Chapter Text
On the fourth day after returning to reality, Wednesday Addams began to formally suspect that she was still inside a romantic comedy.
This suspicion did not originate from post-traumatic narrative residue, nor from her long-standing, stable, and academically valuable hatred of the genre. She was perfectly aware that she hated romantic comedies. She hated the way they crudely appropriated coincidence, humiliated reason, forced characters to run through rain, replaced emotional logic with background music, and packaged humanity’s most dangerous and unreliable emotional responses as destiny. This hatred had not been shaken in the slightest by the fact that she had once kissed Enid Sinclair inside a curse.
The problem was that the curse had ended, and reality had begun behaving in a highly incriminating manner.
The first anomaly occurred at breakfast.
Wednesday had merely been sitting in the corner of the dining hall, attempting to recalibrate her mental state with a cup of black coffee and a nineteenth-century research report on poisoning cases. This was her method of confirming that reality still retained a basic degree of dignity: bitterness, death, the smell of paper, and the disappointing yet predictable conversations of the students around her.
Until Enid Sinclair sat down across from her with a tray.
This, in itself, did not constitute an anomaly. Ever since that inferior romantic comedy curse had ended, Enid sitting across from her had become a new habit, one that had not yet been formally approved by both parties. Wednesday had raised no objection to it, primarily because objecting would cause Enid to produce an expression that said, you don’t actually hate me sitting here, which was more difficult to handle than the habit itself.
The true anomaly was that there were two waffles on Enid’s tray.
Heart-shaped.
Wednesday stared at the two waffles, her coffee cup suspended halfway to her mouth.
Enid noticed her gaze, looked down, and immediately went rigid.
“I swear, I didn’t take these.”
Wednesday slowly lowered her coffee cup.
“They are on your tray.”
“The kitchen lady put them there! I only asked for regular waffles. She said the mold just happened to be this shape today.”
“Just happened.”
Enid raised both hands, her expression extremely innocent and therefore extremely suspicious. “I really did not orchestrate a heart-shaped waffle attack.”
Wednesday’s gaze fell to the two pieces of food whose shape was far too explicit. She knew that, in theory, any geometric form could appear in a waffle. Circles, squares, irregular burned formations—even, given the standards of Nevermore’s dining hall, shapes bearing a strong resemblance to a victim’s internal organs would not be surprising. However, for a heart shape to appear at this precise moment clearly indicated narrative motive.
“Do not eat them,” Wednesday said.
Enid blinked. “Why?”
“They may be a trigger condition.”
“A trigger for what?”
“The next plot sequence.”
Enid was silent for two seconds.
Then the corners of her mouth began to rise.
Wednesday pointed at her. “Control your face.”
“I am controlling it.”
“You are clearly failing.”
Enid bit her lip, but her eyes had already become offensively bright. “You really think waffles are going to make us fall back into a romantic comedy?”
“I believe that until the structure of reality has been confirmed to be fully restored, all heart-shaped objects should temporarily be classified as controlled items.”
“So I can’t eat breakfast?”
“You may eat the piece of bacon beside them that looks as though it has been run over by a vehicle.”
Enid looked down at the bacon, her expression pained. “It looks like it has given up on its own life.”
“Precisely why it carries less romantic risk.”
Enid lasted three seconds before laughing anyway.
The moment that sound entered the air, Wednesday immediately felt that something in the dining hall was wrong. Not because background music had actually begun playing—at least, she did not hear any for the moment. Nor because anyone was openly watching. The problem was subtler. Light fell from the high windows and landed precisely at the ends of Enid’s hair, making those colors look soft in a highly unreliable way. When she laughed, her shoulders shook slightly, her eyes curved, and her fingers remained beside the heart-shaped waffle, as if the entire universe were reminding Wednesday, in the most vulgar manner possible: you have kissed her, and now she is sitting across from you.
Wednesday angrily took a sip of black coffee.
The coffee was warm.
This was the second anomaly.
.·.··.·.··.··.·.·.·
Over the next two days, more evidence appeared throughout Nevermore.
Ajax knocked over a stack of books in the corridor. The books scattered with the precision of an unauthorized rehearsal, forcing Wednesday and Enid to bend down at the exact same second. Wednesday reacted swiftly, using the tip of her shoe to kick the book away toward the corner of the wall before Enid’s fingers could touch the same one.
