Chapter 2: A Real Hero | November, 2015

Benedict

I've always considered people-watching an integral part of the creative process. In years of late, I admit, the habit has grown into something else, however—something with a darker undertone of jealousy. For when I plant myself for a while on a park bench and watch the people go by, or sit in the corner of a coffee shop, or simply walk on a less crowded side of the street, disguise arranged around my contrary identity... I come to feel a certain measure of envy for the people who pass there, unassuming, brushing by one another, brushing by me. I wonder what their lives are like, how they manage in the 'normal' realm of living, and I wish, for more than a few foolish, stray seconds, to become one of them. To climb over the wall of time and space, and come to inhabit a different version of myself, which might have succeeded in becoming the final one if one event in the lengthening calendar of my career had been ticked off course.

So, I watch them, and I allow myself to inhabit each of them as they go along, imagining their stories, placing myself inside of their lives as I see them in my head, incapable of escaping my gift, for it is just exactly this which has made me famous, has made me who they perceive me to be. For a while, it's an escape, a welcome one—but then, inevitably, I have to return to myself, have to return to my work, return to that identity beneath the disguise of normalcy which always finds a way to win in the end.

Now, I am undertaking a silent episode of people-watching in the subway in New York City. I imagine my life connected with these people's in more ways than them watching me on their screens, or hearing about me in gossip columns. As the train speeds through the tubes of the city's underground, I imagine myself conjoining with them, becoming like them, becoming anonymous and normal among them. My agent and personal assistant had both advised strongly against this escapade, but thus far my disguise of scarf, hat and tinted glasses has served me well. I've stuck up the collar of my coat and sit in the corner of the train car, looking mildly around at the others, absorbed in their phones or other work, staring blankly, attending to children—none of them turning a suspicious glance my way, to my elation.

I may have been able, by now, to lull myself into a state of mild sedation with this utter normalcy, this state of being pleasantly ignored and unsuspected... if it weren't for the girl.

She's been sitting on the other side of the car at the opposite end since I got on, and has barely moved a muscle, but this only makes her seem more intriguing to me. At first I noticed the simple things, as I notice the articles and characteristics attached with everyone I watch: she's wearing a cozy-looking sweater boasting Columbia University upon it, though she doesn't seem standoffish about her education in any way. Her legs are in yoga pants and her honey-brown hair is tied up in a singularly messy bun, revealing a delicate neck and face. The latter is absorbed deep inside of a gigantic medical textbook, and her right hand works hurriedly, her fingers clutching a pencil. From time to time, she presses down on the corner of her lower lip with her teeth, in deep thought, before writing again, but she seems set upon never looking up from her book. One arm is clamped down protectively around a backpack that she holds beside her in the same seat, and her leg has tucked up under her on the seat on a few occasions, as I suspect, from creeping pins and needles.

As time has worn on, now, I can't help wondering why she hasn't gotten off yet; whether she's here in hiding from someone or something, perhaps from herself. The moving subway hardly seems like an ideal study spot... perhaps she's just had a spit-out with a friend? Or, maybe, she likes people watching, too, and only has that heavy textbook which is practically as big as her to serve as a disguise, like my own hat, scarf and stiff coat collar.

She has an exceptionally pretty countenance, and the focus and dedication in the set of her eyebrows only highlights it. I wonder whether she's stressed with work, whether this reading is serving for a class on the side of her major, or whether she's shooting for a medical degree, and, if so, then why. My mind tries working out a set of different possible backstories for her, as I do out of habit when I find a person who intrigues me particularly. But with her, there is something different from the rest; she is so singular in my mind that, no matter how I try to piece her together with a pattern of ideas or possibilities, she doesn't quite fit. And thus it is her who I have kept circling back to when I glance among my fellow travelers, out of a deep curiosity that makes me feel slightly childish, but also meaningful, in a way I haven't felt since I, myself, was in school, right at the beginning of things, when the world and myself were open to every possibility.

I'm observing the contour of her leg (which she's put up on the seat and propped the giant textbook against) out of the corner of my eye behind my glasses when the subway makes yet another stop. Some of the people I've been observing for varying amounts of time depart, and silently, with my eyes, I bid them each farewell: the tattered mother with her pink-clothed little girl, the old professor in a tweed coat holding an ancient copy of Macbeth, the three young men in black sweaters carrying instrument cases, the middle-aged woman in business clothes and high heels that seem to have been torturing her all day from the strained look of her mouth.

