Chapter 59: The Friend Who Was Always There
The gravel paths of the Jardin du Luxembourg were a pale, dusty yellow in the afternoon sun, lined with green metal chairs that faced the central pond. Children pushed miniature sailboats with long sticks, their laughter sharp and fleeting over the water. Students sprawled on blankets with textbooks, and tourists moved in slow, map-checking clusters. It was a scene of organized leisure, a picture of Parisian spring, and Rachelle Lebas moved through it like a crack in the glass.
She spotted him immediately, the man standing still near a bed of tulips, his hands in his coat pockets. He looked ordinary, which annoyed her more. She’d expected something more overt, something that matched the unease Corinne’s message had sparked: A man named Zoruk wants to talk. About Alya. Be direct.
Rachelle walked up, her steps quick and precise on the gravel. She didn’t smile. “You’re Zoruk.”
“Rachelle. Thank you for coming.”
“Is Alya in danger?” she asked, bypassing any greeting. Her eyes, a practical, clear brown, scanned his face for lies. “Straight answer. Is this about a threat?”
“No more than usual,” Zoruk said. His voice was calm, measuring. “The danger to someone like Alya is rarely a single event. It’s the cumulative weight of the ecosystem built around her.”
“Ecosystem.” Rachelle repeated the word like it tasted bad. “Right. And you’re here to study the specimens. Does Remy know you’re talking to me?”
“Should he?”
“He’s her boyfriend. He deserves to know who’s circling.”
“Circling implies predation. I’m conducting interviews.”
“Do you always talk to people,” she asked, folding her arms, “like you’re collecting weaknesses? I’ve met your type before. The politely curious ones who are actually taking inventory.”
Zoruk tilted his head slightly. A flicker of something—amusement, or recognition—passed through his eyes. “I’m here because reliable people often hide resentment behind competence. It’s a fascinating paradox.”
Rachelle’s posture stiffened. “I don’t resent Alya.”
“I didn’t say you did. I said you were reliable. The resentment could be directed at… the position. The constant background support role.”
“Alya is my friend,” Rachelle said, her words clipped and clear. “Not a job. Not a brand. And not a fragile princess everyone else gets to interpret while I hold her hand. She’s a person. A smart, sometimes infuriatingly kind person who forgets to eat when she’s stressed.”
“Why do you sound angry when you say that?”
The question hung in the air between them, underscored by the squeal of a child chasing a pigeon. Rachelle looked away, towards the Medici Fountain where water trickled down a mossy stone wall. She took a sharp breath.
“I’m tired,” she admitted, the word escaping like a sigh she’d been holding for months. “I’m tired of smoothing things over. Of answering the fourteenth message from a brand manager because Alya’s phone is on ‘Do Not Disturb.’ I’m tired of noticing the exact moment her eyes go a little blank in the middle of a conversation because the pressure is like a physical weight on her, and I’m tired of being the only one who sees it. I’m tired of watching Corinne manage every room like it’s a chessboard, turning affection into strategy. And I’m especially tired of seeing people like Briv Rodin build a private meaning out of a few kind online replies Alya made five years ago. As if her basic decency is a secret message meant only for him.”
The words came in a rush, each one a stone she’d been carrying. She didn’t look at Zoruk, afraid of what she’d see in his face.
“And Remy?” Zoruk prompted, his voice still neutral.
“Remy is… good,” Rachelle said, softening slightly. “He’s one of the few people around her who doesn’t constantly take something. He gives her silence, and space, and he looks at her like she’s the only person in any room. But sometimes he gives her too much silence. He disappears into it. And when things get loud, when the ecosystem gets toxic, Alya needs someone who speaks up. Not just someone who listens in the dark.”
“So you speak up.”
“Someone has to.”
“And when you do,” Zoruk said, taking a slow step along the path, forcing her to walk with him or stand alone, “is it for her protection? Or is it so that she finally understands how much you do for her?”
Rachelle stopped walking. The question was a needle, sliding directly into a nerve she tried to ignore. “That’s a shitty thing to suggest.”
“It’s an observation. Loyalty requires reciprocity. Even if the only reward is acknowledgment. Without it, loyalty becomes a debt. And debt breeds resentment.”
“I don’t keep a ledger,” she fired back, but her voice lacked its earlier force.
“Don’t you? You just listed your expenses. The messages, the watchfulness, the emotional labor. What’s the return?”