Ajax watched his textbook slide away, his tone blank. “Why did you kick my book?”
Wednesday answered coldly, “I am preventing the world from degenerating.”
He clearly did not understand.
That, at least, was quite consistent with reality.
The next day, during lunch, Yoko asked in a bright tone entirely lacking in survival instinct, “So what are you two now, exactly?”
Enid choked on her juice on the spot.
Wednesday raised her eyes and spent an entire second evaluating the feasibility of turning Yoko into a missing person. Everyone else in the dining hall immediately pretended they had not been eavesdropping, but the excessive neatness of that silence was itself evidence of guilt. A crowd, a public question, a forced naming of relationship status—these all belonged to the malignant mid-stage progression symptoms of a romantic comedy.
“Our status does not require submission to the dining hall for public review.” Wednesday said.
Yoko’s smile widened instantly. “So there is a status.”
Wednesday looked at her. “You have one as well.”
Yoko arched a brow. “What condition?”
“Endangered.”
Enid lowered her head and stared at her tray, her ears very visibly red.
Wednesday saw it.
She should not have seen it with such precision. She should have been focusing on Yoko’s offense, the collective crime of the dining hall, and the suspicious narrative lesion of reality’s possible relapse. Instead, she noticed Enid’s fingers gripping her fork too tightly. She noticed that Enid did not deny it. She noticed Enid sneaking a glance at her, quick and light—not like a demand, more like a question.
Do you also think it was just the plot?
An untimely sinking sensation appeared in Wednesday’s stomach.
She hated the feeling.
What she hated even more was that, this time, she could not fully shift responsibility onto the curse.
.·.··.·.··.··.·.·.·
By the evening of the fourth day, Wednesday decided to establish an official file.
The file was titled:
Observation Record on Residual Romantic Comedy Contamination and Structural Abnormalities in Reality
She sat at the desk in their dormitory and, expressionless, listed the high-risk incidents.
One: heart-shaped waffles.
Two: Ajax dropping his books.
Three: Yoko publicly interrogating their relationship status.
Four: Enid “just happening” to appear around a corridor corner.
Five: the weather remaining non-hostile and mild for three consecutive days.
Six: attentional deviation observed in the subject when Enid Sinclair laughs.
Seven: Enid Sinclair.
When she reached the seventh item, she stopped.
A severe logical problem had appeared in the record. If Enid Sinclair herself was classified as a high-risk incident, then most of the abnormalities could indeed be explained. Since the curse had been lifted, almost every suspicious scene had revolved around Enid: she brought hot cocoa, she sat across from Wednesday, she turned around in the corridor, she blushed when Yoko asked about their relationship, she laughed, she fell silent, she looked over at Wednesday with eyes that were becoming increasingly capable of seeing through her.
However, this classification failed to resolve the central question.
If Enid was the source of contamination, why did Wednesday have absolutely no desire to remove her?
She could avoid Enid. In theory, it would be extremely simple. She could change her mealtimes, refuse to share a table, return to the dormitory later, and cease all unnecessary conversation. She could rebuild distance with coldness, silence, and language precise enough to be cruel. She had handled countless people this way before. The process had been smooth, and the results stable.
But every time she truly prepared to do so, Enid’s voice from that night in the dormitory would automatically surface in her mind, asking softly, “Did that kiss still count?”
That question had never left.
More dangerous than heart-shaped waffles.
More criminal than Yoko.
It stayed very quietly in the depths of Wednesday’s consciousness, like an unexploded bomb. When Enid had asked it, her ears had been red, but her eyes had not looked away. At that moment, she had not been pushed by the plot, nor had any background music given her courage. She had simply been lying in the familiar Nevermore dormitory, her mouth still very close to Wednesday’s, trying to hand over a profoundly vulnerable question.
Wednesday had kissed her a second time.
That had not been a curse condition.
Not a narrative requirement.
Not the final action before the world collapsed.
It had simply been something she wanted to do.
When this conclusion appeared in her mind, Wednesday felt a sharp surge of anger.
Not toward Enid.
Toward the curse itself.
It had stolen her rhythm.
