This is a translation of one of my fics. It has three chapters. I hope you all like it.
February 1st. That was the date they had written in their notebooks before a middle-aged, grey-haired man of average height strode into the classroom with an infectious smile on his face and, as few teachers did, went bench by bench. He immediately started the class, noting the absentees and using his naturally loud voice to catch the attention of his students as well as his soft but comparable footsteps to the tone of his words: slow and dragging if sad, as on a rare occasion when he had been akumatized; quiet and long if happy, as was usual; and a little too loud if angry, something that had happened only once before. But in any case, the first good impression he had made was hard to erase, and almost everyone considered him one of their favourite teachers... Like now, for example, that he, as if it were a story, told them about the universes of books whose minute details had to have a purpose and not just serve as decoration: he emphasised books of mystery and intrigue in which everything had a meaning and served a purpose that inferred the plot; yet the sheer fascination was only shown by a jet-black man in red, sitting on the seats in the back and with his black pen not taking off his pages except to move on to the next word. Meanwhile, the attention of the rest of the class was only piqued enough that they found it interesting to treat a book of any genre as if it were a copy of the real thing, unlike Bridgette, who, among other kids, was reminded of movie plots and some of the few books she owned as she summarised the impassioned speech of one of her favourite teachers.
Creativity was one of her strong suits and she couldn't wait to have to write another story for the class.
"Psst..." Sitting next to her and staring at the date instead of the words on the rest of the page she had slowly written, a blonde with long, braided hair tried to catch her eye.
"What?" She answered quietly, with a pencil on her sheet, one ear on the lesson and the other on whatever her best friend was going to tell her.
"It's February," her whisper was a little sing-songy. The girl with the jet-blue pigtails and big, blue eyes couldn't help but look up from her notes and fix her gaze on the seat in front of her, where sat the boy whose dull blonde hair spilled out of his dark grey back almost like the sun behind the clouds. The jet was already a ray of sunshine that never dimmed, so it was ridiculously amazing that he, a cloudy day with dull colours, would add colour to her days, radiant as she was with the happiness she exuded.
"I'm going to give him..."
Bridgette couldn't help but let out a dreamy sigh and a goofy smile, putting her pencil down on the page as she began to fantasize about a February fourteenth in the company of Felix Agreste.
"I'm going to give him some chocolates because it's something you give on the fourteenth," she said almost spluttering, but the blonde was used to the rhythm of her words, "they'll have weird, bitter flavours, just like Felix likes."
"Don't look at me like that, Alle," she continued without turning around. She didn't need to know that the other girl was looking at her out of the corner of her eye and, at her last statement, with doubt, "I really don't know, and I just hope he'll accept my excuse and take it as a 'Valentine's Day tradition'."
Then she laughed, barely paying attention to her surroundings because of the very visible plans she was carefully arranging in her mind.
"Then I'll invite him for a walk near the Seine because it's nice to walk there, and it's a well-known place: he can't not like it. And I wouldn't invite him to the cinema as usual either, so what would he complain about if I gave him the perfect date? Right?"
She sighed. She hoped so.
Allegra watched her warily, having picked up on Bridgette's nervousness in her twitching eyelids and tightly pressed lips, holding back the handful of strong words that would alert the rest of the class to their conversation. This time the blonde wasn't keeping quiet because the jet-blue wouldn't give her space to speak, but because her entire mind had wiped away any response she could think of.
Allegra had never seen her like this when she was planning a date with Felix. She always looked confident, assured and determined, and Allegra was wondering if Bridgette would want to stop gazing at her beloved as if he were untouchable and she just decided to "pretend". Of course, not thinking about some distant, too-serious future, but thinking about... being completely honest, stopping starting conversations with the word "date", and being friends rather than boyfriend and girlfriend or whatever it was they'd end up being.
She was about to ask her, but first she finally spoke. And Allegra, as usual, left her uninterrupted for the moment. She swore Brid could go on and on all day and never tire of it.
"Of course everything's going to be perfect," she murmured, and the talk officially ceased to be one that one would have in the middle of a class and became more like a sleepover or an outing to the park. Maybe she'd been thinking too much already and it was time to let it out into the air, to Allegra, who always guaranteed his ear, "and we'll go to André's, and I won't tell him how special his ice cream is so he doesn't think I can't stop thinking about us being in love because what a terrible reminder I give him if Felix isn't interested in love!"
She paused to sigh and continued:
"Maybe then he'll accept more dates that he won't know are dates, and he'll get to know me, and he'll stop thinking I'm following him because I'm crazy about him..."
"But you are crazy about him, Brid" The contrarian, with her hands on her neck, her elbows on her desk and her gaze always on her notes, at once managed to interrupt, something that almost all the time was difficult for her in the same way that it was difficult for the jet-haired girl to give room for her opinion.
"So he can stop being so beautifully interesting then!" she folded her arms, pouting and sliding down in her seat.
"Bridgette!" exclaimed Allegra in a tone of warning and some amusement that she couldn't hide. It wasn't the first time they had spoken in class, and quite loudly. Although the latter was not intentional.
This was one of the very few times she felt slightly uncomfortable with the kind of conversation they shared in hushed tones, and yet in a public setting.
She regretted bringing it up.
