Eternal Beauty | Chapter 8

“We are all ghosts. We all carry, inside us, people who came before us.”

— Liam Callanan

The dim glow of Ms. Hawkthorne’s classroom felt heavy, her words settling into the stillness like dust that refused to lift. She moved methodically across the room, her round glasses catching faint reflections of the low light as she gestured. Her white hair was pinned back with careful precision, her silver jewelry gleaming subtly against her pale skin. There was something timeless in the way she carried herself, as though she belonged equally to the past she spoke of and the present she occupied.

“History,” she said in a low, steady cadence, “is not merely the record of our actions. It is the shadow that lingers—etched into us, written into our skin long after we believe we have moved on.”

Her gaze swept across the class and slowed, almost imperceptibly, when it reached Kei and Kukui.

Ms. Hawkthorne lifted a small, leather-bound book from her desk and turned it in her hands with reverence.

“Today,” she continued, “we speak of an old account from the northern province of Valenmoor. The story of Ilyas Verene, the younger son of a noble family whose sister died suddenly during an epidemic that swept through their region.”

She began to walk again, slow and deliberate.

“Ilyas was said to have loved his sister deeply. So deeply, in fact, that after her death he withdrew from the public eye for nearly three years. When he reappeared, the household servants wrote of something…unsettling. He had begun wearing her clothes. Speaking in her tone. Adopting her posture. Even writing letters in her handwriting.”

A quiet stillness fell over the room.

“At first, his family believed this to be grief. Then devotion. Then something far more troubling. They said he no longer answered to his own name. That when spoken to, he would pause, as if remembering who he was supposed to be before replying.”

Ms. Hawkthorne’s voice softened.

“He claimed he did this so that his sister would never truly be gone. That as long as he lived as she had, she would continue to exist in the world.”

She closed the book gently.

“Some historians call this an act of reverence. Others call it the earliest documented case of identity dissolution through grief. The locals called it something else.”

She paused.

“They called it a curse.”

The room was so quiet that Kei could hear the faint scratch of Kukui’s pencil as it moved mindlessly across her notebook.

“The curse,” Ms. Hawkthorne said, “was not that he became his sister. It was that he eventually forgot that he had ever been anyone else.”

Her eyes lifted.

“Remember this: the past does not fade. It waits. And in those willing to carry it, it weaves itself into the present.”

The bell rang.

Kei realized only then that his foot had been tapping against the floor, a small, restless motion he hadn’t noticed until it stopped. He swallowed and glanced sideways.

Kukui sat unnaturally still, her shoulders rigid, her gaze fixed on the page in front of her. Her fingers traced the same shape over and over in the corner of the paper, a slow, repetitive motion that felt almost mechanical.

Neither of them spoke as they left.

They drifted toward the library without discussing it, the quiet space offering a kind of refuge neither of them could explain. The scent of old paper and polished wood settled around them as they walked between shelves, the filtered light from the tall windows casting long, gentle shadows across the floor.

As they turned the corner of a row, they nearly walked into Yuki.

She was leaning against a shelf with casual ease, watching them with an expression that bordered on amusement.

“Well,” she said, straightening, “that didn’t take long.”

Kei blinked. “What?”

Yuki tilted her head. “The Vice President wants to see you.”

Kukui’s gaze sharpened. “How did you know where we were?”

Yuki smiled faintly. “Marin said you’d be here. She’s been keeping an eye on you two since intake.”

Something about the way she said it—so matter-of-fact, so unbothered—made Kei’s chest tighten.

Yuki gestured lazily down the hallway. “Come on. She’s waiting.”

The corridor she led them through grew quieter with every step, the noise of the school fading behind them. The lights here were dimmer, the air cooler, the polished floor reflecting their footsteps in long, distorted shadows.

Yuki stopped at a large wooden door.

The first room felt heavy with age. Dark wood shelves climbed the walls, books pressed so tightly together they seemed to breathe as one. A fireplace flickered at the far end, its warmth barely reaching them. The scent of wax and old parchment hung thick in the air.

The door opened with a quiet, reluctant creak.

Kei stepped through first, Kukui just behind him, and the air changed the moment they crossed the threshold.

The room was taller than the one before it, but narrower, the ceiling rising high above them into shadow where candlelight could not quite reach. Shelves climbed the walls in long, vertical lines, their leather spines faded and uneven, as if the books had been placed there years ago and never moved again. The light here was different—thin, pale, trembling slightly in the draft that slipped in from somewhere unseen. It did not warm the space. It revealed it.

And at the center of the room, facing away from them toward the tall window, sat a single figure.

