Chapter Text
That photograph you held in your hand was more valuable than many from your album, even though it was taken just recently. Everything in it was beautiful - the colors, the people, and most importantly, their smiles. You were in it too - holding a diploma, standing with your friend Sellen, with an indescribable joy shining in your eyes. D and Rogier were also in this photo - your friends from the same year, but from different courses, with whom you spent days and nights, cramming paragraphs from textbooks, hanging out and partying.
"I wonder where you will end up practicing,”Sellen said thoughtfully. She had been on top for the last two years, outpacing most of the students at your university with her academic results. "You should get to Leyndell. They have the best clinics."
Leyndell. The capital. A huge metropolis where everything was available - people from all over the world flocked there to work, study, and simply to live in comfortable conditions. In childhood, you were here only once, when your parents decided to take you with them during the summer holidays. The city impressed you, even though its pace was unfamiliar. Everyone was in a hurry, and it felt like you couldn't keep up with them, not even to enjoy the beautiful sights, of which there were indeed many. Besides the endless business centers and skyscrapers, there were many old historical buildings, beautiful parks, and structures - it seemed impossible to know everything in this city, which made it all the more interesting. Development, opportunities, fun. It was during that summer that the thought arose in your mind, one you were a hundred percent sure of - this was the city where you would live, no matter the cost. Not only out of a desire to escape your boring little town in pursuit of becoming a doctor, but also so that your parents could be proud of you.
"I don't know if I can make it that high. They would take you; don't you want to quickly retrain?" You joked.
"No thanks, I think I'll stick to astrophysics. Lucaria research center dies to intern me,” Ah, as always, the determined Sellen. You always liked her; her character, her incredible mind, friendly manner of communication, and the ease of talking to her.
"I hope fate will be merciful to us and send us decent mentors..." You mumbled.
"Well, you never know, they might assign you to some weirdos for practice. So you just have to endure them while they teach you. And they are your mentors, you can't really say anything to them," Sellen said. You turned to her. She was sitting on the bed opposite your desk, engrossed in reading another article.
"Let's hope it won't be like that. It would be a lame type of practice.”
You tried to continue writing your paper on your laptop, but your thoughts were no longer on the right topic.
“I heard our university collaborates with many private clinics. It would be great to practice somewhere there. Who knows, you might end up working there afterward."
"It would be a good arrangement," Sellen replied to you, "By the way. Have you seen the number of people that clinics are ready to accept this year? Mohgwyns has only one spot available."
"Really?"
Sellen was silent for a few moments, then turned her phone towards you, signaling you to look at the screen. As usual, when the conversation turned to your residency and the name of that clinic slipped out, a sly smile appeared on her face. She opened up for you the list of all the places your university collaborated with. It created the impression that it was endless, so many organizations were listed there. Surprisingly, besides the standard city clinics and hospitals, a good half of the list consisted of private clinics. The Mohgwyn Clinic proudly stood out in the list, occupying a separate place with a detailed description. Next to each clinic, the number of spots for residents was additionally specified. Indeed, Mohgwyn had only one.
In Leyndell, the largest and most technologically advanced clinic had long been considered the Mohgwyn Medical Center. Despite its secretive owner, it thrived and attracted a huge number of patients impressed by the quality of its services. Moreover, the clinic was a leader in health research, constantly improving techniques and treatment methods. It seemed that one could go there with any ailment, and they would definitely cure it, regardless of the severity. However, the bill for services was often quite steep. Many students drooled at the opportunity to do their practice there, not to mention employment prospects.
"Wow, i have no chance," was the only thing you could say.
Sellen giggled, putting her phone away.
"Don’t stress. Did you apply for surgery?" she asked, resting her chin on her hand.
"Yeah, I hope they take me."
"Don't worry. You'll do great. You've worked hard these past few years."
"Well, of course! A genius like me will naturally be taken to the Mohgwyns," you joked sarcastically and went to get ready.
"In every joke, there's a grain of truth, you know," Sellen said as you disappeared into your shared bathroom.
