murmured.
The word came from memories of games, fantasy, and translated cards.
Not exactly an ordinary surname, but it might pass as the strange name of a foreigner if no one had the time or interest to investigate.
The article made it too theatrical.
Not crying over hair buried beneath a stone.
Not thinking that anyone from home might fail to recognize her at first glance.
Beans—Julios—rested her forehead against the broken glass.
The reflection divided her face into three fragments.
— SweetBeanPaste died — she whispered.
She disliked the sentence immediately.
— SweetBeanPaste stayed in the letter.
That was easier to endure.
The night had grown colder.
Her body demanded sleep crudely, without poetry. She wrapped herself in the blanket, lay on her side against the stone, and kept the knife beneath one hand.
She did not think about the NRC.
Did not think about Crowley.
Did not think about her hair.
For three seconds, she succeeded.
Then, without noticing, she began to hum.
The song from Mulan about reflection, identity, and failing to recognize the person staring back from the water.
She did not sing the lyrics.
The melody already knew what to say.
Beans fell asleep before reaching the end.
At Night Raven College, twenty-three hours after her escape, her absence still did not possess the correct name.
Incident involving external individual identified as Player.
Individual known online as SweetBeanPaste, commonly shortened to Beans. Civil name unknown.
Crewel read the correction.
Trein did not raise his eyes.
Crewel remained motionless.
— Yuu needed time before they could speak.
The sentence required no defence.
Crewel picked up the second page.
The account was written in Trein’s rigid handwriting, with several pauses marked by larger spaces between the lines.
Yuu states that the name used by the individual in connection with the game was “SweetBeanPaste,” shortened by acquaintances to “Beans.” The designation was jocular and food-related, without ritual or magical significance. Yuu does not know the individual’s civil name.
Crewel read the statement twice.
The entity that half the school had treated as an embodied violation used the name of a dessert filling.
But it cruelly undermined the grandiose image some of them had constructed because grandeur made hatred easier.
Trein closed the ink bottle.
— They did not remember it now. They always knew the username.
— Then why did they not say so?
The answer came from the doorway.
— Because nobody asked the right question.
Grim was beside them, too restless to remain still and too subdued to interrupt.
Yuu looked worse than they had that morning.
Not physically. Physically, they were the same: pale, exhausted, dark shadows beneath their eyes, clothing wrinkled from a night without sleep.
The deterioration lay in the expression of someone who had spent hours forcing open an internal door they had never wanted to touch.
Crewel did not tell them to enter.
He did not tell them to leave either.
— Do you wish to give the statement now? — Trein asked.
Vargas stood in the corner with his arms crossed. Sam leaned against a bookshelf without smiling.
Trein had made that decision before summoning Yuu.
Yuu looked at the table rather than at them.
— The username was SweetBeanPaste. Her friends shortened it to Beans. She used to laugh about it. Said it sounded like the name of someone who would die in the tutorial because they stopped to read too many signs.
— She talked a lot while she played — Yuu said.
— Sometimes I found it annoying.
— Not at first. At first it was… good. There was someone talking. Even when I couldn’t respond properly. Then, after I understood what it was, everything became…
Crewel did not ask them to.
Yuu pressed both hands against their knees.
— She complained about the preset dialogue.
— Whenever choices appeared that changed nothing. She got angry. She would say, “That isn’t a choice. That’s decoration with buttons.” Or, “Why are they pretending I can answer if they’re going to force the same sentence anyway?”
— Sometimes she apologised to me.
The final sentence carried more weight than the others.
— I didn’t understand. Or I thought it was part of the… noise.
— During battles, she talked about the Unique Magics. Not as toys. She tried to work out how someone could survive them.
Vargas leaned forward slightly.
— Yes. Things like not confronting them directly. Not letting Leona touch the wrong surface. Never signing anything Azul offered. Avoiding Jamil’s eyes if he started acting strangely. Not provoking Riddle when he was already near his limit. Things like that.
Crewel kept his expression still.
— But she also said magic was not good or bad by itself.
They repeated the words as though Beans were still speaking from the other side of a wall.
— “A sword can be used to protect or to wound. The wielder determines the function of the tool.”
The statement remained in the room.
For several seconds, no one wrote.
Sam moved first. He ran a hand across one of the charms at his neck, thoughtful.
— She said that when I became afraid of some of their magic. Or when I didn’t want to depend on people who had nearly killed someone during an overblot.
— You never told us that.
— I didn’t know whether it was my thought or hers.
That made Crewel look directly at them.
— That is the problem. Some thoughts were mine. Some came from her. Some of them—I don’t know. When I needed money and Crowley refused to provide it, she kept complaining from the other side.
— Wait. Was she the one who gave you the idea about Ruggie?
Grim explained, visibly irritated at sounding as though he was defending someone who had once stolen food.
— There was a time when we had almost nothing. And the headmage was being stingy.
Sam made an offended sound.
— “Stingy” is praise compared to what he does.
— Yuu thought about asking Ace and Deuce for help, but they were broke too. Then Yuu decided to ask Bucchi where to find cheap food, small jobs, that sort of thing. I thought it was Yuu’s idea.
— It was hers. She said, “Ask Ruggie. He’ll charge, but at least he charges honestly.” Then she said I shouldn’t ask for a favour. I should ask for information. Information was cheaper than protection.
Sam smiled for the first time that day.
The words escaped before they could defend themselves from them.
Yuu rubbed both hands over their face.
— But she… she helped me survive when Crowley didn’t.
The door behind them remained closed.
Perhaps it was best that Crowley was not there.
