Chapter Text
"Max! He’s locked himself in again!" Cried a young, plaintive male voice from the other end of the hallway.
A dark-skinned man, broad-shouldered and powerfully built, charged down the corridor like an elephant in full stampede to reach the exasperated youth. The muscular man, the supervisor in charge of the boys’ dormitories at the home, wasted no time and began pounding furiously on the bedroom door.
"LUCIEN! OPEN THE DOOR OR I'LL BREAK IT DOWN!" he roared like an enraged tiger.
A silence of a few seconds hung in the air before Max resumed his hammering at the door, his knuckles reddened from the blows against the wood, which was close to splitting under the force. At last, the door slowly opened, revealing the silhouette of a young man, a book in his hand.
"What?" he replied, nonchalantly.
Max saw red and grabbed him by the collar of his stained, patched-up T-shirt. Lucien had no time to dodge, nor even to react, except to raise his eyebrows in surprise.
"What did we say last time?" The educator hissed through clenched teeth, his jaw tight with anger.
Max had pulled the young man so close that their foreheads could almost touch. Lucien stared back into his elder’s eyes, his face expressionless.
"This room, you share it with your roommate, period. You’re not the boss here, this isn’t your home! How many times do I have to tell you?!"
The features of the muscular man’s face, twisted with rage, looked far more like the snarling maw of a starving hound than that of a man.
"Did I make myself clear?" He spat through his teeth.
Lucien stared at him, his gaze and expression so neutral, so empty, that the silence he maintained became chilling. Max finally released him with a shove, then stormed off, muttering curses under his breath.
"What were you even doing? Jerking off?" his roommate hissed.
As he entered the room, the latter deliberately brought his shoe down with full weight on Lucien’s bare foot. Lucien did not flinch.
"I was reading," he replied, without even looking at his interlocutor, as he went back to lie down on his bed, just as he had been before being interrupted.
"You? Reading?"
Lucien gave no weight to the remark, not even lifting his eyes from the book. He sank once more into his reading and his thoughts.
"It won’t make you any smarter than us..." the young man muttered with disdain.
Discreetly, Lucien shot a glare at his so-called roommate with whom he was forced, unfortunately, to share the room as the latter turned his back to rummage through a cupboard.
"Smarter than you, at least," he retorted.
The young man didn’t turn around, but Lucien guessed from the way his shoulders jerked in a staccato rhythm that he was mocking him.
Without another word, Lucien closed his book and stuffed it into his old, overflowing backpack before leaving the room, slamming the door behind him. His roommate, holding the items he had come to retrieve after breakfast, spun around and dashed at full speed toward the now-closed door.
"Asshole, you didn’t... start again, did you?" he growled, grabbing the door handle to open it.
But it had just been locked from the outside.
"You filthy bastard..." the roommate muttered, trapped in the room once again.
How he hated him... everyone hated Lucien in the home. And even elsewhere, even his own mother despised him. He was just... more than flesh and blood can stand. He always had to do whatever he wanted, be vicious, deceitful, mean, and pile on subtle blows like this one just to piss people off.
After banging on the door in hopes that someone would let him out, Lucien’s roommate sat down on the floor, back against the door.
Then, as he looked around the room more closely, he was taken aback by a detail. Lucien’s belongings, though few and rarely on display, were gone. His corner of the room looked as if he had never lived there...
At first surprised, the trapped young man allowed himself a small, satisfied smile. Maybe, after all this time, they would finally be rid of that nuisance once and for all.
***
Yves tied the knot of his black tie in front of the bathroom mirror, a sly smile playing on his lips—an asset that had earned him quite a bit of success with the ladies, much to his delight. He adjusted his brown hair one last time, making sure his outfit was flawless.
He stepped out of the bathroom, picked up his suitcase that he had left in the hallway, and began to descend the stairs. His eyes swept over the photos hanging on the stairwell walls one last time before a long absence. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, a voice called out to him.
"Ready, son?" asked his father, a broad smile on his face and pride shining in his eyes.
"Absolutely!"
"Promise you’ll keep in touch, huh?" implored Lucette, emerging from the kitchen.
"Of cour-"
The young man didn’t have time to finish his sentence before his mother grabbed his cheeks and pinched them affectionately.
"Mom!"
"Sorry, sweetheart. But I wanted to do it one last time before you left."
"Hmm..." he murmured, rubbing his cheeks to ease the slight sting, feigning annoyance.
"Go on! Before the train leaves without you!"
"Love you, Mom."
Yves leaned down and kissed his mother on the cheek. Then he left the house by car with his father, heading toward the train station, a pang of emotion tugging at his heart.
Paris was ugly, Paris was vast, Paris was the heart of the country. Everything had to happen in Paris; that’s what the Jacobins, and later the Empire, had decided, and nothing had changed since.
It annoyed Yves, because in Paris it was cold, the weather was miserable, and Parisians were execrable. He had come here to go through trials, but coming here was a trial in itself.
The young man left his hotel with the essentials for his exam—a sleek backpack filled with a pencil case, his identification papers, his exam notification, and some provisions. This exam consisted of three written tests, an oral test in two languages, and a psychological evaluation. Elitist in nature, many tried their luck, and many left with broken hearts and bruised egos from failure. Nevertheless, Yves was confident. He had spent two years preparing for this, had excelled in his baccalaureate, and nothing seemed likely to stand in his way.
He had always succeeded. Success had always found him. Why would he fail now?
With the strap of his stylish leather bag slung over his shoulder, Yves left his hotel wearing a crisp, comfortable white shirt. To sit for hours composing answers on a sheet of paper, it was better to be dressed in cozy, pleasant clothes.
