Faint rays of sunlight, already muffled by the thick clouds that persistently hung in the sky over Aurelius University, softly drifted past the cheap blinds of the college dormitories before landing on the carpet below. At first, the sunbeams went completely unnoticed by the person who called this dorm room ho, though not because she had lost herself in the comforting arms of slumber.
Chloé Belmont, the girl whose very being had sohow been scattered between multiple planes of existence, didn’t sleep anymore.
The only way to relax was to revert to her natural state, which, as best she could tell, was so kind of ethereal, formless thing only held together by her own consciousness. While in that state, she hovered between Earth and Purgatory, and perceiving anything happening on campus ant putting in just a little more effort than she preferred. The beams of sunlight that slowly crept across her floor, for example, barely looked any different than the rest of her room.
She eventually pieced together the distinction, and prepared herself to face the coming day. Sunlight ant dawn, which ant she only had an hour or so left before it was ti to get ready for classes. Her roommate, Kendra, was likely to get up early and make herself breakfast, and it was a good idea to show herself to avoid any suspicious absences from Kendra’s point of view.
Until Kendra woke up, however, the night was still hers.
So she waited.
She looked at her computer, filled to the brim with interesting gas and movies, and recalled how much effort it would take to keep herself manifested enough to engage with any of them. Effort that, if she expended now, she might not have the next ti soone accidentally bumped into her in a hallway at school. How would she explain to a stranger that their arm had just phased through her body?
No, better to wait and avoid the risk.
She instead watched the beams of sunlight as they continued to fill the room, trying to get better at judging the passage of ti through their movent. Once she felt like half an hour had passed, she reached for her phone and checked the ti. She’d been a little off, it had actually been closer to forty-five minutes, but she was still happy that she’d been sowhat close. After manifesting enough to unplug her phone, she tucked it in her pocket and began preparing for her walk to the front door.
She flew into the common area, confird that Kendra was awake and making a ss as usual, then returned to her room and committed to her physical form. Sound, color, and gravity all appeared at once, literally and figuratively grounding her as she reached for the handle.
“Morning, Kendra,” Chloé muttered, along with a non-committal wave.
“Oh, Chloé, hey!” Kendra said, looking over her shoulder. “Any chance you could pick up the kitchen at all today? It’s getting a little ssy.”
Of course it’s ssy, you never clean up after yourself…
“Um, I’ll try, but I’m pretty swamped with classes and howork today,” Chloé said.
“Ugh, you’ve been saying that ever since the sester started! What on Earth did you do to your schedule, girl?” Kendra groaned.
Chloé pretended to have a text co in, looking quickly at her phone. “Sorry, gotta run!” After one last wave goodbye, Chloé walked out the front door and closed it behind her. Thankfully, fortune had her back this morning, and the hallway was completely deserted. With a sigh of relief, she retreated to her natural state and began heading towards her first class of the day.
To avoid any accidental voyeurism, she flew up through the ceiling and made sure to skirt around other dorm rooms as she traveled. She passed through walls, doors, and floors as easily as she’d previously walked across a room, though she still found a bit of excitent each ti she erged dozens of feet above the campus. Hovering over the sidewalks that crisscrossed between buildings, she had a spectacular view of Aurelius University, and at tis she flew high enough to appreciate the massive forest preserve just outside of campus.
Within minutes, she’d arrived at Brandt Hall. The ability to phase through walls ant she’d arrived quite early, so she passed ti by simply floating above the desks in the classroom and watching the clock. As she waited, she checked her phone to see if any texts had co in during the several seconds she’d manifested back in her dorm.
Predictably, there were none.
As she stared at her phone, her eyes lingering on the complete lack of service it got while suspended between planes, she considered shifting it back to Earth to check again, but decided against it. Instead, she slid her backpack off and manifested it atop a desk in the back corner of the classroom. Then, after most other students had arrived and class was monts away from starting, she flew towards the nearest bathroom to prepare.
The irony of her current situation was not lost on her. After finally coming to terms with her transgender identity, public bathrooms had imdiately beco a source of great distress. In her hotown, using a public bathroom always carried the risk of being confronted by soone who was determined to make her life miserable. For years, she did everything she could to avoid using public bathrooms at all, but thankfully people at Aurelius University never gave her trouble. Now, as she constantly fought against the limitations of her physical form, public bathrooms had beco a bastion of safety.
No one questioned people walking into or out of the bathroom. Their existence mostly faded into the bathroom, and because students normally only spent a few minutes inside, it was never suspicious to see soone leaving a bathroom that you didn’t see enter. In Chloé’s case, all she had to do was wait until the bathroom was empty, manifest in a stall, then walk out into the building like she was a perfectly normal human.
From there, it was a quick walk to the classroom, at which point she walked over to her backpack and slid into the desk she’d reserved for herself. She angled herself out slightly, making sure she had perfect vision of the students in front of and beside her, then took the risk of removing her own tangibility.
The burden of manifestation receded slightly, and she did her best to focus as class began in earnest.