Yuu inhaled and continued.
— She also complained whenever the game treated my life like a tutorial. She said I needed money, a proper bed, food, documents, and a responsible adult. She got angry about it. I used to think it was funny.
Trein finished writing carefully.
— Did she ever mention plans to escape?
— Not as an actual plan. More like commentary. Whenever the school became dangerous, she said that, in my place, she would gather everything and disappear. That no one should trust a headmage who left a magicless teenager to solve magical crises. That the first rule was to leave the authority’s zone of control.
Vargas tightened his hands.
— Does she know how to do that?
Yuu laughed without amusement.
— She liked stories about spies, survival, things like that. I don’t know what she can actually do.
They looked toward the report.
— Thinking has already been sufficient to avoid Rook for almost twenty-four hours — Sam said.
Not with an announcement.
But Pomefiore was incapable of keeping that kind of action entirely invisible, and Crewel was not naïve. Rook Hunt had left for part of the afternoon and returned without a trophy, without a satisfied smile, and without an ornamental explanation.
That alone was information.
— If Rook hasn’t found her…
— Then she did not follow an obvious emotional trail — Crewel said. — Or the principal route. Or a straight line.
— She hated straight lines during a pursuit.
Despite everything, Grim looked almost offended.
— How does someone without magic disappear like that?
Yuu answered without looking at him:
— Because no one spent the first hours searching for Beans. They searched for the Player.
Rook Hunt was kneeling beside a wet stone when he admitted to himself that the fugitive had been intelligent.
Not a sublime creature of the shadows.
Intelligence left absence.
He touched the stone with two gloved fingers.
She might have passed there.
Or she might have chosen the kind of terrain that would make it appear she had passed.
There were broken branches to the north.
Partial footprints to the west.
Too much weight on the left heel.
A patch of mud marked almost childishly, nearly theatrical, as though someone had remembered footprints existed and attempted to manufacture them after the fact.
The first time he found a false trail, he had smiled.
The second, he had praised her silently.
At the third, he understood that Beans was not playing at escape.
She was willing to be ugly.
That was the part many people failed to understand.
A beautiful escape was easy to track.
A beautiful escape preserved pride, rhythm, symmetry, and signature.
People who wished to be admired disappeared like characters.
Beans had left no scenes.
Small, imperfect decisions. Some good, some poor. None consistent enough to create a portrait.
She had walked across stone whenever possible.
Entered shallow water briefly, without following the stream for too long.
Broken branches in the wrong direction.
And, at some point, she had stopped behaving like someone fleeing the school and begun behaving like someone attempting to reach an inhabited place without being recognized.
The wind carried the smell of wet earth, fungi, cold leaves, and something human too faint to serve as a trail.
Beneath it, almost nothing.
The town was far, but not impossible.
— Mademoiselle Beans — he murmured, not as mockery but as a test of sound.
The name did not fit the monstrous image that had circulated through the school.
That was a problem for everyone.
Not because he had surrendered.
Because, if he continued alone and found her, she would run again.
And perhaps, next time, choose a path even he would prefer not to imagine.
By nightfall on the second day, Julios Arpenteur had reached a place close enough to civilization to hear wheels.
Julios did not approach the main road.
Instead, the disguised traveller remained among the trees and watched.
The first carriage passed with two adults speaking loudly, neither looking toward the forest.
The second carried sacks beneath a canvas cover. The driver wore a broad hat, carried exhaustion in his shoulders, and kept a long staff resting beside him.
The third was not a carriage. It was too small for that and too mechanical to belong completely to an older age.
Twisted Wonderland remained irritatingly unwilling to select a historical period.
Beans watched everything with enough hunger to bite her own tongue and enough fear to remain hidden.
She corrected herself mentally.
The stone placed inside the left boot helped.
It did not cause serious pain.
Enough to alter the step slightly, disrupt the natural movement of the hips, and make Julios resemble someone wearing poor footwear while maintaining controlled haste.
Far better than kicking a wall like an idiot.
She almost thanked the former spy from Miami.
When she finally emerged from the trees, she kept her face low enough to avoid invitation and high enough not to resemble prey.
Could not read all of it.
The language of that world remained an intermittent assault. Sometimes her mind understood. Sometimes it stumbled. Sometimes the magic of the place appeared to offer meaning and then removed it halfway through a sentence.
One word seemed to indicate the direction of the port district.
Another possibly referred to the railway station.
A ticket before departure.
The shortened pencil pressed against her ribs from inside the coat.
Beans thought about the letter.
Wondered whether someone had finally asked for her name.
As Julios Arpenteur: a poor foreign boy with badly cut curls, a voice shaped by necessity, and an entire body constructed around a lie small enough to survive.
Far behind, Night Raven College completed twenty-four hours without finding Beans.
Not because she was powerful.
Because they had begun by searching for the Player—and only considered looking for Beans after she was already beyond the reach of the name they had chosen for her.
@idynk
@leeniverse
@boring-kid-in-the-internet
Author’s Note — Continuity Correction
I realized that I accidentally posted “Julios at the Port” before the chapter that takes place immediately after Beans leaves Night Raven College.
The missing chapter covers her first night away from the NRC, her decision to leave Sage’s Island, the creation of the Julios Arpenteur identity, and the journey that eventually leads her to the port.
Nothing has been removed from the story; the chapters were simply posted out of chronological order. The correct reading order is:
Beans leaves the NRC → the missing forest chapter → Julios at the Port
I’m posting the missing chapter now and will add links between the posts to make the correct order easier to follow. Sorry for the confusion, and thank you for reading!