That was more unforgivable than background music, couples’ baking, or a destiny prom. That inferior, vulgar, aesthetically bankrupt romantic comedy world had placed the emotion she was worst at handling, and least willing to handle carelessly, at the center of a stage. It had made everyone watch, made the world provide accompaniment, made every scene feel as if it had been forcibly arranged by a cheap script. It had forced her to perform an admission before she had decided how to admit it. It had given Enid reason to doubt whether Wednesday’s closeness had only been the result of a plot compelling her; and it had given Wednesday reason to flee, to pretend she had merely been dragged along by an external narrative.
She disliked losing control.
She especially disliked having her precious loss of control written like a vulgar cliché.
Wednesday stared at the notebook, the tip of her pen nearly piercing the paper.
Just then, the dormitory door opened.
Enid walked in, carrying a stack of books and a jacket. When she saw the notebook on Wednesday’s desk, her steps paused slightly.
“You’re doing research again?”
Wednesday closed the notebook swiftly.
“You are not authorized to inspect it.”
Enid placed the books on her own desk. Her tone was very cautious, but it could not quite conceal the hint of curiosity beneath it. “Is it about… whether we’re still in a romantic comedy?”
Wednesday was silent.
Enid’s gaze changed slightly.
“You really are still thinking about that.”
“I have no obligation to explain my research direction to a potential source of narrative contamination.”
Enid did not immediately laugh the way she had over the past few days.
This put Wednesday on alert.
Enid stood on her half of the room, her jacket still hanging over her arm. Evening light fell in from the window, not particularly beautiful, not particularly dramatic—only ordinary light, carrying a little dust. The joking expression on her face slowly receded, leaving behind something quieter.
“Wednesday,” she said. “Do you still feel like you’re being controlled?”
The question made the air in the room instantly too clear.
Wednesday did not answer.
Enid’s fingers tightened around the edge of her jacket.
“I’m not trying to force you to say anything. I just… I want to know. Because if you really feel like it wasn’t your own choice, if you feel like you were only pushed into doing those things by that world, then I can—”
She stopped, as if the rest of the sentence was too difficult to say aloud.
Wednesday lifted her eyes.
“You can what?”
Enid smiled a little.
Small and strained.
“I can choose not to treat it as real. Our status does not require submission to the dining hall for public review.”
That sentence was more grating than any background music.
.·.··.·.··.··.·.·.·
Wednesday stood.
Slowly.
She suddenly understood why Enid had been smiling so quickly over the past few days, and then, at certain moments, suddenly stopping. Enid was not oblivious to danger, nor was she simply treating the curse as a funny memory. She had been waiting. Waiting for Wednesday to determine whether that kiss was valid, waiting for Wednesday to decide whether the second kiss after they had returned to their dorm that night counted, waiting for Wednesday to come out from behind the sarcasm, records, prevention lists, and paranoia, and tell her: it had not been an accident forced upon them by the plot.
And while Wednesday had spent the past few days checking whether the world was still inside a romantic comedy, she had left Enid standing in front of this question for too long.
She detested this particular form of her own slowness.
It was very human.
“Do you want to treat it as false?” Wednesday asked.
Enid’s eyes immediately widened.
“Of course I don’t.”
The answer came too quickly. So quickly that Enid herself froze for a moment. Her face flushed, but she did not look away.
“I don’t,” she said again, her voice much lower. “But I don’t want to force you to turn something you haven’t figured out yet into a promise. I know that world was terrifying, especially disgusting for you. You hated it. I also know you hate being forced to perform any feeling.”
Wednesday looked at her.
Enid always understood more than Wednesday expected.
This was dangerous.
And rare.
“So I just want to know,” Enid said. “Do you regret it?”
Wednesday’s heart stopped for a second.
Not in the physiological sense. That would have been simpler, and easier to handle. She merely felt something deep in her chest, something that had been tightly drawn for days, touched with precision, and the pain of it nearly made her want to cut off the conversation at once with something cruel.
She did not.
The dormitory was very quiet.
This time, there was no audience. No Yoko, no Ajax, no destiny prom, no cooperative weather, no background music. Outside the window was an ordinary Nevermore dusk, shadows slowly climbing up along the corners of the walls. Enid stood a few steps away. Although she was clearly a little taller than Wednesday, her nervousness made her seem as if she had compressed herself smaller. Wednesday suddenly remembered how accustomed she had once been to using force of presence to erase every physical difference, and at this moment, all she could think was that Enid’s height made her uncertainty more visible, and her waiting more impossible to hide.
