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With every passing day getting harder to appreciate, the photographer had begun to resent the sound of his own shutter. It wasn’t because of how it clicked with the hollow insistence of a clock counting down to some humiliating extinction, but because of the tragic situation its owner was in. For months he had prowled the streets with a hunger that curdled into desperation, searching for a scandal worthy of ink, a revelation that would elevate his name beyond the column of mediocrity in which it had stagnated. His editor’s patience had thinned to a filament. He had been told in a voice that lacquered with feigned civility that another week without a headline, and his position would dissolve into nothingness.
He was Ixian by birth, though he concealed it beneath the careful neutrality of his voice. That heritage, once a source of pride, was now stained by his constant failures. Yet it was precisely that lineage which allowed his eyes to discern what others might overlook.
He had nearly resigned himself to failure on a cold afternoon.
He loitered near a café filled with decorations and signs, pretending to review notes while contemplating the humiliation of returning to his cramped apartment with nothing but trivialities to submit. Groups of people drifted in and out, laughing and speaking lightly of their daily affairs. He could do nothing but glance at them from time to time with detached irritation.
Then, as if destiny showed him a drop of mercy to ease his nerves, he saw a moving figure that marched outside while making eccentric gestures.
Without a chance to blend into the crowd, and stripped away from ceremonial regalia and royal insignia, Apollo walked out with a demeanor that gave out his upcoming. His posture screamed of a discipline forged in harsher climates than the mild human times.
The photographer recognized him instantly, though his memories of the boy were leaning to more formal themes. If every area of his brain still moved properly, then the horned being that was in front of him was the Prince of Ixia.
His pulse quickly accelerated with the thought of capturing the heir of a realm with his camera. It would be no minor triumph, as a mere photo, an interview, or a simple statement could restore his standing. He straightened, preparing to approach and enforce his duty. But he had to stop his steps when he realized Apollo’s gestures were directed at a girl with white hair that walked by his side.
She emerged from the café with Apollo, gently going through the door the young Prince held open for her. She was not adorned in the same air of elegance as he was, her clothes were closer to practical austerity. Her white hair attempted to melt with her pale skin and her faintly sardonic expression. Even from a distance, the man who observed them could tell that she spoke freely and with a strong tone while she played with the chains that hung from her skirt. He also noticed how Apollo inclined his head toward her with a focus that was unsettling to outsiders like him. They walked close enough for their sleeves to brush, though neither appeared conscious of the proximity.
The journalist narrowed his eyes, observing the subtleties passerbies dismissed in their ignorance. Apollo’s habitual arrogance and tone seemed a little tempered in her presence. The girl possessed an air of realism that did not wilt before this strong personality. At times, she laughed, responding to his comments with a low voice. Apollo received everything she said with remarks that made her roll her eyes, yet she did not stop their conversation. They moved as though accustomed to orbiting one another.
The photographer’s mind, long starved of opportunity, started a feverish calculation, something infinitely more combustible than serious and valuable questions.
A prince displaced from his realm with a girl at his side. No formal announcement and no official confirmation behind their joyful conversations. The narrative assembled itself in his mind with intoxicating speed.
He moved back slightly, acting with disinterest while raising his camera with discretion. The lens captured Apollo’s face perfectly as they turned. Another frame preserved the closeness they shared when they whispered to each other, though it was a much more scandalous shot.
The young students crossed the street and only stopped to read the various posters that were lined up in the buildings.
Watching their bodies disappear in the distance, he imagined the headline before he had even called his colleagues: “Prince of Ixia tangled in a possible romance.”
The phrasing pulsed through his mind violently, compelling him to adjust the angle of his camera and capture them as they resumed their walk toward a nearby store. He followed at a cautious distance, preserving the illusion of coincidence in case he was discovered, but his concentration was frequently interrupted by his joy.
