Sometimes, the fact that I was following the beats of a video game made my weird life totally anxiety-inducing. Other times, I felt like I had some measure of control over the world that I otherwise wouldn't have.

For example: when Rémi drank our endurance potion, I knew he wasn’t about to be poisoned.

Lou, Sylvain, Étienne, and I all sat on the volleyball court while Rémi stood before us, surrounded by barbells. Lou was sketching (I’d asked him if he wanted to draw up some product designs and logos for us, and he was so flattered that I thought he’d keel over). Sylvain handled the stopwatch and the notes.

Watching Rémi in action was way more thrilling than being told about it in the game, mainly via silly sound effects and one CG art meant to get you eyeing his muscles.

I cheered and clapped as he showed off how the potion let him lift a barbell twice his max weight, hardly breaking a sweat. Sylvain wrote his notes dutifully. Lou fist pumped.

Lou told me, “We were testing prototypes all weekend.”

I giggled, bumping his shoulder to let him know he was in on the joke. “Sylvain said you and Rémi got super sick.”

“This one is totally safe, we promise!”

“I woulda rushed to school to help, but I had no idea at the time. If only someone didn’t try being funny in his letter to the prince…”

Antoinette, Étienne, and I ended up hanging out at the palace for the whole weekend. Rémi had sent us a note, telling us to come help test potion prototypes, but if his retelling was to be believed, he’d phrased the letter like he was inviting Étienne to come to a regency-era orgy. The staff threw it out and a very confused Étienne got another lecture.

As much as I wanted to help the guys with the potions, I was happy to skip their brush with food poisoning. Besides, Étienne had been called home in the first place to help with the finishing touches on the charity auction preparations…and that included trying tons of hors d’oeuvres and sweets to decide what the caterers should serve. Antoinette was discerning and picky, Étienne effusively complimented everything when the cooks were present (though we bullied him into admitting his true thoughts afterwards), and I was just happy to have so much free cake.

“Hey, princess!” Rémi shouted, looking past the court.

I turned. Speak of the devil; there was Antoinette, frowning at us from the gate. The autumn wind tossed her long pleated uniform skirt and toyed in the tail of her puffy red braid. She called, “Didn’t that silly potion land you in the infirmary, Rémi? Don’t tell me you’re trying again.”

“We got it all perfected! Come on in and enjoy the show.”

She rolled her eyes…and entered the court. She slid some dry leaves away with the edge of her shoe and sat between me and Louis, tucking her legs beneath her.

I intended to pay extra attention to how all the guys reacted to her presence, but I got stuck on Sylvain. He was watching her very closely, seeming puzzled.

He said, “You were at the palace this weekend with Chloé?”

“And Étienne.” She checked her nails, brushing away the court dirt.

Sylvain glowered at me. Okay, even though technically it was my fault, what was there to blame me for? Making her eat strawberry mousse and help price the charity dresses and meet Étienne’s adorable pet horse?!

So I said, being extra emphatic, “We had sooooo much fun.”

“That’s good to hear,” Étienne said, smiling in his rare way that was desperately pushing away a grin. “I worried all my official nonsense would bore you two.”

Antoinette scoffed. “That was your official nonsense? God, I should marry into the royal family. It was much better than all of my work. I get stuck with endless paperwork and boring factory tours!”

Louis asked, “You’re allowed to do paperwork?”

“I’m good with numbers and writing up contracts.”

Sylvain studied her, gray eyes keen as a cat’s. “You have actual say in Aconitum’s processes, then.”

“Why are you surprised?” She raised an eyebrow. “That’s why I’m here with you all, isn’t it? So I can help you cheat for my father’s favour?”

“Okay, quit flirting!” Rémi snapped. “I’m trying to show you something.”

We all dutifully turned our attention to Rémi. He hoisted up another, heavier barbell high above his head. He could hold it for about ten seconds before sweat popped on his brow and he had to throw it down onto the court with a bang.

“Before the potion,” I told Antoinette, “he couldn’t get it higher than his knees.”

Sylvain made a note in his book. “Well, its capabilities on strength are obvious.”

Rémi brushed off his hands. “Yeah, last time we tested it, I even got Lou to lift up one of his dorm beds! Which he's clearly never done since it looked like something died under there.”

“Let's see how well it works with other skills that are key to athletics. Endurance, speed, precision…”

“It’s the perfect spot to test them out,” Lou said, gesturing at the volleyball court.

Rémi grinned. “Who wants to take a swig and play against me?”

