“Wille!” Amir called behind him. “Where are you? I need to introduce you to someone!”
Wilhelm did not want to meet anyone, exhausted, fried and longing for bed as he was. So he stepped on the crates stacked in front of the window and clambered out before Amir could find him, walking away from the Palace on tottering feet. He slid down an incline and yelped when he found someone crouched behind the cement embankment.
“Can you please keep it down?” the figure hissed. “I don’t want to be found.”
“Um-”
“Felice!” drunken, female voices rang out from a distance. “Hey, Felice! Come on out.”
The figure - Felice - groaned, and buried her face in her hands.
“Hey you!” a brunette yelled at him from the front of the Palace window from where Wilhelm had just climbed out. “Have you seen our friend? Um, pretty, curly hair, black-”
“Maria!” another friend nudged her.
“What, isn’t she black?”
Felice watched him pleadingly from her position.
“Um, yeah, I think I saw her,” Wilhelm said unsteadily. “I saw her go that way-” he pointed in the opposite direction “-I think she went towards the dorms.”
The brunette rolled her eyes and charged away, her friends in tow, and they disappeared around the corner of the building.
Felice sighed and untensed, sitting back against the cement wall and gathering her knees to her chest.
“I get so overstimulated,” she muttered. “Thanks for saving my ass.”
Wilhelm chuckled. “I know the feeling,” he admitted. “I just about escaped too.”
Felice smiled up at him - and oh. Oh wow.
Wilhelm’s brain short-circuited and he genuinely didn’t hear what she said to him.
“Sorry, what?”
Felice giggled - a melodious sound. “I said, do you want to sit here and take a break?”
Wilhelm nodded until he felt his brain rattled around in his skull, and sat down next to her, careful to keep a respectful distance.
“I’m Wilhelm,” he said, omitting his last name, putting out a hand to shake, which she took instantly. Her hand was soft and covered with pretty rings. “You can call me Wille.”
“I’m Felice,” she said. “First year.”
“Oh, wait, did you go through an initiation as well?”
She laughed. “Yep! But it wasn’t half as traumatising as what I heard you guys went through.”
“I have a whole elder brother who went to this school before me, and he didn’t even tell me about this,” Wilhelm complained.
“I think elder siblings are supposed to keep it a secret,” Felice said. “All a part of the ‘joke’. I’m just glad it’s over. Anyway, where are you from?”
They sat there for over an hour as they introduced themselves. Felice didn’t bat an eye when he haltingly told her his surname and what his family did, which was as refreshing as a dip in a cool, clear lake. Felice’s mother was an old-money socialite, and her father was an immigrant who had risen to the top ranks of Sverige Riksbank.
“My father wants me to become an investment banker,” Felice said, twisting her ring around her finger. “My mom just wants me to marry rich. But honestly, I’m still figuring myself out. I only want to do finance if I really want to do it, not because my family expects me to.”
Wilhelm started at the side of her face. There was a softness to it that pulled at his heartstrings. “I hear you,” he said quietly. “I wish I had that choice.”
Felice knocked her head back against the wall, looking up at the sky. Wilhelm looked up at the sky with her. Far from the city, the stars twinkled brightly in the dark sky. “I think all of us have a choice,” she said. “Sometimes it’s hard and sometimes it’s easy. But there’s always a choice.”