That evening he composed the article with strong exhilaration. He insinuated clandestine meetings, referencing Apollo’s royal heritage with dramatism, emphasizing the tension between duty and youth. He described his company as enigmatic, mysterious enough to not even have a name, as all she needed was an eccentric enough title to cover for her missing identity. The contrast in their appearances alone was irresistible. Not even him nor his coworkers could believe the story he had prepared. He selected the most suggestive photographs, arranging them with what he considered to be a strategic position. Once he was finished, all he had to do was present what would be his salvation.
By morning, even the students at Blackmore Academy had heard of the news, whispering to each other with surprise as they eyed the newspapers passerbies held. They gathered in clusters, either dismissing what they had seen as sensationalism or dissecting every photo. The phrase “Prince Apollo of Ixia” reverberated through corridors that had previously regarded him merely as an exceptional, if insufferably proud, classmate. Now he was recast as a romantic figure, profoundly taken by life.
Graves’ name circulated with equal fervor, but with much more annoying comments. Had she ensnared him deliberately? Had he succumbed to human distraction? The narrative for their love story multiplied beyond the journalist's initial projection, sprouting embellishments of its own. The laughter of many started to mingle with envy, as many wished to renew their interactions with intensity, searching for confirmation of what the article had proclaimed as near fact.
The reporter, for the first time in months, experienced the intoxicating ascent of relevance. Engagement like the one in the institution where Apollo and that girl studied was enough for him to rest easy with pride. His impending dismissal receded, and he could walk freely without the same laboral worries. He did not yet know that he had miscalculated the resilience of his subjects, so, for now, he reveled in the spectacle he had orchestrated, unaware that in attempting to immortalize a moment, he had merely ignited a chain of consequences far less manageable than a printed headline.
By the time it reached Graves and Apollo, it had already ripened into something ridiculous.
Their classmates had spent the better part of the morning tossing remarks into the air with the careless enthusiasm of people who had discovered a new form of entertainment. At first neither of them paid much attention. Apollo assumed it was the usual trivial gossip that clung to any environment where too many idle minds shared the same walls. Graves, for her part, had perfected the art of selective hearing long ago, allowing irrelevant chatter to pass over her consciousness like distant thunder that promised nothing of consequence. Yet the murmurs did not fade. If anything, they gathered weight. And their ignorance had allowed the murmurs to evolve into laughter cracked in brief bursts behind cupped hands, and several heads turned in their direction with an intensity that made even their strong and practiced indifference falter.
Eventually, their curiosity triumphed over their limited patience. With obvious reluctance, they followed the direction of a group of giggling faces and located the newest newspaper folded on a nearby desk inside the teachers room. Apollo leaned in first, though Graves did it without hesitation. Together, they studied the grainy photograph printed at the center of the page. The image had clearly been captured from a cautious distance, since the figures were blurred by poor lighting and uncertain focus, yet the posture and faces of the two silhouettes were unmistakable. They turned and went their separate ways, not even breathing correctly as their first reaction to their shared image. But even so, their freedom wasn’t possible with so many eyes moving up and down over their bodies.
Apollo was the first to see the article in full, for he was accustomed to scanning every surface of every object. He read the words with a cold expression that slowly transformed into something entirely different. At first, there was a flicker of offense in the corners of his mouth and eyes, but it changed to a reflexive disdain that curled his whole face. He scoffed under his breath, dismissive of the words that extended before him. An hour later, he walked firmly to the girl that appeared with him in the photo: Darcy Graves, then pointed frantically at the picture to make her lean over her desk. When she examined the headline, she let out an incredulous sound that hovered between a laugh and a groan. She seemed to miss when they only had an empty photo as their representation, and her voice shifted quickly to let Apollo know this new addition to their case was only a trouble to notice for her.
“Ew,” she muttered, trying to hide her face behind her hand.
Her response was delivered with such perfect dryness that it momentarily unsettled the boy who had expected embarrassment. She returned to her notes without another word, scratching across the paper with irregular lines.
