*TW: Some parts of this chapter may be upsetting to some readers.* {Explicit mention of Su* and self-H* }
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It was hard for her but she wanted to keep living. She held onto every type of motivation, without really putting herself first.
It was therefore no surprise when those flames of motivation began to go out one by one.
Which led her to simply follow a direction that seemed simpler, less mentally constraining, and apparently she was good at it. People said she was talented.
But she was just a simple being trying to live one day at a time.
Fortunately, during that grey period, she was able to count on her family.
Happiness was so fragile, disappearing at the slightest jolt, giving way to a torrent of negative feelings.
One more day, that was all she needed for now. Just one more day, as unremarkable as possible. That was all Cassandre was asking for.
...
The memories quickly became nightmares.
Her already weakened mind was losing its grip more and more, and they began to invade her.
They had been there before but she had been able to face them.
Now weakened, they returned with full force. No longer willing to give way.
They were filled with darkness, negative feelings consuming every trace of positive emotion or sensation.
A whirlwind of harmful thoughts.
That pushed her to give in.
And she did. But she failed.
Thankfully.
Realizing the gravity of the situation and terrified by the consequences her next actions would bring.
Harmonie somehow managed to pull herself out of it long enough to cry for help before being swallowed again by that torrent of darkness and finding herself suffocated by everyone.
...
The day they died, she was thankfully not with them.
Sometimes she told herself she should have followed them — then she would come around.
That day, she was at her best friend's house, having asked her parents to let her stay over so they could do their homework together.
They were in the same class. Because after moving, she had struggled to integrate as she needed to, which slowed down her studies and she had to repeat the year.
At the time, she took the situation very hard, feeling that she wasn't living up to her parents' expectations.
But her parents had reassured her. She remembered her mother telling her to find the good side in every situation, at that moment, she couldn't see it.
But after being reunited with her lifelong friend, she finally began to see the good side her mother used to talk about.
But now, finding herself standing before her parents' grave, she couldn't find the good side her mother used to speak of.
Her mind couldn't make sense of the situation.
She had some concept of what death was, she understood she would never see her parents again. That they were gone forever.
But being still in a state of shock, not a single tear had left her eyes. And that continued.
She felt nothing, absolutely nothing. She was numb to everything happening around her.
She had even become angry at herself for not feeling sad. Why wasn't she crying? Did she have no heart?
Her uncle had her see a child psychologist.
He thought he was doing the right thing but he also separated her from her best friend whose presence by her side was doing her the most good. But she didn't have the words to describe that during that period.
The psychologist helped her come out of her shell.
Life was full of contradictions, as sly as it could be.
But it also showed mercy.
...
Chloé quickly realized that in some way each one of her friends needed, to varying degrees, sessions with a therapist.
Because traumas however minor they may seem to some were in reality signs of deep inner suffering.
But she hadn't expected such traumas after everything they had been through.
It wasn't possible to be so cruel to the same people, she told herself.
She was praying to wake up, screaming in her mind to wake up from this sordid dream, this nightmare.
Things were finally starting to fall into place. Why such cruelty – her hand moved to where her heart was and she gripped that spot with all her strength, a grimace of pain settling across her face.
...
The first time Chloé understood her friend's distress was not when she ended up in the hospital with a fever and feet burning with pain.
It was well after, and it was a terrifying situation for her.
Everything seemed to be going fine – she was doing school from home as usual while occasionally going to the academy since they were still in their testing period and would soon be receiving their results.
But in some way all the pressure Harmonie had piled up inside herself had finally overwhelmed her, turning into tetany episodes.
Chloé could see the atrocious state her friend was in and didn't know what to do.
On top of those episodes, suicidal thoughts had begun to make their appearance as well. Chloé quickly understood it wasn't that those thoughts hadn't been there before, it was more that she never spoke of them and never acted on them.
But that line that should not be crossed had worn away and Harmonie was self-harming.
She was not cutting herself, and Chloé didn't know if that made it better or worse, but she was scratching herself in such extreme ways that she would inflict enormous wounds on herself, resembling burns by the following day.
In this new ordeal Chloé was not alone in managing the situation — she had her new family with her.
But Princess and she had begun to notice that something was off with Harmonie. They just couldn't quite put their finger on what. Only that Harmonie was acting strangely.
Until the day Chloé walked into Harmonie's room unannounced. Catching her in the middle of treating a wound on her left forearm. Harmonie being in her underwear, Chloé could see the two other bandages on both her thighs.
And it was as if everything suddenly made sense, the fact that she always wore long-sleeved clothing and other small details.
Princess, not seeing Chloé come back with her sister, went to look for them herself. She saw Chloé frozen in front of Harmonie's bedroom door. She looked inside and froze too.
While the two of them were in shock, Harmonie continued tending to her wounds.
And with their combined insistence, she revealed the truth to them. Recounting the situation in a tone that made it sound like she was talking about the weather.
They of course quickly alerted the family. Who then did everything to help her.