Étienne blurted, “It can't be me.”

“Yeah, those hands can't look like they’ve seen a day of labour in their life.” So Rémi obviously pointed at me instead. “Get up here, firecracker.”

Maybe the game was influencing me. I stood up right away. This was real magic; I'd be stupid to turn it down!

Rémi asked, “Want in, Delphine?”

“Should I really be toying with things like this, right before the Samhain Formal?”

“I never took you for a coward.”

She scowled with the power of a thousand suns…and got to her feet. “Ugh, fine.” She folded up the waist of her skirt so the hem was a fair bit off the ground. “If this does anything unexpected to me, you're all dead.”

Rémi made to hand me the potion, but Sylvain interjected loudly, “Do a practice game first, so we can control for the potion’s effects.”

“Argh, fuck off, that’s boring.” Rémi groaned.

I laughed. “I’m bad at everything sporty. We don’t need to test for that.” I bet I was a total disaster now that I was in Marie’s body. It took me long enough to master walking without bonking my head on things or tripping on my uniform skirt.

Flipping to a new notebook page, Sylvain muttered under his breath. Probably something about how us idiots were ruining his scientific method.

Rémi said that his sneakers versus my and Antoinette's delicate Mary Jane-like uniform shoes wouldn't be fair, so we all kicked off our shoes and socks and I stripped down to my button-up uniform shirt and rolled up my skirt like Antoinette’s.

Rémi handed the potion to me first. “Two capfuls for twenty, thirty minutes. Lou and I dealt with the brunt of the side effects. You're good to go.”

The way they kept reminding me of the food poisoning fiasco didn’t actually make me feel more confident. Still, I knocked back one cap, then the other. “Soapy,” I said with a wrinkled nose, passing on the potion to Antoinette. “Yikes, man, we really have to work on the taste. Ew.”

“Any advice, Miss Delphine?”

“Maybe if you win the game,” she quipped, taking her own dose. “Oh, ugh!”

As Antoinette recovered, I noticed the new sensation that had washed over me: I could feel myself standing taller. My every move seemed light, effortless, and I felt sure in my stance.

Antoinette didn’t look any different. Did she feel like this all the time?

Rémi let Antoinette serve first. She balanced the volleyball in one hand, carefully measuring up the swing of her other wrist with it. Love Blooming never touched on her extracurriculars, sure, but from living with her, I could see she was a comfortably sedate girl, her hobbies leaning more towards words than working out.

But when she hit the volleyball, it made a fantastic, perfect arc, sailing over the net towards Rémi. He grinned up at it and gave it a little bump back with the inside of his forearms.

This time it was heading for me, and without even thinking about it, I spiked it back and earned our first point as the ball crashed inside the white line.

Energy charged through me. I felt the rush I'd get while sprinting, but with none of the exhaustion catching up to me. As Antoinette and I got a feel for our new abilities, we started to play way more aggressively, sprinting up and down the court and even calling to each other like the teams on TV. Rémi tried to get the ball through us, crashing it down like a bullet, but one of us was always in his way.

I was pretty sure we just invented doping.

At a point, we had such an aggressive volley going on that Louis began counting our passes out loud. The potions seemed to be making us evenly matched with Rémi, even if he'd started out from a much higher skill and endurance level than us. That gave a cool insight into how the potion worked–

But honestly, I struggled to focus on that. Sometimes, I struggled to even focus on the game. Antoinette was as riled up as she was in the trivia night, her blue eyes sharp as chips of ice, her scowl permanent. The physical exertion put some pink in her cheeks and had her wrangle her wavy red hair into a braided bun that made her look incredible. Sweat shone on the nape of her long, white neck, and her uniform shirt was sticking a little to her back just above the bundled-up waist of her skirt. She wasn't afraid of being rough and chaotic when she was in the midst of a competition, and more than once she did a crazy dive to save the ball from hitting the ground. (She even lent me a spare ribbon to tie up my hair in a ponytail, eeee!)

Despite all that distraction, I managed to score another goal.

It was a good one, too, a spike that lifted Rémi’s hair that had long fallen from its coif, and hit the ground between his feet with a satisfying thwack.

It must have been really good because Lou whooped, Étienne clapped, and Rémi ducked under the net to give me a tight, slightly-sweaty one-armed hug.  To my shock, he kissed the top of my head. “We just might need you on the team, now!”