Wednesday took one step forward.
Enid did not move.
“I regret many things,” Wednesday said.
A little color drained from Enid’s face.
Wednesday continued, “I regret that the curse exposed private emotional responses before I had adequate preparation. I regret that Yoko witnessed too much. I regret that I did not destroy the band equipment before the prom ended. I regret that you saw frosting on my hands during couples’ baking.”
Enid’s eyes were faintly red, but the final sentence made her freeze.
Wednesday looked at her, her voice lowering.
“But I do not regret kissing you.”
Enid’s breath stopped.
After the sentence was spoken, the world did not collapse.
There were no fireworks.
No slow motion.
No rain.
Nor was there any evidence that the structure of reality was once again becoming romanticized.
Wednesday waited half a second, confirmed that the universe had not interfered, and then continued, “I despise the way that world arranged it. It was like an aesthetically deficient invader with no sense of boundaries, presuming to decide the setting, rhythm, and audience for me. That is what I am angry about.”
She stopped, her fingers curling slightly.
“Not you.”
.·.··.·.··.··.·.·.·
The tears in Enid’s eyes finally rose to the surface.
She did not cry. She only looked at Wednesday, as if trying very hard to believe every word she had just heard.
“So…” Enid’s voice was very soft. “If there’s no curse now, no plot, nothing forcing you…”
Wednesday looked at her.
Enid pressed her lips together, then still finished the question.
“Would you still want to kiss me?”
The question was extremely direct.
Far more direct than Wednesday usually permitted humans to be with her. It had no packaging, no joke, and no escape route left for her. Yet this time, Wednesday found that she was not angry.
She only felt that running away was exhausting.
Those records, suspicions, prevention lists, and residual curse hypotheses were all like temporary obstacles she had piled between herself and Enid. They had indeed protected her for several days, allowing her to pretend everything was still a research problem, to pretend she was not afraid that once she admitted it, she would lose the last of her position as an observer.
But she had never been an observer.
Not since she had failed to step back inside that absurd world. Not since she had kissed Enid again after they returned to the dorm. Not since she had accepted that cup of hot cocoa, crossed out “Enid Sinclair” in her notebook, and failed to deny their status in the dining hall. She had already stepped inside long ago.
Wednesday reached out and caught Enid by the cuff.
The movement made Enid’s eyes widen slightly.
She did not pull hard. She only drew Enid a little closer in front of her. Because of the difference in height, when Enid lowered her head, she was very obviously restraining some kind of expression. Wednesday saw it, and her gaze turned cold.
“If you dare make any comment about this angle, I will ensure that for one week you can only consume food through a straw.”
The corner of Enid’s mouth trembled. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face did.”
“My face is trying very hard right now.”
“Not hard enough.”
Enid finally laughed.
The sound was quiet, carrying a tremor of tears that had not quite fallen, yet it was more real than every laugh she had used over the past few days to conceal her unease. Wednesday looked at her and suddenly felt that the entire world was quiet in an appropriate way.
This silence had not been arranged by the curse.
It was the blank space left behind after they had finally stopped escaping.
Wednesday looked up at Enid, her hand still gripping Enid’s cuff.
“The answer is yes,” she said.
Then she kissed her.
This kiss did not carry the same urgency as the last one, when it had seemed to happen just before the world collapsed. Nor did it have the absurd grandeur of the prom, where background music had pushed them both to the edge of a cliff. It was quieter, clearer, and more like someone taking back a rhythm that had originally been stolen from her. Wednesday first kissed Enid on the mouth, very lightly, almost as though confirming whether reality still permitted her to do this. Enid’s breath trembled in that instant, her hand stopping in midair, as if she were still waiting for permission.
Wednesday let go of her cuff and took her hand instead.
This was more of an answer than the kiss.
Enid finally closed her eyes and kissed her back.
There was the waiting of the past few days in that response, as well as the panic that had never been properly explained after the curse. There was a little grievance, and even more of the careful warmth that came from finally being chosen. She did not rush to get too close, but she did not step back anymore either. Wednesday felt Enid’s fingers slowly tighten around hers, as if she had finally confirmed that this time, she did not need to wonder whether she was misreading.
