Ch 77: Why Not Me?
What in the world is this girl talking about? Lucien thought, studying Eleena with open bewilderment as she fumed at him with eyes blazing.
She was not finished. "Melissa is not the kind of girl you believe her to be," Eleena declared.
"I am not," Melissa choked from behind him, stepping out from his back to glare back at Eleena.
What could have possibly happened between these two to bring things to this point? Lucien thought grimly. He should have intervened sooner, much sooner, and the regret of not doing so sat heavily on him now. Had he stepped in even a few minutes earlier, the situation might never have fallen so far beyond the point of repair. Now both girls were glaring daggers at each other with the intensity that made it seem like they would launch themself at each other. Eleena looked like someone who wanted nothing more than to repay the debt of that slap across her cheek, while Melissa, on the other hand, was barely keeping her tears from spilling over again, and even in that fragile state she looked fully capable of reaching out and yanking Eleena's cap clean off her head and tangling her fingers into Eleena's hair and pulling them apart.
Lucien could not quite believe he was not dreaming. For a brief moment he genuinely questioned it and hoped it to be a dream. But the world around him was far too sharp and solid and painfully real for that to be the case, so he set the thought aside and focused on what he could actually do about the situation in front of him.
"Whatever you are imagining is wrong, Eleena," Lucien stated firmly. "Melissa is not the kind of girl you fear she is."
He released Eleena's wrist. "She is a good and kind girl."
"No, she is not," Eleena shot back, shaking her head with the fervent conviction of someone who had already made up their mind and could not understand why no one else was willing to see it. Her face twisted with a sense of outrage and disbelief that Lucien was not taking her words seriously.
"Please, you have to believe me," Eleena pleaded, stamping her foot against the floor.
"Enough of this, Student Eleena," Lucien ordered, his patience wearing visibly thin as he watched her carry on in a manner so far removed from the composed girl he had known before. This was entirely unlike her.
"Apologize to Melissa immediately," he demanded.
As Lucien had expected, Eleena froze on the spot and stared at him as though she were looking at a complete stranger.
***
Eleena could not believe what she had just heard. He was asking her to apologize to Melissa. She searched Lucien's face, looking for some sign that he was joking, but his expression was as unreadable and impassive as it had ever been. And surely, surely he should have been asking who had started this, because it was not her. She had not laid a hand on Melissa. Lucien had caught her arm before she could even begin to return the slap, a slap that had come so fast and so completely without warning that she, an Elite [Upper], had been wholly unable to dodge it. One moment Melissa had looked on the verge of breaking into tears and the next her palm had connected with Eleena's face before Eleena's body had had any chance at all to react.
Eleena shifted her gaze reluctantly to Melissa. The girl was holding herself together by a thread, her eyes still wet and rimmed with red, the faint tracks of shed tears still visible along her cheeks. Her lips were pressed inward so tightly they had nearly disappeared. And then Eleena's gaze dropped lower and she noticed that Melissa's hand was curled into the fabric of Lucien's shirt, gripping it between her fingers.
For a moment Eleena felt her own breath catch, and she snapped her eyes back up to Melissa's face with a sharp glare.
Something tightened violently in Eleena's chest and the air left her lungs in a single sharp rush. Her eyes snapped to Melissa's face, blazing. "You bitch," Eleena snapped, her voice cracking at the edges. "Why are you grabbing onto Luci- Professor's shirt?"
And, as Eleena had expected from a girl like Melissa, she faked being terrified and winced. Melissa pulled a face as though she were seconds away from breaking into another bout of tears, and yet the girl did not let go. Her fingers stayed tangled in Lucien's shirt without any intention of releasing it.
Before Eleena could hold her glare any longer, Lucien shifted and drew Melissa behind him, positioning his body between the two of them and cutting off Eleena's line of sight to her entirely. Eleena lifted her face to Lucien, her eyes trembling with everything she could not bring herself to say out loud. He was shielding Melissa. He was standing between them and shielding her, and offering Eleena nothing in return, not even a single word of acknowledgment that Melissa had been the one to throw the first blow.
Why not me? The thought drove into her like something sharp and cold. Why is he not standing for me when Melissa was the one who slapped me first?
Eleena searched his expression desperately for something, anything, some flicker of softness or recognition or even the smallest trace of the way he used to look at her, but there was nothing. No care. No worries. No warmth. Nothing directed at her at all. "What happened to you?" she whispered, her fists clenching tight at her sides. "You were never like this before."
"Student Eleena," Lucien repeated, his voice turning glacially cold, "say sorry to Student Melissa. Now."
Eleena's lips pressed together until they ached. Every part of her wanted to cross the distance between them and grab hold of his shirt the way Melissa was doing and demand to know how far that girl's hold on him had already gone, and whether there was still any part of him left that she could pull free. But every time she so much as shifted her weight in his direction, his arm came up or his foot moved sideways and the space between them remained exactly as wide as it had been.
"Student Eleena, apologize right now, or do not force me to file an official complaint against you," Lucien demanded, and his voice this time carried both frustration and cold fury in equal measure.
Why? The question tore through her silently and found no answer anywhere. Why are you this protective of her and this willing to set me aside as though I am no one?
"I am sorry, Melissa," Eleena said at last, clipping each word short and offering nothing beyond them, no sincerity, no warmth, no hands pressed to her ears in the formal gesture of apology. She turned and walked away without waiting to hear another word. But she did not leave without first letting her eyes find Lucien's face one last time, holding his gaze for a single burning moment before she turned her back and was gone.
***
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