I had nowhere to brace my hand except against his warm chest. He held me close–only for a second, really, but I let the moment stretch out like taffy in my senses. In my real life, I didn't get hugs often, and he was clearly so comfortable with me that I realised what I'd been missing. Maybe being the automatically-lovable protagonist wasn't so scary? I'd never felt lovable in all my life.

Antoinette appeared then, holding the ball. Her mouth was tight. “Our serve,” she said, and spun on a heel towards the back corner of the court.

We all got back into position. I was feeling pretty good, adrenaline coursing through me, and now my heart was warm with Rémi's kindness, too. My palm stung with the power of that spike. Rémi smirked at me like he knew I was gonna try it again and was ready for me. I was actually worth paying attention to, even in this little way, in this narrow situation.

Antoinette served the ball to me. It was coming at a weird angle, so I wouldn't be able to spike it; I bumped it with the insides of my arms instead, but my overconfidence got the best of me and the ball sailed backwards over my head. I swiveled to see how Antoinette handled my dumb move.

Our eyes met. For a split second, her eyes tightened, the blue going a few degrees colder. And then she spiked the ball, hard–

Right at my head.

I didn’t feel it hit me. I didn't feel myself fall. How did everyone get here, crowding me? How did Sylvain start his concussion tests and Lou start supporting my head and Rémi–why was Rémi shirtless?!

“Ow,” I mumbled. “Again?”

Étienne handed me a water bottle. I drank eagerly, my mouth dry as a desert. The water cleared up the rest of the fog and brought with it a pain zapping through my skull.

Rémi asked, “You remember who you are this time, right?”

“Yep. Chloé Something-or-Other–”

Étienne corrected, the shake of nerves in his voice, “Alarie; we named you that as long as you're under the protection of the king, remember?”

“Yeah, I was kidding, don't worry.” I named them all in a circle, ending with Antoinette, who was seated a bit behind Sylvain.

She’d locked eyes with me right before hitting me with the ball. Did she mean to do it? Or was the eye contact accidental, and it was like when you look the wrong way riding a bike, and your body pulls that direction?

I knew the answer, even if I hated it. She did it for a similar reason as to why she dumped the paint and put her ring in the servant’s pocket. Rémi had kissed me and it threatened her.

I hadn’t thought much of her reactions until now. It was like I’d forgotten she was the villainess.

This was no good.

I wiped water off my mouth and tried to act cool. “Rémi, where'd your shirt go?”

Louis said, “Your head, it was bleeding really badly… I hate blood.”

I noticed the soft bundle he was pressing against the back of my head. Wow. 

Sylvain explained, “When the ball hit you, you fell into the net post. It's metal.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” I whispered. Being a clumsy protagonist wasn't as cute and quirky as all the otome games made it out to be.

“Who?” Lou asked.

“Nothing.” I reached out a hand and Rémi grasped it to help me sit up. Even though Louis tried to warn me that my head might still be bleeding, I took the shirt away.

It was blotted with a big stain of blood, totally ruined. I touched the back of my head. My hair was a bit crunchy, but…

Sylvain’s tone was grim and thoughtful. “It's stopped bleeding.”

“No way,” Lou said. “Head injuries take forever to heal, and we all saw that gash.”

“It seems…” Sylvain gently pieced apart my hair. “The gash. It's closed.”

Everyone traded looks, except Antoinette, who was still watching me, expression inscrutable. I tore my gaze away from hers and asked, “Does that mean…?”

Rémi lifted his eyebrows. “Looks like our potion's got more uses than we thought.”

A bubble of pride moved through the group. Étienne said, “We should look into that. A product that makes you stronger, faster, and heal is a recipe for encouraging destructive behaviour and–”

“Aw, Étienne,” Lou said, “you can agree it's pretty cool for now, right?”

He smiled. “I guess so.”

“For being a downer,” Rémi said, “you can help me clean the court.”

Sylvain said, “I still want someone to help Chloé to the infirmary. Antoinette?”

She stood quickly. “No. I'll help with the court. It was my error, anyhow.” She turned away to fetch the ball, rolling against the fence, before I could read her expression.

~*~

Note from the Author

If you can't escape the protagonist programming, Chloe, you can't escape anyone else's! Yikes!!

Next chapter, we'll be heading into the Samhain Formal, a three-parter to wrap up the 'Endurance Route.' After that, I'll be taking a small break to let my other serial platform catch up to Scribble Hub. However, since you guys are so supportive (and so far ahead!), I have a bonus chapter planned that'll be exclusive to SH. Also make sure to vote on this chapter's poll. Thanks for bein' so awesome.