Today, you wanted to go to Leyndell and have a good time. Meet up with friends and crash at some bar. From your university to the city, there was a train - the journey took about an hour. Sometimes, when the walls of Lucaria became completely tiresome, you would go there to change the scenery. And now, when the last exams were already approaching and cramming already felt like a chokehold, no one wanted to sit with textbooks today. Sellen was soaking up all the knowledge like a sponge anyway, Rogier seemed to have known everything since birth, and D had probably just pushed everything to the back burner. You, on your part, were simply tired. A day or two of rest wouldn't hurt anyone, right?
"By the way, they have high salaries there!" Sellen shouted from the room, "And there are a lot of men!"
"Sellen, leave me alone!" you shouted back and turned on the water in the shower to drown her out. If you were still in the room, you would have heard that there was nothing shameful about your poorly concealed desire to practice there.
Of course, you were no exception. You also wanted to go there for an internship, to feel what it's like to be an excellent specialist in medicine. To work with good equipment… and most importantly, to help people. That was the main reason you enrolled in medical school. Not only was the field of interest to you, but also the opportunity to improve someone's life through your efforts. You never admitted it to anyone, but you had read every scientific article published by the Mohgwyn Center staff in the last couple of years. God forbid someone saw your browsing history...
Studying at the university was not easy for you. In fact, it wasn’t easy for anyone—the workload at the Lucaria University was, as usual, overwhelming, but despite that, you tried to keep up with everything on time. Professors were almost always satisfied with you. Almost all, because there was Professor Offnir, who liked no one. In general, no one liked him either. You did well on exams and successfully managed practical classes. But you stood out the most in surgical disease classes. Deep knowledge, a steady yet gentle hand. What more was needed? Let's not mention that Rogier always did math for two (if not three). Also skip the amount of money spent on thank-yous to Sellen for the consistently ready homework in physics.
Overall, you didn't complain. Everything was going relatively smoothly, graduation from university was approaching, there were no academic debts, but not far on the horizon loomed the scary question of residency. You applied to several surgery programs. Would you be accepted? In the evenings, you often noticed that while contemplating your studies and future, your heartbeat would start to rise anxiously, as if your brain was ignoring the convincing reasons why you couldn’t fail. But sometimes it seemed that…
“Hey, how long are you going to take, princess? We’re going to miss the train!”
You jolted and came back to your thoughts. It seems you've been here longer than you thought. You turned off the water. In the silence of the bathroom, there was an almost continuous buzzing - someone was bombarding your phone with messages. Wiping your hair, you leaned over your phone to see what was going on.
Rogier, 15:32
Hi. Are you guys getting ready?
Rogier, 15:33
Hello?????
Rogier, 15:37
Darling?
Rogier, 15:37
Are you playing with a scalpel all night and now sleeping? Where have you disappeared to?
D, 15:40
I'm ready. You all get ready too. I am not waiting for any of you incase ur late.
The last message even made you a bit tense. Darian, as serious as always. You left the bathroom. Sellen had already changed and was waiting for you, once again engrossed in some scientific reading. You tried to finish your preparations quickly, and as soon as you gave the green light, you both rushed out of your room.
You hurried to the station and you were only spurred on by the anticipation of a good, relaxed evening. The path led across the entire campus, and you had time to enjoy the view of the academy yet again. The architecture was incredible, as if not from this world - the arches of the buildings and towers looked like they were from the most beautiful painting. To admire the towering facades, one had to tilt their head back significantly - the towers rose high above the ground, stretching far into the sky. Gothic ideas predominated in the design, yet they intertwined with a unique feature exclusively for the Academy of Lucaria, the incorporation of bright crystals. If you found yourself in the campus courtyard at night, you would be amazed at how brightly these crystals emitted light - you never quite understood why they glowed at all. During the day, sunlight reflected off them, creating incredible multicolored patterns with their glimmers. It seemed you could never tire of looking at it. From the square at the main entrance, the landscape was no less stunning, if not better - lakes stretched far away, reflecting the sun's rays in the water. The first time you found yourself here before starting your first year, you stood for a long time and just looked around at the surroundings, breathtaken. Sometimes you still caught yourself thinking that it resembled a colorful dream more and more. Where you came from to study, it was hard to find something like this.
There were unexpectedly many people at the square. It was rare to see so many students before exams - usually, everyone left after them. Your gaze swept over the crowd, trying to see any familiar faces.