They ignored Claude and Alan's stares, which, for a few seconds, they felt on the backs of their necks. Bridgette raised her own gaze to see if Felix had moved or even given a sign that he had heard them, but he remained as much the same as she had seen him minutes before, writing and occasionally scribbling something on the side of his text...
Bridgette straightened up a little and decided to see what it was later. Immediately afterwards, without a hint of embarrassment she checked, along with Allegra, to see if the professor had heard them. However, they only got a stern look before he went on with the lesson, since he had made it clear from the first day that it was not his problem if someone failed their subject because everyone was responsible for their performance, and he would not reprimand anyone for being distracted, as long as they did not prevent the others from paying attention or doing the activities.
The teacher only raised his voice slightly as he continued, and the girls spoke again after barely two seconds.
"I want to meet him," Bridgette blurted out and Allegra took the opportunity to pull her out of her bubble a little, this time less gently than the previous ones.
"Well, you love not to know nothing about him as long as you can keep him... Perfect" she pointed out, already looking undisguised at the blonde: "I think you've let too much time pass to seriously worry about inviting him somewhere other than the cinema, where you'd barely have to talk... if he accepted."
"It's never too late" Bridgette replied without a tinge of doubt in her voice, turning almost dramatically to her best friend, almost afraid of what Allegra would say to her after she didn't deny all her claims but decided to take the first step with Felix less often. And with less blushing and shyness, and more ease and serenity so that he would start to think that maybe Bridgette wasn't in love with him, nor was she taking him on a date as she always has when she was inviting him to the cinema, but was showing interest in building a friendship and suggesting more neutral places for them to start knowing each other.
Of course, all this meant nothing until after Valentine's Day because on that day Bridgette could not disguise her chocolates and interactions that were clearly meant to appear romantic as well as the following ones she could hide.
Allegra seemed to understand it as well.
"Just don't delay it any longer."
Ending the conversation, both friends looked back down at their notes and turned their attention back to their teacher. Bridgette, realizing that she no longer knew what she was saying, didn't know what else to do but stare at Felix for the next few minutes: she could ask him for the rest of the notes, anyway. For that kind of request he was certainly polite, at least to people he knew would return his sheets just as he had given them to her, and she was that kind of person - though ten times the tidier, perfectionist, when it was about Felix.
For a long minute her eyes lowered to the hollow between the torso and right arm of the reason for her sighing, catching a glimpse of his sheets, written in cursive and small and... together, messy, like a scrawl. Bridgette remembered that she'd seen it before, and now that she thought about it more carefully, that the blond was the sort of person who scribbled on his notes was odd.
For some reason she cleared her throat, as if she was uncomfortable with what she had discovered and didn't want to dwell on it, yet. So she tried to remember the words she had spilled like water several minutes ago, something that of course came easily to her. However just the right curiosity pricked at her right shoulder, warning her of Allegra, who had brought up the topic of conversation and now stood like her, staring blankly at one point until the class was over since she couldn't continue taking notes either.
"Are you going to do anything that day?" Bridgette asked her friend, her voice low as before, this time hoping she could keep it up.
"I don't think so" Allegra shrugged, "although I know Alan and Claude will be hanging out together since they don't care... I'm sure I'll spend it with them.'
"I imagine that before my outing with Felix we'll eat my parents' macaroons" Bridgette phrased it as if it was a fact and for her it was. How could she not spend the day of love and friendship with her best friend? "And, oh, we could go to the Eiffel Tower so you can play your flute and I can take pictures of you like the professional photographer that I am!"
Her statement wasn't too much of an exaggeration, since she had been posting pictures of the products her parents sold to attract customers for years, and she was getting better and better at it.
Still Allegra laughed, though probably because Bridgette was talking her head off once she got started and because her classmates were joining them for lunch and she still didn't notice or perhaps didn't care. So Allegra took the opportunity to almost interrupt the words on the tip of her tongue.
"Well, I'll wait for you in the courtyard with two lunches while you starve, Brid," Allegra almost jumped to her feet, raised her hands as if to indicate "innocence", lowered them and began to walk as well, "Your call."
"See you in five, Alle" She answered her, she was already planning to let the group leave anyway before she took a look at Felix's notes. She wasn't worried about getting into trouble because the teacher had already headed off to his next class. She was intrigued by those doodles and the thought that someone like Felix would be as distracted in class as she was from time to time.
He had left them on the bench because there was nothing to be afraid of, apparently. If Bridgette were him she would keep everything in her backpack because she never knew whether or not some irresponsible fellow student would steal sheets of paper that had taken considerable time to write, neatly and clearly.
His level of distraction must have been high.
Drawings of roses in the corners of his sheets, from the ugliest, with no petals or visible shape, to the prettiest and most detailed, with petals even marked in the best way one could mark without being a draftsman...
A smile that could not be a smile crept across her face, the opposite gleam of happiness was planted in her blue eyes. Loose words and phrases were distributed among the flowers on paper as if these had to be there because that was their place, and Bridgette was to do nothing because nothing would come to her.
Not a letter, not a flower, not a gesture or a sign.
The scribbles were colourless, and it was okay because they were from Felix, it was okay because maybe, just horribly, thankfully maybe, it meant that the girl wouldn't reciprocate his empty feelings.
Sometimes Bridgette hated her thoughts.