And in their place a number of new people enter the car from the platform outside, the steady ebb and flow of this hour in the evening keeping the car comfortably full but not packed, and everyone finds a seat, with some space between them, apart from one man who grabs my attention immediately, and stands in the center of the car, preferring to take hold of a rubber loop hanging from the ceiling rather than sit down in one of the open seats. I consider his jeans, his hair pulled back into a bun, his aquiline nose and button-up white shirt, and find it curious that he doesn't carry anything with him, but figure that he must be on for only a short ride, and decide not to stare or figure too long as the doors close and the light of the platform speeds quickly away from the train windows.

I start to glance over the other newcomers, but before I can really take anything in, something happens that doesn't register in my mind at the start as what it truly is. I hear, from my corner of the subway car, two sharp blasts of sound, and then everything is extremely quiet for a split second before the occupants of the train car surge into motion. This is one thing I have observed about people in all my hours of watching them: they will always appear dormant, private from one another, until an event such as this takes place. Then, they band together like a tremendous trained unit in battle, as though they've known each other all their lives—and the spectacle can be something quite grand and bolstering to watch.

But when I'm caught up in the moment of the two sharp bangs, and the sudden realization that they were made by a gun in the quick hand of the man with the aquiline nose and long hair who I'd noticed moments earlier, the moment of banding together isn't so much aweing but frightening, like a frenzy, and accentuated in its terror by the very enclosed and small space in which we find ourselves.

Another man is the first to react to the gunshots, spotting the culprit and quickly tackling him down to the ground, stomping on the hand that holds the gun and sending the firearm spinning across the floor of the subway car to the other end, far out of reach. This second man quickly apprehends the man with the aquiline nose, and it's clear that he's had some sort of training as a public servant, for her does it quickly and effectively, placing his knee on a pressure point in the culprit's back to make sure he isn't about to get up again.

Very quickly, everyone else comes to action, too, in what seems like slow motion compared to the initial action of the second man. I don't get up from my seat at all, too frozen by what has just passed, but I observe as the others get up, some of them, like me, remaining in their seats, stunned, leaning forward to watch the scene unfold.

It becomes apparent soon that the two shots fired had both found purchase in bodies—the first, most accurate bullet had buried itself deep in the abdomen of a young boy who had been very near the gun when it had gone off. The second shot had torn into the girl with the textbook, quickly bloodying her Columbia sweater and book; it seemed to have gone into her side, just missing her lung. The first victim, the young boy, is now bleeding very badly and screaming, slumping to the floor as his father, beside him, kneels down along with him. A crowd of passengers, all struggling to keep on their feet in the moving subway, crowd around, all of them shouting, while the Columbia girl at the end is doubled over silently, bleeding profusely but attracting little attention. Someone gets on the phone with the police. And then a shout goes up from one of the people crowded around the boy, a shout that pierces through the cacophony of vague mutters and yelps of confusion: "He's bleeding out!"

And it's in that split second that the girl who I'd been so intrigued by earlier, for her silence, is drawn fully out of her shell, and, despite her bleeding side, despite the fact that she has to practically crawl over to the boy and elbow her way through the accumulated group, clutching her side—she raises her voice. "Let me through, I can help him," she says, her voice high and strained by the urgency and by her own pain.

"You're not a doctor!" sputters the father of the bleeding boy, who keeps looking urgently toward the man who'd shot his son, groaning as he's detained by the heavy, expert man at the end of the car.

"I'm going to be, sir. Please, let me try. Something's better than nothing," says the girl, and there's a second that passes between her and the man, in which he notes her Columbia sweater, notes the raw determination in her eyes, and decides to move aside slightly, letting her get at the boy—whose blood now has spread in a giant puddle across most of the subway car floor.

I watch from my secluded, cold corner of disbelief, as the girl, heedless of her own severe gunshot wound, which has her whole sweater drenched in blood, and has her breathing harder and faster by the second—turns into a machine of passion and efficiency, ordering the other onlookers to do various things, keeping pressure on the area around the gunshot wound while she stoops lower, doing something... I have no idea what... that seems legitimate if only from the pure assurance and ability she exudes as she does it. A point comes at which she performs CPR on the child, and still, I can only look on in awe, frozen in my shock at reality...