“She’s my friend,” Rachelle insisted, heat rising in her cheeks.“She trusts me. She tells me things she doesn’t tell Corinne, or sometimes even Remy. She cried on my shoulder when some magazine called her ‘vapid’ last year. She asks my opinion on everything from which dress to wear to whether she should fire her publicist. That’s the return. That’s real.”
“And is it enough?” Zoruk pressed, his gaze unrelenting. “When you’re hauling her suitcase through an airport because her hands are full signing autographs, or fielding another call from Georges Bernier because he’s ‘just checking in’ but really he’s pushing for an invite to some party Alya is going to, is the friendship enough? Or do you sometimes wish, just for a second, that she’d look at you and really see the machinery keeping her life from falling apart?”
Rachelle’s throat tightened. She stared at a group of students laughing, their carelessness a stark contrast to the knot in her chest. “Both,” she whispered, the word ripped from her. Then, immediately, she hated herself for saying it. “God, both. And I hate that. I don’t want to want recognition. It makes me feel like I’m no better than Briv, building a shrine.”
“There’s a difference,” Zoruk said quietly. “Briv worships an idea. You sustain a reality. Your resentment isn’t about fame. It’s about the invisibility of the foundation.”
Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, not of sadness, but of furious, exhausted validation. “Sometimes,” she confessed, her voice low and rough, “I want her to make a huge, public mistake. Nothing that would really hurt her. But something… messy. Something Corinne can’t instantly spin, that Remy’s silence can’t comfort. Maybe then, when it all goes a bit wrong, people would see who’s always there to clean up the actual mess.Not the image. The emotional carnage. Maybe then she’d…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “It’s a terrible thing to think.”
“It’s a human thing to think,” Zoruk corrected. “Lord Olmer values reliability above almost all else. But TDC Season Five is not a stable foundation. It’s an earthquake. It will test whether your loyalty can survive not only without recognition, but while being actively challenged, manipulated, and pushed to its breaking point.”
Rachelle wiped her eyes angrily, squaring her shoulders. “I don’t need applause. I just need to know it matters. What I do. That it isn’t just… expected background noise.”
“Impatience,” Zoruk said, turning to face her fully, the dappled light through the plane trees shading his composed features, “often begins where unthanked loyalty runs out of air. You’re running out of air, Rachelle. The question is whether you’ll suffocate quietly, or learn to breathe in a different atmosphere.”
He didn’t offer her a card. He simply watched her, letting the truth of his words settle into the space between them, heavy and real as the gravel under their feet.
Rachelle inhaled, a deep, shaky breath that filled her lungs with the scent of grass and damp earth. The protective instinct towards Alya was still there, a core part of her wiring. But beneath it, now acknowledged and raw, was the other truth: she wanted to matter as more than the friend who was always there. She wanted a story where she wasn’t a supporting character.
“If I go,” she said, her voice steady now, resolved, “it won’t be to follow her. It’ll be to stand somewhere she can finally see me.”
Zoruk gave a single, slow nod. “Then the offer, when it comes, is for the architect. Not the janitor.”
He walked away, leaving her standing amidst the calm order of the garden, the chaotic truth he’d excavated from her heart beating like a second, louder pulse. She looked at her hands, the hands that carried phones and suitcases and held a famous girl when she cried, and she wondered what they would feel like holding something of her own.
=====
Rue Oberkampf, Paris. April evening, after Zoruk’s meeting with Rachelle Lebas.
The cool, garden-sanctified tension of Rachelle’s confession still clung to Zoruk as he turned onto Rue Oberkampf, where the air became a vibrating cocktail of fried food, spilled beer, and bass-heavy music bleeding from every doorway. It was a symphony of engineered chaos. Scooters wove through crowds with psychotic glee, their engines buzzing like angry insects. Graffiti swirled across every available surface, a visual shout against the old Parisian stone. Groups clustered outside bars, smoking and laughing too loudly, their eyes darting to track who was watching them pretend not to care.
Georges Bernier was leaning against a poster-plastered wall beside a bar called Le Vieux Chêne, one foot propped behind him. He watched the human current with a detached, amused flick of his eyes, sipping a cheap blonde beer from a bottle. He saw Zoruk approach and a grin spread across his face, sharp and welcoming in a way that felt like a challenge.
“So you’re the ghost,” Georges said, his voice cutting through the thrum of conversation. He gestured with his bottle. “The man who talks to famous people in gardens and outside stadiums. You know, for a mysterious otherworldly recruiter, you dress like a very expensive funeral invitation. All respect, of course.”