On the surface, neither seemed especially perturbed aside from their usual annoyance. Apollo maintained his posture of indifference, determined to correct every comment that went through his ear and refusing to dignify the gossip that surrounded him. But Graves went about her day as she always did, skipping some classes to occasionally murmur to the hand hidden within her sleeve. If she noticed eyes lingering on her longer than before, she knew it would be wise to use her plan to scare them enough for them to never wish to see her face again.
But when they reunited, and their presence mixed, they could feel how the air became heavier. Now, their conversations ceased when they entered rooms, and they couldn’t look each other in the eye when laughter followed them down the hallways.
There was a peculiar cruelty in the collective imagination Blackmore Academy indulged in. The students who had never before addressed Graves now examined her when she glanced at Apollo, and despite him being accustomed to scrutiny, he found this new variety of attention distasteful. The implications embedded within the gazes that fell upon them and their suggestions were something he couldn’t stand. He began to hear things he had not permitted himself to hear before: that they were always together, that they left class at the same time even when their schedules did not align perfectly, that he lingered by the laboratory door if she was late, pretending to check the watch while scanning the corridor, and that she alone seemed unafraid to challenge him. Apollo felt an inexplicable heat rise to his face whenever those accusations flew in front of him. Even if he told himself the rumors were beneath him, he couldn’t withstand the possibility of Ixia and his own bonds to be stained.
With this thought came the realization of how knowledgeable he was when it came to Graves. He could recognize the sound of her footsteps in the hallway and the meaning of every expression she made. He had spent time saving her a seat and showing her his notes, always giving her a reason that made his every move seem detached. And though those things were simple and always excused by his swift mind, now they all seemed like a mistake made by a lost boy and not a deserving prince.
Graves, for her part, sensed the change in atmosphere but chose not to dissect it. She was no stranger to being regarded as peculiar, and any rumor that reached her ears was banal compared to the things she had heard since childhood. She continued to write and mumble in the dark corners, only offering a fight to those who truly wished to pester her. If Apollo’s name appeared more frequently in her thoughts, she attributed it to irritation.
Now, with their initial reactions and their initial predicament, they had to wait until tomorrow to see if normalcy still fought by their side. So as soon as the morning started, they locked eyes at the gates, unconsciously waiting for the other.
“You’re up early,” Apollo praised with a rather bitter tone.
“I even got here first! What would your father say if he knew…?”
“Absolutely nothing. It’s not worth it. Let’s just go.”
He got past her, almost pouting to express his disapproval and challenging her to keep up. But when they walked with mismatched steps, she caught him watching her with an intensity that had not been present before, making her lose some speed and forcing her to change her agenda to catch light air.
The only problem with her decided absence was that, when she skipped the next classes, he found himself scanning the rows of desks with a restlessness that bordered on anxiety. He could try to dismiss it, but every minute he gained more awareness of the time he wasted on his thoughts. It hurt even more now that the hours became longer with her nonappearance.
And in a repeated cycle of cat and mouse, the only way to see her was when she returned the following afternoon, carrying a stack of papers and an expression of mild exhaustion. He felt an unaccountable relief that irritated him beyond measure. He approached her desk directing his eyes to her stack of papers, only to find himself remarking that punctuality was not optional, and that she had betrayed the consistency he expected of her. She stared at him with an incredulous smile, tilting her mouth to use her mocking yet subtle tone.
“Oh, Golden Boy,” she murmured, low enough so that only he could hear. “Were you worried I’d abandoned you?”
The playfulness of her words was so natural, he considered it gentle.
“I do not concern myself with trivialities,” he replied, though his voice lacked certainty.
She arched a brow and returned to her work, apparently satisfied. Apollo retreated to his own desk, acutely conscious of the distance between them, something he had never before measured.