She listened as best she could, occasionally restoring the sense of touch in her hands to take notes, all while paying careful attention to the students around her. For better or for worse, people had a habit of ignoring her, and she wasn’t about to argue with the good fortune of not being incredibly popular.
Roughly an hour and a half later, her first period of respite arrived. She let all the other students leave first, to ensure no accidental bumps, then carefully picked up her things and returned to the bathroom.
Alright, Chloé, one class down. Let’s keep it up!
The first class was always the easiest, but she tried to stay optimistic as she closed a bathroom stall behind her. Another deep sigh, a release of tension, and her body disappeared once more. She let a few minutes pass, and as soon as the bathroom was completely empty, she unlocked the stall and started off towards her next class.
Unfortunately, both corner seats had been claid by the ti Chloé arrived.
Ugh, shoot. Why are they here so early? Okay, think. Is it better to get a better seat early, or wait longer but get a worse seat? Probably the latter, right? I’m already starting to feel so exhaustion kicking in, and trying to stay tangible for an entire class sounds like a nightmare.
Her decision made, she once again erged from the nearest bathroom. As she entered the classroom, however, her heart skipped a beat as she saw Sam sitting in the front row. His ssy brown hair had grown out slightly over Winter Break, and his muscular physique was sowhat hidden beneath a thick sweater. He smiled as Chloé walked in, scattering a flock of butterflies in her stomach as she returned his enthusiastic grin.
“Hey, Chloé, there you are!” Sam said, gesturing towards his jacket that he’d draped over the desk next to him. “Here, I saved you a seat!”
How could I forget about Sam’s class? Okay, you can do this, it’s worth it. He’s worth it!
“Sam, thank you so much!” Chloé said, taking a seat next to him. As she did so, he imdiately leaned over and clapped a hand on her shoulder, causing her to blush for a mont while also trying extra hard to keep herself physically present.
“How’ve you been? Do anything fun over the weekend?” he asked.
“Um, nothing really… A couple shows, a bit of gaming, it wasn’t too crazy. What about you? Get any good gas in?”
Relaxing back into his seat, Sam began pulling folders out of his backpack. “Nah, nothing too crazy. Got a good workout in, but otherwise it’s been about the sa. You still enjoying Cyberpunk? I heard it’s been a pretty rough launch, but admittedly I haven’t played it myself.”
Okay, what about gravity? As long as I focus, I won’t need to grab the desk too hard to keep myself seated.
Quickly freeing herself from gravity’s hold, Chloé redoubled her grip on the desk to prevent herself from floating away. “It’s definitely buggier than I was expecting, that’s for sure, but I’m still having fun with it. It’s a really pretty world, and I like a lot of the writing! Although, I’ll admit weird bugs don’t always break my imrsion as much as they might for other people.”
Their conversation drifted into generic small talk for a few minutes before the professor called for everyone to quiet down. At that point, as nice as it was to sit next to Sam, it was hard to deny the extra strain of keeping herself tangible at all tis. He was a fairly affectionate person, sothing that had made her feel welcod and appreciated only a few months prior, but now that appreciation ca at a cost.
On two separate occasions, she was forced to fight off one of her strange spasms. She didn’t fully understand them, but to the best of her understanding, they were simply a side-effect of trying to overextend her manifestation abilities. In her mind, she likened them to the cramps she used to get when she overused weak muscles back when she had a normal body.
The second ti, Sam even noticed that she wasn’t feeling well. He leaned closer, placed a hand on her arm, and whispered “Hey, you doing alright? You look a little pale.”
“Yeah, I’m…” Chloé winced, putting all her focus into preventing her body from disappearing or her hair turning white. “Just a bit of, uh, back pain. It’ll pass.”
Seconds later, the spasm ended, and Chloé flashed a weak smile at Sam before the both of them turned their attention back to class. With only fifteen minutes left at that point, she tried to focus on the upcoming break she had, during which she’d be able to recuperate so of her strength. The seconds ticked on, minutes slowly adding up as she watched the clock, and finally the mont arrived. The professor wrote their howork assignnt on the board, she took a mont to record it like she always did, then she packed up her backpack as quickly as she could.
Beside her, Sam tried to speak up, and she was forced to cut him off. “Sorry, Sam, but I need to run. I’ve got so painkillers, but I need to get to the bathroom first.”
Seemingly alard at her insistence, Sam simply nodded before Chloé turned and bolted for the exit. Every fiber of her being scread in protest as she walked, and each step threatened to shake her already tenuous hold of the gravity holding her to the floor. Approaching the exit, she saw several students lingering and blocking the doorway. Without a second thought, her desperation forcing her hand, she raised her voice and spoke as sharply as she could to make a path for herself.
“Excuse !”
Two of the students gave her nasty looks and rolled their eyes, but she didn’t care. She needed to let go, to take a breath after more than an hour of intense focus, and she likely only had seconds left. The sounds of the students around her began to cut in and out, her vision briefly flashed to a colorless view of familiar, flat grays, and her pinky finger phased through the handle of the bathroom before the rest of her hand found purchase. She pushed open the door, ran for a stall, and locked it behind her before gasping and letting go.
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