And then, before another moment has passed, it seems, the train is slowing down again, and it stops at another station. The doors open and some people on the platform start to shout and scream. Police flood into the car and professionally apprehend the man who'd fired the gun, collecting said firearm in a bag and sealing it efficiently. Medical people come in, too, and in a flurry of time and space and movement, both the little boy and the girl who had rushed so heroically to his aid despite her own severe injury are taken away through the platform and up toward the aboveground, from where ambulance sirens can already be heard wailing.

The train has clearly been stopped indefinitely for this emergency, so that the people onboard can be serviced, and so it is without much of a rush—for I am too unsteady already as it is to hurry, and my head is full of unbalance—that I walk over to the other side of the car, sidestepping the puddle of the boy's blood, and retrieve the girl's abandoned school backpack and textbook from the floor and her blood-spattered seat. Before I can really register picking them up, though, a police officer takes me by the elbow and escorts me off of the train and onto the platform, where I try to gather myself, and quickly head through toward the stairs to ascend onto the city street, very aware of my susceptibility to being recognized, here.

So I hurry through the crowd, none of whom apprehend me, as the talk is all focused on what has happened in the subway, and I work my way, breathless, up into the daylight of the cool November evening. On the city street I have to find a place to sit, which happens to be the doorstep of a large brownstone on the side of the street. I tumble down to sit upon it, in a sense, shocked and exerting a great amount of effort to catch my breath and recollect my wits after such a startling turn of events.

Soon enough, I manage to get my thoughts in order again. I am in one piece; I am not covered with someone else's blood, or bleeding, myself; I have escaped the subway car without damaging myself and without being noticed; and I also have escaped with that startling girl's possessions—that girl who is likely being rushed to a hospital for urgent attention at this very moment.

As I realize my responsibility to somehow get her possessions back to her, a measure of guilt settles down unpleasantly over my shoulders. I chuckle to myself a little at the irony of the whole predicament: that I should be here in New York City, on the set of a film in which I portray the story's hero, and that I should find myself stuck in a real-life attack and not be able to muster any sort of bravery at all, is funny to me in a cynical way. For I have played at being the hero in plenty of stories, but that certainly doesn't make me one in reality. It's ridiculous to me that people such at myself, who only mime the actions of real heroes, get all the attention, where the people like that girl in the Columbia sweater—the true hero—don't get much acknowledgement at all, above perhaps an article in the newspaper.

Sitting on the step with the leaves falling from the trees around me and the crispness of the season chilling me even further, cabs honking, people running and walking past, the smells of chlorophyll, fresh baking and metal—I am faced with the realization that I truly admire that girl, that girl who I have never met, but still feel as though I somehow know, subconsciously. And I find myself, too soon, becoming obsessed with the idea of her, the fact that she, who had looked so quiet and still, studying from her medical textbook, had in a split second become so helpful, so heroic to the cause of saving that young boy... and all while she, herself, was no doubt suffering from the most intense physical pain she'd ever felt in her life.

Heroism such as that couldn't be cast off merely on adrenaline, and the more I think about her, think about her heroism, the more I am warmed and feel lucky to have borne witness to such a brave act. And, too, the more I feel a longing to meet her in person.

Which, I realize, is not a prospect entirely unlikely, as I just happen to have picked up her backpack and textbook, items she will surely be looking to retrieve, once she's freed from the hospital.

It's not difficult to find an identification patch, sewn into the very inside of the backpack, which is full of other textbooks—and, I note with a mild smile, a paperback copy of Great Expectations. I examine the little patch, with personal information written onto it in fine-tip sharpie: Her name, Holly Whitaker, her phone number, and the location: Furnald Residence Hall, Columbia University.

I decide easily that it would be too risky to call her phone number. I don't want to seem imposing, if she happens to know who I am. So the better thing to do would clearly be to make an anonymous delivery to the lost and found. It takes a quick Google search to find that I can turn the bag into the public safety operations desk at the Low memorial library at the university's Morningside campus.

So, infused with a new purpose, enlivened by the autumn air, and feeling a little better about myself than I did a moment ago, I gather myself up from the front step of the brownstone, and set off down the street, placing the backpack over my shoulder with the utmost care and carrying the textbook under my arm, glad to make myself a servant of this heroine—Holly—whom I've become so quickly and completely amazed by.