She was seated in a high-backed chair, posture straight but relaxed, a large, worn book open across her lap. One hand rested along the page, fingers curved lightly against the paper as though she had paused mid-sentence and simply forgotten to continue.

For a moment, Kei did not think anything of it. It was simply someone sitting in a quiet room. A person at a desk. A student council member, perhaps.

Then she moved.

Not much. Just a small shift of her shoulder. The tilt of her head.

Something about that motion struck him so abruptly that his breath caught without warning.

He stopped walking.

Kukui nearly bumped into him from behind.

The girl did not turn right away. She closed the book first. Carefully. With both hands. The sound of the covers meeting echoed softly in the stillness.

Only then did she rise from the chair.

The movement was unhurried. As if she had all the time in the world.

She turned.

Kei’s mind did not process what he was seeing at first. It refused to.

Dark hair fell over her shoulders in soft waves. Her lips were painted a deep, bruised red that looked almost black in the candlelight. Kohl lined her eyes, darkening them, sharpening them into something haunting and precise.

She did not look like Marin.

She did not look like anyone he recognized.

And yet—

His stomach dropped so suddenly he felt dizzy.

The angle of her chin.

The way her shoulders held themselves.

The quiet stillness in her gaze.

Kukui made a small sound behind him, a sharp intake of breath she tried and failed to suppress.

The girl’s eyes settled on them.

Not curious. Not surprised.

As if she had been expecting them.

Kei’s hands had begun to tremble. He didn’t notice until he tried to curl his fingers into fists and they refused to obey.

He took a step forward without meaning to.

“…Sugei?”

The name fell from his mouth like it did not belong to him anymore.

Kukui’s hand flew to her mouth. Her nails pressed into her lips hard enough to turn them white.

The girl did not flinch.

She looked at him with something that resembled softness.

“I go by Marin now,” she said.

Her voice.

Kei’s chest tightened violently.

It wasn’t the same, but it was close enough that it hurt.

“Sugei…” she continued gently, “that part of me is gone.”

The room felt smaller. The air thinner. Kei realized he had not taken a full breath since she turned around.

Kukui took a step backward, shaking her head slowly, as if she could deny what she was seeing simply by refusing to stand still in it.

“No,” she whispered. “No, this isn’t—”

She couldn’t finish.

Kei couldn’t stop staring.

The way Marin stood. The way her hands folded in front of her. The quiet calm in her posture. It was so precise, so practiced, so familiar that it made his skin crawl.

He felt like he was looking at someone wearing Sugei’s shadow.

“Why?” he asked, his voice barely holding together. “Why would you do this?”

Marin’s gaze drifted past him for a moment, toward the shelves, toward the walls, anywhere but directly at him.

“Sometimes,” she said quietly, “the only way to hold on to someone is to live as they would have. To carry them forward so they’re never truly gone.”

Kukui shook her head more violently now.

“That’s not holding on,” she said, her voice breaking apart. “That’s disrepecting their memory.”

Her eyes filled with tears she didn’t try to hide.

She turned and hurried out of the room, footsteps uneven, echoing harshly in the stillness.

Kei didn’t follow.

He couldn’t move.

Marin’s eyes returned to him.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” she murmured. “How people change.”

She stepped closer.

Kei didn’t realize he had stepped back until his shoulder brushed the edge of a shelf.

Marin reached up and gently brushed a curl from his forehead.

The touch was warm.

Familiar.

And completely wrong.

His chest ached with something he could not name.

“I wanted to ask you something,” she said softly.

He didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure he could.

“Would you join the student council?”

The question felt unreal, like it had been spoken from a great distance.

“Maybe…through this, we can find something of what we lost.”

Kei stared at her.

At the dark lipstick.

At the eyes lined too heavily.

At the posture that was not hers and yet was.

He felt like he was standing inside a memory that had been rearranged without his permission.

He turned without saying anything.

His legs moved on their own, carrying him toward the door, toward the hallway, toward air that did not feel so thin.

Behind him, Marin did not call his name.

The corridor felt colder than before.

Kei walked without direction, his footsteps echoing in the quiet as if the building itself were listening.

His mind kept replaying the image of her standing there.

Sugei’s shape.

Marin’s face.

Someone else’s life worn like clothing.

He swallowed hard, but the tightness in his throat refused to ease.

Sometimes the only way to hold on to someone is to live as they would have.

The words lingered, heavy and terrible.

As he walked, he could not help but feel that he, too, was carrying something that did not belong to him anymore—memories worn so long they had begun to change shape inside him.

And for the first time, Kei wondered if the past was not something behind him…but something quietly walking beside him, waiting for him to notice.