"You are late," Your heart nearly dropped to your heels. D was standing almost right behind you, and you didn't even notice it - his voice sounded loudly in your ear, causing you to almost jump in fright.
"Perfectly on time," Sellen said calmly, not at all frightened.
You turned around. Rogier was standing behind Darian, his face wearing the usual calm and friendly smile. He nodded at you in greeting and came closer.
"We just arrived ourselves. Someone halfway through doubted whether they turned off the iron," Rogier looked at Darian, who grimaced in annoyance.
“At least I had enough responsibility to come back and check. You would have just left it like that.”
"Do you have your own iron?" you asked, raising your eyebrows in surprise. You only had a shared one that you used with several neighboring rooms.
"We have an ironing board too."
You quickly bought tickets. When you stepped onto the platform, the train was already arriving.
The journey went smoothly, filled with conversations about unimportant things.
"Oh, I’ve missed this place," you said as you stepped out of the train car. The atmosphere had changed drastically - the noise, the crowd, and the coolness of the evening welcomed you with open arms. It was starting to get dark, and the first evening lights of Leyndell began to flicker on.
You headed to the center - where all the popular spots were gathered. Inside the central "ring," formed by the main business centers owned either by the children of Marika - probably the richest woman in the country - or by independent entrepreneurs, there were a huge number of bars you could visit. Sometimes you would write their names on a piece of paper and roll a die to see which one it would land on, so you wouldn't have to choose yourself. Today, the die landed on "Lost Grace". What a name, you thought. The place was quite popular, even though it was considered to be on the edge of the central circle.
The streets signs around shone in different colors, periodically shimmering with neon, like a defocusing camera and you wondered if your eyes were playing tricks. Near the entrance of the bar you were heading to was a noisy crowd of smokers - today the place was particularly lively, and you hoped that there would be a table for you at all. No matter how much Rogier convinced you that you would definitely get in, it was not worth having high hopes for the evening before the weekend.
A large sign reading "Lost Grace" glowed with a golden light, standing out for its size against the others. The bar was located in a small alley across from a huge medical complex, the largest in the city - it was not hard to guess what kind of place this was. Quite an ironic place for a bar - to gulp down bitter shots in front of the palace of life. When you stepped inside, it turned out that the bar was larger than it seemed from the outside. It was quite dark, the dim light likely hiding half the patrons. In the main area you entered, tables were arranged around the perimeter of the room, separated by partitions. Despite the semi-darkness, it was very noisy. A hostess immediately approached you and, to your quiet relief, guided you to a table and left the menu.
"I told you we would fit in," said Rogier.
You quickly glanced over the menu. All the cocktails had rather… unique names.
"Seriously, 'Destined Death'? Am I even going to leave this place alive?" Darian asked under his breath, fiddling with the menu.
"Sounds good, I’ll take it," Rogier said decisively.
After a while, a girl approached you with a phone in hand to take your order. You looked at her; she was beautiful, despite having issues with her left eye - it was not entirely clear what was wrong with it, as visually it appeared healthy, yet she did not open it. The darkness harmoniously accentuated her soft features. You looked at the badge pinned to her shirt, which displayed her name.
«Good evening. What can i get for you?”
Your friends ordered food and drinks for themselves - two "Destined Death" cocktails, one "Dark Moon," and "Grace" for you.
Rogier tried to steal another potato from D's plate when he got smacked on the fingers.
"I'll sue you," Darian said, pushing the plate away from Rogier.
"That's the only reason you went into law - to legally argue with people," Rogier smirked, dramatically rolling his eyes.
"Who are you to talk," D replied, "Went into psychiatry to dig into people's minds. What are you going to do, blow me up with hidden revelations of my traumatic childhood?"
"Please, he doesn't always unearth his own revelations. Psychiatry is just a cover for him to make his podcast analyzing maniacs," Sellen said, twirling a cocktail glass in her hands.
"More interesting than listening to a mad scientist trying to prove his own scientific article," Rogier stole another fry.
"The professor was so impressed that she gave me an excellent grade on the exam faster than the others," Sellen noted.
"Yeah, impressed. Sure. She clearly wanted to get rid of you as soon as possible."
"Sellen wouldn't let her. Poor Professor Renalla had to listen to her nonsense until the very end," you laughed.