Holly

It's been an hour since I was released from the hospital after undergoing an intensive surgery on the gunshot wound, and, still, I am perfectly exhausted. Regardless of how enticing my bed sounds after such a stress-filled evening, I know that I still will have to stay up and study later tonight, so I send myself on a mission for my roommate, Alexandra, who has, yet again, lost her thermos. It's a short walk across campus to reach the lost and found, and I hope that the cold seven o'clock temperature will wake me up again, and get me ready for a night of studying.

I make my way with a few groans out to the front of the residence hall with the help of a crutch which the athletic department has been kind enough to loan me for free, until It's advisable that I walk on my own two feet again. The cold air of the campus hits me like a solid wall, and I stumble a little bit, catching myself on the railing before limping groggily down the steps and onto the pathway which will lead me through the campus to the low library.

Instantly I start to regret my decision to be the bigger person and go out in Alex's name, for I've already been strangely cold since the surgery, and though I'm buried in a new (free-of-blood-stains) Columbia sweater and pair of sweatpants, courtesy of the school, I feel myself shivering, my teeth chattering as I limp across the campus, chewing on a chocolate bar forced into my hand by Alex, in an attempt to get some of my vitality back.

On my journey, I'm forced to take a seat on a bench once, since I've become quickly light headed, and as I continue to make my trek across the campus a minute later, people start to stop me, and congratulate and thank me on what they say is heroism. I thank them all, though most of them I've never met before, and really I am glad that I had the opportunity to use some of my medical knowledge in the real world—but I wouldn't ever go so far as to consider myself a hero. I was only doing what was right in the moment, and it didn't even feel at that moment that I was the one doing it—it was more of an out-of-body, instinctive experience, to be perfectly honest.

As much as I appreciate the recognition from my peers, however, it's my one hope that the boy who I helped get to the ambulance in time will be alright. I met with his father before leaving the hospital after my own surgery, and we exchanged phone numbers, so that I might be kept notified of the young boy's status. If I can manage it, I'd like to make a visit to him tomorrow, and talk with him... That is, if he's in the condition to do so. The doctors said before I departed that they were hopeful for the little boy, so I let those positive thoughts cloud my head, ignoring the doctor's code of realism which I will soon have to conform to, and instead allowing myself to be optimistic in respect.

I reach the lost and found after what seems like ages of walking, not to mention the terrible challenge that the stairs up to the entrance made for me in my new condition. I'm very relieved to see that a young woman who I'm familiar with, Julia Sykes, is manning the desk for the night, and I take a satisfied bite of Alex's chocolate bar, starting to feel some vague tingles of liveliness where I hadn't before.

"Alex's thermos again?" exclaims Julia with a mild look of knowing on her face when she spots me.

I limp with the crutch up to the desk and lean forward on it, winded. "You know it," I say, with the same tone. Alex is in a terrible habit of misplacing her thermos, and either she, I or both of us are down here at the lost and found at least once every week to reclaim it.

Julia smiles at me, at our shared predicament, and starts to rifle through a few boxes against the back wall behind the desk. After a short search she comes up with Alex's thermos, and sets it on the desk for me to take. I smile at her in gratitude. "You alright?" she says, when I smile, and I'm sure that I must look dreadfully weak.

"You know," I admit, "I'm pretty sure I'm still a little doped up from the surgery. But I'll be just fine tomorrow."

"It's gonna hurt like the dickens when you wake up. But— The pain will be well worth it, I'm sure, as long as that little boy turns out okay."

I nod, letting her know that she's read my mind perfectly once again. "Well," I say with true reluctance, for I'd like to linger and keep her company for a while, "I really should get back. Alex will get worried about me if I don't hurry, and I've got to study, still."

"You're one for the books, Whitaker," Julia says to me, with a broad, praising grin and a mild shake of her head. I lift up the thermos to her in salutation before gathering up my crutch and limping back into the elevator, faring her goodnight with a little wave before the doors close and I'm shuttled up to the ground floor again.

I've been a little too uplifted by Julia's kind words and by the relief at fulfilling my mission of reclaiming my friend's thermos, and so when I get back outside onto the cold steps, I try a little too fast to descend them, and stumble a little. To keep from falling on my face I have to let myself fall back a little, and I end up sitting down, winded and dizzy from the still-ebbing anesthesia in my system. Its late and the campus is starting to get more and more empty, but I decide to just sit down here and take a breather. Alex will understand, and better to freak her out a little bit than to pass out in the middle of the campus. So I lay down my crutch beside me and press my hand to my side, densely bandaged by the doctors, taking deep breaths to keep myself from passing out.