The headline faded from prominence but did not vanish entirely. It had planted a seed in the mind of the young prince, who found himself pondering questions he had previously dismissed as irrelevant. Why did he wait for her at the gates when their classes ended at different times? Why did the prospect of her transferring to another school, or moving away, fill him with a sharp and disproportionate irritation? What was the debt his mind looked for?
The most normal explanation that traveled through his brain was that excellence recognized excellence, and that since she was competent and inquisitive, he could see a value to her that he couldn’t recognize in other humans. After all, such qualities were scarce and therefore exclusive. But was that all?
No matter the reason, no solution would even try to give him a clue. The more he attempted to disentangle his routines from hers, the more tightly they seemed woven together.
In the midst of the silence that followed days of useless conversations, Apollo began to confront a realization he had never anticipated, and it unsettled him more profoundly than any rumor: The academy believed him entangled with Darcy Graves, and he had dismissed the notion as absurd. Yet as he traced the architecture of his days and found her name etched into its every beam, he could no longer deny that she occupied a space within his life that no one else approached. The acceptance of proximity becoming a necessity felt like an inexorable tightening. And though he would have rather faced a battlefield than that truth, all he could do was to take the sour memories and store them deep within his heart, never ready to open its valves. He had always understood his life in terms of discipline and trajectory, but Graves had slipped into that structure unnoticed, like ivy threads between stones.
With his poor knowledge on impure and wasteful things, he recognized that he liked her.
The thought was so preposterous in its simplicity that he almost laughed. Liking was a childish word, unworthy of an heir. There had been no space in the lexicon he adored for that quiet, destabilizing inclination.
Aside from bringing clarity, it brought him shame. For what was he to do with such a sentiment? He who had prided himself on self mastery now found himself undone by the mere tilt of her head. The only thing that came to mind was a technique that would categorize him as a coward when fencing: painful distance. By fixing their proximity, he would restore the equilibrium that had once existed. He would prove to himself that he remained sovereign over his own inclinations.
Thus he began, subtly at first, to withdraw.
He arrived at the laboratory precisely on time rather than a few minutes early to avoid any spark of responsibility in her. He declined her habitual invitations to walk across campus together under the fine excuse of additional training. And when she leaned toward him to examine his notes, he shifted away with casualness.
The only fault in his plan was forgetting how Graves noticed everything immediately, even when she pretended not to.
The absence of his presence registered more than his constancy ever had. She found herself glancing toward the door at the end of every class, expecting to see him waiting with a faintly impatient expression. Instead, there was only open space.
She wished to assume that some new ambition had seized him, yet the pattern persisted in the hours that they usually shared. And this threatening silence only made her realize how his gaze slid past her more quickly than ever, and how his replies shortened when his theatrics were almost part of his identity.
It irritated her so deeply, one afternoon, she made a desperate move and asked him to advance their project together.
She waited until the light settled correctly on the tables, and, after enduring his third silenced comment of her laboratory technique, she set her tools down bordering violence.
“Do you have something to say?” She asked, raising her chin along with her tone.
Apollo blinked twice, nervously taking a step back and picking up a defensive tone he couldn’t handle.
“Me? No. Are you so eager to hear me speak?”
“Yeah. I want to know about whatever game you think you are playing.”
He stiffened, instinctively reacting as if being attacked by a thin and cruel sword.
“I am playing no game. Have you gone completely mad?”
“You are,” she replied, getting off her seat and stepping closer until the sterile scent of her gloves was replaced by the sharper fragrance of his cologne. “You have been orbiting me for months, and now you pretend I am invisible. Decide which delusion you prefer.”
Her words were close enough to the truth to make his skin even more red, filling him with a soft fever.
“This is absurd. You are imagining things,” he began to explain, but his words lacked conviction.
She folded her arms, staring at him with stern eyes that slowly pulled a reaction from every nerve inside of him.
“If you find my company so intolerable, say it plainly. I have no patience for this.”