Wednesday’s reason issued a faint protest from somewhere far away.
It reminded her that they were kissing in the dormitory, and that this fact itself could not completely avoid suspicion of romantic narrative contamination. It reminded her that Enid’s lips tasted faintly of hot cocoa, and that hot beverages had already been classified as high-risk media. It reminded her that if someone walked in at this moment, she might need to immediately devise an extremely meticulous act of revenge.
Wednesday temporarily ignored all of these reminders.
She was busy.
Enid laughed softly between kisses.
Wednesday opened her eyes, her gaze dangerous. “What are you laughing at?”
Enid’s forehead nearly touched hers, then stopped very close, as if she had remembered that Wednesday did not necessarily like sudden proximity. “I was just thinking… this time really isn’t the plot.”
“That you only understand this now is disappointing.”
“No.” Enid’s eyes were still a little red, but her smile was very soft. “I mean, this time, you wrote it back yourself.”
Wednesday went quiet for a moment.
That sentence was far too accurate.
The curse had stolen her rhythm. The world had used vulgar tropes to perform ahead of her all the things she had not yet been ready to hand over. But at this moment, no external force was compelling her. She had come over herself, caught Enid by the cuff herself, admitted she had no regrets herself, kissed her herself.
She had taken back the scene the romantic comedy had stolen from her.
Made it hers.
Wednesday looked at Enid and finally said, “If I am the one writing it, at least its narrative quality will be higher than the original.”
Enid laughed out loud.
This time, Wednesday did not stop her.
She only pulled Enid closer again and kissed that laugh away.
.·.··.·.··.··.·.·.·
The next morning, Wednesday wrote her conclusion on the final page of Observation Record on Residual Romantic Comedy Contamination and Structural Abnormalities in Reality.
Conclusion:
The structure of reality is no longer under continued romantic comedy control.
The curse has been lifted.
Recent abnormal incidents can be partially attributed to excessive peer interference, coincidence, Yoko’s criminal curiosity, and Ajax’s basic lack of spatial control.
The subject’s hostility toward the romantic comedy genre remains unchanged.
The subject does not regret kissing Enid Sinclair.
The relevant emotional response was not generated by external force.
The tip of her pen stopped for a moment.
Then she wrote:
The curse stole the rhythm of expression, but it could not fabricate willingness.
This sentence appeared excessively close to an emotional conclusion.
Wednesday stared at it and considered deleting it.
In the end, she did not.
She closed the notebook.
Enid was still asleep in her bed.
This originally should not have happened. After they had kissed the night before, Enid had merely sat on the edge of the bed and talked with her, talked until very late, and eventually fallen asleep against the pillows. In theory, Wednesday could have woken her and ordered her back to her own bed.
She had not.
This execution failure had resulted in Enid currently sleeping very peacefully while holding Wednesday’s pillow, her hair scattered across the black pillowcase in an act of chromatic invasion.
Wednesday walked to the bedside and looked down at her.
The morning light was gray and pale, possessing no cinematic quality whatsoever. Outside the window, a crow called once, its voice hoarse and reassuring. Nevermore was still Nevermore. Cold, strange, entirely unromantic. There was simply one extra werewolf in the bed, with poor sleeping posture and an extreme capacity for inconvenience.
Enid shifted in her sleep and murmured, “Wednesday…”
Wednesday went still for one second.
“If you are awake, I will classify this as deliberate manipulation of the morning atmosphere.”
Enid did not wake. She only hugged the pillow tighter.
Wednesday looked at her occupied pillow and briefly considered reclaiming it. In the end, she reached out and pulled the blanket a little higher over Enid’s shoulder.
The movement was very light.
Too light to resemble her.
She decided not to record it.
“I still hate romantic comedies,” Wednesday said quietly.
Enid seemed to smile in her sleep.
Wednesday narrowed her eyes. “You had better not have heard that.”
No response.
Good.
She stood beside the bed in silence for a moment, then finally added:
“But I do not hate you.”
After the sentence was spoken, reality remained stable.
No music. No change in lighting. No one applauded.
Wednesday waited for a full five seconds.
Confirmed safety.
She reached her final conclusion: she was no longer inside a romantic comedy.
Very unfortunately, she appeared to have retained a girlfriend.
Current observations indicated that she had no intention of returning her.