It's just as I'm confident I've returned enough to normalcy that I can get back up again and resume my trek down the stairs toward my residence hall, a figure in casual clothes and a warm-looking coat appears to me in my peripheral vision, and I turn my head to look toward the newcomer, who is looking at me, as well.

"Miss Whitaker?" he calls out to me from the bottom of the steps, and I note his English accent. He's tall and good looking, his face illuminated dimly by the light coming from the building behind me and from various lamp posts around the campus. But more importantly I see that over his shoulder is slung my backpack and he's also carrying my medical textbook, which I'd abandoned in my rush to get off the subway and to an ambulance, which I'd been panicking over all night long.

"Oh, my God, thank you so much," I say to the stranger, grateful even beyond my own belief that the backpack and textbook have shown up again, and so soon. In this city, I've too quickly learned, if you leave something behind, it's foolish to expect to ever see it again. But it seems that I'm being repaid for the good deed everyone's praising me for doing, and the happiness of seeing my backpack and book helps me get back on my feet.

I limp down slowly with the help of my crutch, to meet the man at the bottom of the steps, and he helps me on with the backpack, which I'm grateful for, as it would be embarrassing—to say the least—to hop around on one foot while trying to do it alone. He's much taller than me, perhaps nearly a foot so, and if I weren't so close to the building and in a pretty well-lit part of the campus, I might have been nervous being alone with him. But given the circumstances, I look up into his face with a smile to show my gratitude once more. I feel like he looks vaguely familiar... but in the relatively dim light and with my mind still groggy, I can't quite tell.

"I was on the subway, today," he tells me. "I picked them up when you left, and I didn't know who to give them to, so I thought I'd bring them here myself. I hope you don't mind."

"Of course I don't mind," I say, shivering a little in the cold but warmed by this man's kind gesture. "Really, I'm grateful—you easily could have stolen the bag—there's thousands of dollars worth of textbooks in here. I never could have paid for new ones."

He raises a playful eyebrow at this revealing statement. "Thousands of dollars, you say?"

I laugh a little at his sense of humor. "But really," I say, "thank you." And then, because I don't want to keep him, and I really should be getting back to the dorm as soon as possible before Alex calls someone on me, I smile at him again and gesture the way I'm headed. "Well, I shouldn't keep you."

He nods his understanding and steps back from me. "Have a good night," he tells me, and I nod my thanks to him again before limping off toward the residence hall, leaning heavily on my crutch.

But before I reach the main pathway toward the hall through the campus, he calls out from behind me again. "Miss Whitaker?" he says, and I turn around to face him receptively, curious at what he wants to say to me. He shuffles his feet slightly and looks at the ground, as though composing a statement of extreme potency and importance to him. Again I feel a flash of recognition in his manner and his voice, but I'm sure I'm just being delusional, given the time of night, and the crazy day I've just survived.

"I think it's amazing what you did on the train," he says to me at length, a look of real sincerity in his eyes.

I shake my head a little bit, as I have already many times, when confronted with praise by my peers, though it is a little different being told I'm admired by a person who was actually there in the train car to witness my act. "I really don't think I did much of anything important," I say honestly, not wanting to sound too humble, but only being truthful to my opinion. "I was just doing what anybody would have done."

He laughs a little bit, the sound pleasant across the short distance between us. "You did what I certainly couldn't have done in that situation," he says gently. "I was petrified, completely useless. I'm a bit embarrassed about it actually."

I smile at his cordial and honest nature, and am suddenly glad that it was him who brought my possessions back safely into my hands. He seems like a very nice man, and I'm glad to be able to say that we both survived that incident on the subway together. "Well," I say, not able to say anything else, when faced with such kindness. I shrug my shoulders a little bit and smile at him sheepishly; I've never been good at taking complements. "Thank you, anyway."

He nods his head and looks at me for a moment with an intense admiration in his eyes that makes my face color slightly, and then I nod again, saying "Good night," before turning awkwardly on my crutch and limping away again across the campus, smiling a little foolishly at his complements.

I get into my dorm room just before eight o'clock, and groan at the digital clock on the desk when I realize that I've just spent nearly an hour doing what I could have done in just fifteen minutes had I been uninjured. Alex is sitting on her dorm bed, not studying, watching something on her computer and eating from a giant bag of popcorn.

"I was about to call someone on you, slacker," she says playfully as soon as I get in the dorm room.

She's facing the other way so I stick my tongue out at her in response as I set my backpack down heavily on my desk, turning on the lamp I use for studying.