He searched his own mind for the appropriate answer and found none that did not unravel him further. The laboratory seemed suddenly too small, as if the walls were closing to punish him. He realized with a kind of dreadful clarity that he could not endure her walking away under the belief that he rejected her. So in the scenery of an empty space, where only she was present to listen, he tried to explain the constant movement of his affections.
“You misunderstand,” he said at last, almost mumbling.
“Do I? Then enlighten me.”
“I have not withdrawn because I dislike your presence,” he forced himself to say. “Quite the contrary.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly, but she pressed her lips to not give in to a greater reaction. At her silence, he swallowed the many excuses that came to mind with visible effort and began to speak again.
“I did it because I find that your presence has become… Excessive to my thoughts,” he confessed. “I did not anticipate that you would occupy them so persistently.”
She simply stared at him, observing his face with disbelief rather than dissecting his words. Even if she paid attention to what he said, all she could point out from it was the nervous movement of his lips and the subtle tremble of his fingers.
“You are embarrassed!” She said after a short laugh.
“I am not.”
“Yes, you are!”
He exhaled sharply, defeated by the accuracy of her perception.
“I do not indulge in distractions.”
“And I’m a distraction.”
“You are,” he admitted, meeting her gaze with a candor that felt almost violent. “You are the only one who has ever been. Isn’t that bad enough?”
She had not prepared for this stark admission. Her own feelings, which she had kept neatly folded and unnamed, stirred restlessly under his question. She was the one who started this, so could she retreat?
She stepped closer, erasing the final measure of distance he had so painstakingly constructed.
“You thought you could simply step back and I wouldn’t notice.”
“I had hoped. But you are really persistent, aren’t you?”
“And you are the least subtle person I have ever met.”
They stayed silent, pouting and scoffing at the other to not say more than needed. Both of them knew they were standing in far too dangerous territory.
“You could have told me,” she said, lowering her tone and looking away.
“Well, I didn’t know how. It was hard enough to do it now…”
She turned again, realizing their closeness and the weight of his words. With such implications, could she simply take his words and leave their tension to tomorrow? His eyes looked at her from time to time, doubting at the sight of her lips. Didn’t that deserve a response? Graves smiled, thinking about silencing his next sentence. And without thinking, she rose slightly, closing the last breath of space between them. Then, with a decisiveness that startled even herself, Graves cupped his jaw and pressed her lips to his, clumsily holding onto him to not fall. It was certainly not elegant, but it was warm in its imperfection. Even so, Apollo froze, trying to respond by bringing calm to her gesture.
When they parted, both were completely lost, trying to find a sign for what their next move should be.
“This changes nothing,” Apollo murmured, holding her side lightly.
“Is it illegal on Ixia to teach anything about emotions? Of course it does,” she replied.
He almost argued, but to prove her wrong, he leaned forward again, imitating her kiss with the same pride tainting his face.
The kiss might have remained a private moment, had fate not possessed such an irreverent sense of humor.
Perched at the periphery of that moment, crouched behind a column with the desperate vigilance of a starving man, stood the architect of the original rumor, holding his camera with joyful strength.
After the first article and the fleeting thrill of relevance, he had tasted a thin, metallic disappointment. The headline had burned brightly for a week, then guttered into background noise. His colleagues started to ask him for his next work, thinking that he would have another moment to generate speculation with, but he had nothing to show besides the pride he still carried from his past. He had followed his instinct and been rewarded with temporary triumph, but it had decayed quicker than he expected.
So his only solution was to linger around Blackmore Academy, trusting the indications of a friend who assured him that the prince —and consequently, the girl— would be there.
Through the narrow glass pane in the laboratory door, he caught the unmistakable silhouette of two figures standing too close for his photos to be just for free interpretation. He adjusted the focus of his lens with shaking hands, holding his breath and comments until he had the perfect shot.
He captured the first contact of their mouths, and the second. Clicking frantically as he mumbled to himself. His movements attempted to be careful, but they eventually encountered the senses of Graves, who broke the kiss abruptly, putting her attention on the source of their worries. Apollo followed her gaze, confused, and tried to sense the same danger she seemed to feel.