"You’re all maniacs," Darian sighed, resigning himself to the loss of his potato.
In another toast to graduating from university, you raised your glass - the drink inside was particularly beautiful and looked delicious. When it was inside you, the glass bottom caught the reflection of a person, and as soon as you set the glass down on the table, you met his gaze.
His gaze was bright in the dark of the bar. Even from a distance, you could see that his eyes were amber. He was looking directly into your eyes, but you couldn't imagine what he might be thinking - the unreadable expression on his face was all you could discern, but his gaze was cold and seemed to look into your soul. For some unknown reason, you also couldn't stop looking at him, as if he had snatched all your thoughts and, without words, compelled you to focus solely on his figure. He was sitting with two of his colleagues - or so you thought, because they were all dressed somewhat similarly - at the other end of the hall, lazily but not serenely reclining on a sofa. With the fingers of his left hand, he was rhythmically tapping on his glass—not nervously, but keeping a calculated beat. A moment later, he squinted and smiled at you—not in a friendly way, but not threatening either, as if he had already understood everything about you long ago.
Rogier snapped his fingers in front of your face.
“Hello? Dear, you’re staring at that weird guy as if he’s a question on an exam that you can’t answer,” Darian remarked.
The man tilted his glass toward you, as if toasting mockingly. Your attention instantly shifted back to your table.
“I got chills from him,” Rogier said. “Not in a good way, I mean.”
That guy suits his hairstyle, you noticed, as if there was something special about his long hair pulled into a messy ponytail.
"Frenzied Flame" was next - shot after shot, you downed them, laughed, and argued about all sorts of nonsense, ordering more. The bar, in turn, was getting busier and busier over time - more people were coming in, anticipating the weekend. Your head hadn't started to spin yet, but you knew it would once you stood up. Your cheeks were already burning. Sometimes you couldn't help it, and your gaze returned to that man as if magnetized, but from his side, at that moment, there was no mutual attention directed towards you. Undoubtedly, your momentary distraction was noticed by your friends, and for the most part, they ignored it. "Like them older?" was the only thing Darian asked with a smirk regarding this, for which you elbowed him in the arm.
Closer to midnight, you remembered the existence of the last evening train towards your university - thanks to Darian for always drinking less than the others, already sipping coffee while you, Sellen, and Rogier were still arguing about whose life was harder - a doctor’s, a psychiatrist’s, or an astrophysicist’s (the argument ultimately didn't come to a logical conclusion).
Somehow gathering yourself and finally settling the bill for the evening, you stumbled out of the bar in high spirits. Darian asked to stand outside for a couple of minutes while he smoked; you declined the offered cigarette - you don’t smoke. Stepping away from the intoxicating heat, you all caught your breath a bit, quietly laughing during the conversation. When you were about to head towards the subway and then to the station, you decided to check your pockets to make sure you hadn’t forgotten anything. Documents, phone… Your hands nervously fumbled through your pockets, feeling them. You couldn’t find your student ID, without which you wouldn’t be able to get onto campus - damn it for not moving it from the outer pocket to the inner one.
“Shit,” you whispered. Your friends looked at you questioningly. “I think I lost my ID. I’ll be quick.”
You turned around to go back into the bar and check if your ID was left under the table somewhere, when a man came out of the door, the same one who had toasted you. He immediately focused on you, as if your face was exactly what he had been expecting to see, yet he clearly wasn’t in a hurry to catch up with you. You looked up at him as he stopped in front of you, and you already intended to walk past, when he raised his hand, holding something between two fingers. In the shape of an object illuminated by streetlights, you recognized your ID.
“Losing things already?” His voice was unexpectedly smooth, though it carried a hint of playful mockery. Standing so close to him, you caught a barely noticeable scent of antiseptic and... rain? Now, looking at him in the light, you noticed he had incredible snow-white eyelashes and similarly sparse strands in his hair. He flipped the card over, examining the information written on it; his eyes were clearly darting between your initials, moving over the lines and spending particularly much time studying your photo on the plastic. When he satisfied his curiosity, he handed the card to you. "It would be quite inconvenient to actually lose it, don't you think?"
Your fingers brushed against each other as you took the ID from him.
Neither of you apologized for the touch.