Zoruk stopped before him, untouched by the noise. “I’m here because you have a particular skill, Georges. You adapt to every room by making it clear you don’t belong in any of them.”
Georges’s grin didn’t falter, but his eyes, the same shade as Remy’s but infinitely more restless, sharpened. The comment had found its mark. He took another swig. “Belonging is overrated. Especially when your older brother is Remy ‘The Saint’ Bernier. Everyone already decided which of us got the halo and which of us got the horn section. Saves me the trouble of picking a role.”
“Do you want to defeat him,” Zoruk asked, his tone conversational, “or just stop being measured against him?”
“Are those different?” Georges countered, pushing off the wall. He was Remy’s height but leaner, all coiled, impatient energy. “Winning implies you’re playing the same game. I’m not. He’s the symphony. I’m the guy kicking the fire escape for the rhythm.”
“And how does Alya Dumont’s world sound to your fire escape?”
Georges barked a laugh, too loud, causing a couple nearby to glance over. He lowered his voice into a conspiratorial stage whisper. “Alya’s world is a perfectly tuned orchestra playing a song called ‘Adoration in A Major.’ Half of Paris is hypnotized. The other half is pretending they’re too sophisticated for the melody. It’s impressive. And honestly, a little boring in its perfection.”
“Where do you fit in that metaphor?”
“Nowhere,” Georges said, shrugging. The gesture was deliberately loose, but his gaze was fixed. “Which is convenient. I provide the occasional, discordant cymbal crash from the wings. Everyone gets to be scandalized, Alya gets to show how gracefully she handles ‘unpredictable elements,’ and I get to go home alone. Everyone wins.”
Zoruk watched a scooter narrowly miss a pedestrian, the ensuing shout lost in the music. “Briv Rodin builds private monuments to her from a distance. Rachelle Lebas stands guard, her loyalty worn thin by thankless work. Corinne Chagnon conducts the entire performance. But you… you’re the only one close enough to see the stage machinery and rebellious enough to point and laugh at it.”
“Someone’s got to,” Georges said, but the smirk was thinner now. He looked away, scanning the crowd as if looking for an escape route he didn’t really want. “She’s smarter than they think, you know. She has to be. Remy…” He trailed off, swirling the beer in his bottle. “Remy looks at her like she invented the moon. But sometimes he looks too careful around her. Like loving her is a priceless vase he’s terrified of dropping. It’s exhausting to watch.”
“Do you enjoy seeing the cracks in his perfect restraint?”
The air between them chilled by several degrees. Georges’s playful mask slipped, revealing something colder, protective, and fiercely complicated underneath. “Don’t,” he said, the word flat and final. “Remy doesn’t need anyone’s pity. Especially not mine. He chose his vase. I’m sure he’s very happy dusting it.”
“Lord Olmer values adaptability,” Zoruk continued, unfazed. “The capacity to thrive in shifting environments. But TDC Season Five will punish rebellion that exists solely to prove a point. It consumes contrarians as fuel.”
Georges finished his beer, setting the empty bottle on the ledge with a sharp clink. “So what, the game wants obedient people? Good little soldiers who follow the script? Sounds like my brother’s natural habitat.”
“No,” Zoruk said. The single word was quiet but absolute, slicing through the bar’s noise. “It wants people who understand leverage. Who know the precise moment when breaking a rule creates an advantage, and when it just creates noise. Your brother understands silence. Your skill is noise. The question is whether you can learn to use it as a signal.”
For a long moment, Georges said nothing. The vibrant, chaotic street seemed to recede around them, narrowing to this single point of contact. The provocative humor was still on his face, but it was hollow now, a discarded shell. Zoruk had bypassed the performance and found the raw, pulsing knot beneath: the lifelong scramble for an identity that wasn’t just a shadow or an opposite, the desperate, unspoken wish for his particular brand of chaos to be seen not as a flaw, but as a form of strength.
Georges laughed again, but this time it was lower, a private sound of acknowledgment. “A stage where being the difficult brother isn’t a diagnosis. It’s the whole point of the act.”
“If you can learn the difference between an act and a strategy,” Zoruk replied.
He didn’t offer a card. He simply met Georges’s newly thoughtful, calculating gaze, gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod, and turned, melting back into the Oberkampf crowd. Georges watched him go, the empty bottle forgotten, the noise of the street transforming in his ears from a blanket of sound into a series of distinct, usable frequencies.