“Shut up. I think there’s someone out there,” she murmured.
The photographer had the misfortune of meeting her eyes through the glass at that precise instant, realizing the sin he just committed. Without a second thought, he ran away from the scene of his own crime. His footsteps echoed too loudly, betraying his panic, but he did not look back. He was too busy imagining the headline already forming. He almost laughed in relief, but his peace was interrupted by a strange sound coming from behind. It didn’t sound like any wandering student, it was more like a dragging step and pulsing granite scattering across the floor, accompanied by a low, collective murmur that curdled the blood. Against his better judgment, he glanced over his shoulder, becoming a witness of the most disturbing sight his eyes could perceive. Zombies, unmistakable and grotesquely real, shambled down the corridor with a determination that defied reason. Their bodies emerged from a small grave that trembled like an illusion, feeding into their desire and hunger.
He screamed nervously, close to praying, and ran with his camera clutched to his chest.
Apollo stepped into the corridor moments later, checking to see if any student caught their act. Graves stood beside him, analyzing the gestures of his mentor, unnervingly calm with the situation.
But the chase they prepared didn’t end at the academy gates. The photographer fled through streets that were as suffocating as a crowded room just to get a better chance to escape, feeling his lungs burn. By the time he reached his apartment, fumbling with the key in urgency, he could feel the cold exhalations of the nearest corpse at his back.
He slammed the door and collapsed against it, sobbing. The pounding began minutes later, slowly driving him to madness, and it lasted until dawn. Only then did he decide to crawl to his camera, watching the sun touch it slightly before dying in the night. His fingers roamed over it before destroying his salvation, afraid that it would become the real reason for his perdition.
The next edition bore a different tone, printed in large, almost hysterical letters, the title presented: “Mina” Found Intoxicated Outside Jezebel's. The article was detailed, vivid, and entirely ridiculous. The photographer had decided that proximity to the Prince of Ixia was hazardous to his continued existence, and the same prince giggled with cruelty along with his girlfriend while reading the newer works of the man, admitting that they were truly needed in his career.
Back at school, Apollo and Graves returned to their routines with a subtle alteration that only the most observant might detect. They stood closer without any formed limits now, and their arguments retained their bite but carried beneath them a current of familiarity that felt conspiratorial.
Graves found herself more aware of the warmth of his hand when it brushed hers over books, and he could finally appreciate the way her gaze softened with compassion for the finer things. The girl hadn’t transformed into something saccharine or overtly sentimental. She still called him names with infuriating consistency, and even rolled her eyes when he lapsed into grand monologues about Ixia’s superiority. But there were moments, when she allowed herself to rest her head briefly against his shoulder, allowing the love she never got to witness infect her heart. And maybe that hope had also helped Apollo, who sighed more calmly now, thinking of the day in which his emotions may reach a higher place than their current human expression.
“I do not hate you as much as I would like to,” she joked as she wrote efficiently, making loud sounds with the keys under her fingers.
He looked at her with solemnity, faking an enamoured reaction as he gestured greatly with his arms and hands.
“I shall endeavor to correct that oversight.”
She snorted softly, leaning closer to push his arms down.
“So you take easy jobs now? How lazy…”
He stopped, offended by her quick stab. He quickly reacted with fury, defending his lineage and purpose as if she truly wished to attack him. But Graves was glad, since she wouldn’t want any other variation of his behavior. This was the person she estimated, and if their confession changed that, she would have felt rather disappointed. But this was the same Apollo she met in their first class together. The acknowledgment of his feelings had not diminished him. If anything, it had rendered him sharper and more deliberate in his choices. He had also gained the ability to notice the lonely sides of her life, making him wish behind a deep silence that one day, he could fill in the gaps of that mortal torture, and thank her properly for showing him the joys of simplicity.