"I felt that," she says to me sharply, referring to my sticking my tongue out at her, and I'm sure to make a lot of noise putting my crutch against the wall by the desk. She chuckles to herself and I can't help smiling too, at the friendly banter we've developed in the past short months. I've never had such a supportive and gracious friend in all my life; in fact, I consider her, truthfully, to be the first true friend I've ever had.

I look over at her with a grateful smirk on my face, happy to see her so blissfully ignorant of everything around her, her earbuds in, continuing to wolf down that popcorn. She's watching the same TV show she's been binging nonstop since I first met her at the beginning of the semester. Something British, a modern reboot of the classic Sherlock adventures—

Oh. My...

Turning away from my desk, clinging to the post of Alex's bed as I limp over, I look over her shoulder at the screen of her computer.

"Finally getting drawn in, eh?" says Alex, noticing my proximity. She's been trying to get me addicted to the show for a while.

But I only shake my head at her mildly in response, my own jaw dropping open a little bit as I piece together the face of the actor who portrays Detective Holmes on the show—Benedict Cumberbatch, with whom Alex has a mildly unhealthy obsession—with the face of the man who had just delivered my backpack and textbook to me in front of the memorial library, just minutes ago.

I'd known then and there that I'd recognized his look and voice from somewhere, and now I understand why... and a little smile comes to my face with this private knowledge. But I decide that not saying anything is the best choice in this situation. He's never going to turn up again, and it likely would only have been embarrassing for both he and I, if I'd recognized him in the moment. Maybe it had been a welcome change for him, to have a casual interaction with a person who didn't recognize him for his celebrity.

Surely, if I were to tell Alex, that I'd seen him, she would go searching for him all around campus, and I would never hear the end of it for the rest of my life. So, I just smile a little bit, keeping the interaction to myself. "Sorry. It's nothing," I say to her, turning away and going back to my desk, unpacking my backpack, relieved to see that everything—especially my prized copy of Great Expectations—is still here, and that the backpack has no blood on it whatsoever.

I sit down at the desk chair, adjusting myself around the sensitive surgical site in the side of my abdomen, and start to get to work studying, though really, I'd rather be going to bed. As the sound of flashcards greets Alex's ears, she pauses her show and turns to me with a look of pure audacity on her face. "Are you seriously studying, Holly?"

My mind is now a swarm of terms and definitions, so it takes me a second longer than usual to process and respond. "Yeah, I am. School isn't just put on hold for gunshot wounds."

"Actually," scoffs Holly, "it can be. If you have to, just ask Stockett for an extension. She's understanding enough. And, anyway, you're going to ace it, as it is. You've been quizzing yourself nonstop for the whole week. Holly—"

The precise tone of her voice makes me hesitate in flipping the next flashcard, and I turn to look at her imploring face. "You need some sleep after all this," she informs me.

Even after she says the word sleep, I feel the sudden urge to nod, but suppress it. I'm attending school here in the first place on a massive scholarship, and if I intend to continue earning it day to day, I need to really ace this examination, and every other one. Right now, I could probably get a grade in the nineties. But I need a hundred percent. And that's something that Alex, though she's brilliant, will never understand, since her parents are incredibly wealthy, and she's here without any financial aid whatsoever.

I give her a sheepish look that relays my intentions to keep studying regardless of her advice, and she shrugs, grumbling something like "whatever" as she goes back to her show. I feel a little bit tense, betraying her kind intentions, but soon enough she's drawn into the show again, chuckling and munching on her popcorn. I look in disbelief at the screen, watching the man's face on it, and I shake my head a little bit at the irony of the whole situation, before getting back to studying, sure that meeting Mr. Cumberbatch had only been a one-time, chance encounter.

Author's Note:

Oh my gosh, marvelous readers! I am really starting to enjoy this story... there's so much to explore, so many depths to probe! More chapters of this drama are definitely in store. I'm grateful to you who left feedback on the first chapter—you really motivated me to keep writing! I hope that I won't disappoint!

Just an FYI: I have no trouble writing from our heroine Holly's POV, given that she's an original character... But I do feel a little bit weird writing from our dearly loved Benedict's point of view... Please let me know how his POV sections feel and read to you guys, so that I can know what to improve to keep his voice as accurate and enjoyable to read as possible!

Hope you all are faring well,

une-papillon-de-nuit

17 July, 2020