Chubby girl's Mystical LOVE

The first thing I smelled wasn’t mildew or dust. It was something sweeter, like bruised jackfruit left too long in the sun, mixed with cold stone that had been sweating in the dark for years. The abandoned palace in Kerala rose around us-whitewashed walls turned the color of old teeth, arches cracked like snapped bones-while the afternoon wind dragged palm leaves across the ground with a dry, papery whisper. My shoes scraped gravel that had no business still being loose after so many seasons. Somewhere above, a crow clicked its beak like it was counting time.

“Rae,” Fred Royedger called, and his voice cut through the chaos of students arguing over maps and missed turns. He was close enough that I could see the shine on his hair where the sun hit it, and the careful way he kept his smile even when someone bumped his shoulder. The Royedger family boys always moved like they owned space, but Fred never acted as if he owed me. He just looked at me like I belonged beside him in the same frame.

I was Raeliana, history department, France Davalde Royedger Historical College, the nerd who could tell you which fort had been rebuilt twice after a raid and which mosque had shifted orientation because of a longer river. I wasn’t supposed to be scared of anything. Except that the palace gate had felt wrong the moment our group crossed it, as the air had thickened and decided my lungs were negotiable. And the way the guide kept repeating, “Back by five,” made the place feel like it was waiting for us to fail.

I wanted one simple thing from this tour exam: to survive it with my notes intact and my mind sharp. The department loved “field learning,” which was just a fancy way of saying we’d get graded for how well we pretended the world made sense. At 1:00, we entered. At 5:00, we had to be back. That was the rule, the only rule anyone cared about. I could do rules. I could do timelines. I could even do abandoned architecture, as long as it behaved like history and not like a living throat.

Fred walked beside me for a while, his attention sliding from my face to my hands when I adjusted my bag strap. He didn’t ask why I kept touching my notebook like it was a talisman. He didn’t mock me either, not for my chubby body, not for my dark skin that always looked like chocolate to people who were too loud about it. He just said things like, “You’ll find something good here,” as if the palace was a library and I was the missing key.

“Fred,” I said, trying to sound normal, “do you think the library-”

He cut in, easy and bright. “The abandoned library? You’re going to race me there.”

I blinked. “I’m not racing you.”

“Sure,” he said, and his smile stretched wider, like he was daring the day to disagree.

Behind him, the tour group split into smaller clusters. Five boys and one girl-my group had started that way-then exploded into separate directions the moment the guide looked away. The sun angled through broken windows, striping dust into gold bars. Students laughed, then stopped laughing when the laughter didn’t echo the way it should. Even the sound of our own voices felt delayed, like the palace had to think before it returned anything.

Emy Laider was supposed to be with us, but I noticed her absence the way you notice a missing bookmark in a book you’ve read too many times. Fred’s attention slipped once toward the direction she’d gone earlier, like a compass needle searching for a magnet. He’d been with her family before-everyone knew it, everyone treated it like a public secret. Emy was the most beautiful girl in the Royedger line, the kind of pretty that made teachers soften their voices and classmates act like they were lucky to breathe the same air. I’d always told myself I didn’t care. I cared too much anyway, like an idiot.

At 1:00, the guide had pointed toward a wing with collapsed walls and said the library was “somewhere that still remembers.” At 1:10, I found myself moving that way alone.

It wasn’t bravery. It was hunger-history-hunger-and the way the palace felt like it had a doorway only my curiosity could unlock. The hallway I followed narrowed, stones sweating under my fingertips. The air turned colder as I went, and the sweetness in the smell thickened until it made my throat itch.

I heard a sound, not footsteps-something lighter. A dragging, like a wet cloth sliding over rock. It came from behind the wall where the plaster had peeled away in strips. I pressed my ear to the cold stone.

A whisper answered.

Not words at first. Just a rhythm, like breath trying to become speech. My heart kicked once, hard enough to hurt my ribs, but I didn’t run. I didn’t know why. My brain insisted it was just a trick of sound, a trick of echo, a trick of my nerves. But my skin didn’t agree. Goosebumps rose in a line from my wrists to my throat.

“Hello?” I said, and my voice came out smaller than I wanted.

The whisper thickened into a voice that sounded like it had been trapped in the wall for years. “Rae…”

...