After a ride on the metro and a few minutes’ walk, the young man arrived at the Paris Faculty of Medicine. It was vacation time, but the faculty had opened exceptionally to welcome the exam candidates. And there were many—far too many... A large crowd of young people, sometimes accompanied by their parents, had filled the sidewalk in front of the college building.
The building had a light stone facade and was designed in the Art Deco style. Perfectly symmetrical, it featured four rows of eight rectangular windows. Above the door was a bronze plaque with an allegory of medicine, and in the old Latin convention—where U’s were replaced by V’s—capital letters spelled out “Vniversité de Paris.” Finally, above the plaque, a flagpole held the French flag.
Yves knew there would be a crowd; it was the same every year. Yet seeing the numbers written in tiny print on a sheet or in the corner of an article did nothing to convey the reality they represented...
A knot of anxiety formed in the pit of his stomach, but the young man didn’t falter. He found a space in the crowd and, like many other candidates around him, pulled a revision book from his bag, waiting for the doors to open.
But barely had he immersed himself in the lines of his lesson, forgetting the hubbub and the anxious breaths around him, when Yves felt a prickling sensation at the nape of his neck.
He lifted his eyes from his book and met the gaze of another young man. A bead of sweat ran down his spine. Two dark blue eyes stared at him intensely, just a few steps away. Yves furrowed his brows and scrutinized the young man from head to toe.
His expression was frighteningly blank. His pale complexion was marked by dark hollows under his eyelids, tinged with a plum-purple hue. His cheeks were sunken, his lips dry and cracked. His lower lip was bleeding. His once-white T-shirt was dirty, stained, and torn in places—yet still held together in one piece. The same could be said for his oversized blue jeans, frayed and stained at the hems. Yves couldn’t suppress a small, almost imperceptible grimace of disgust.
The other young man squinted and lifted his chin slightly. He stared at him for a few more seconds before finally disappearing into the crowd, without a word.
Yves watched him go, both puzzled and wary. He was certain he didn’t know this individual, nor had he ever seen him before—so what did he want? The young man exhaled, releasing the tension the encounter had sparked, and refocused on his last-minute revisions, assuming that the guy’s behavior was nothing more than a strange tactic to unsettle competitors before the exam.
After all, any technique was fair game when it came to securing a top spot, right?
The doors of the Faculty of Medicine opened, and all the candidates poured inside, following the arrows and numbers to find the lecture theatre where their assigned seats awaited. Yves walked with confidence, his pace quick but relaxed, while most of the others moved stiffly, some even crying from stress and anxiety. After all, for many, they were betting their future—and their family’s honor, passed down from generation to generation—on whether they would succeed in this exam.
But Yves was not in that situation. In fact, he had nothing to lose, and nothing seemed to suggest he would fail.
Arriving in the lecture theatre where he would spend the next several hours, Yves followed the instructions shouted by the proctors after his papers were checked. On the tables, every other seat held a small sticker with each candidate’s name, surname, and number, along with a blank exam paper. It was simply a matter of scanning the long tables to find one’s assigned seat, which created a peculiar dance of young people weaving back and forth across the hall to settle in.
Yves had trouble finding his sticker.
"Excuse me," he called to a young woman, also a candidate. "Have you seen a sticker with the name Yves?"
"Maybe try a little higher up?" the girl suggested with a shrug, pointing toward the upper rows of the hall.
"Thanks."
Unfortunately, the answer wasn’t much help—it was obvious. Yves was about to climb the steps to check the upper part of the hall when he caught sight, out of the corner of his eye, of the dark blue-eyed young man from earlier, just a few steps away. A shiver ran down his spine as Yves passed him to go find his seat further along.
Finally, he found it. Right next to him was an empty chair, and beyond that, two other young men were unpacking their things. Yves did the same. He took out all the pens from his pencil case, his correction tape, his ruler, and his snacks before putting the empty case away in his bag, as it was forbidden to leave it on the desk during the exams.
Then, the group of students went to drop their bags at the top and bottom of the lecture theatre, yet another measure to prevent cheating. Since Yves had a seat fairly high up, he left his bag at the top.
Finally, he sat down at his seat. The English exam was distributed first, and he answered with ease. English was the easiest subject for him, and he regretted that it didn’t carry a higher coefficient. His parents already spoke English due to their respective jobs and had taught it to their son, in addition to paying for private lessons. Although he took his time answering the questions, he finished ahead of schedule. He reviewed his work and then waited for the exam to end.
He watched the other candidates below, still busy writing, then his gaze settled on one in particular.
From behind, the dirty white T-shirt and disheveled jet-black hair made him recognizable, even from a distance. Yves couldn’t help but find the guy a bit menacing, yet strangely intriguing. Part of him wanted to know more—about the reason for his appearance, his behavior... Suddenly, the black-haired young man sat up abruptly. Yves furrowed his brows, and slowly, the guy in the white T-shirt turned to look directly in his direction.
Three rows of candidates separated them, meaning several meters of height between them as well—how had he known it was Yves staring at him?
Their eyes met. Yves swallowed, feeling a cold sweat run down his neck, but he refused to look away. Finally, it was the candidate seated lower in the hall who broke eye contact and returned to his exam paper. Yves exhaled, not without relief.
Finally, the English exam came to an end, and the history exam followed. More complex and more important, Yves took his time to answer carefully and secure every possible point. All the candidates were fully absorbed in the test, their noses almost pressed to their papers, wrists and necks aching. This time, Yves didn’t finish early; he had very little time to review his work and left the exam with a lingering sense of dissatisfaction. Nevertheless, he had done his best, and that should be enough to guarantee success—or at least, that’s what he told himself to reassure and convince himself.
The final exam followed: philosophy. Yves dreaded it. Whether for the baccalaureate or any other test, philosophy was notorious for being entirely a game of chance. The teachers of the subject could insist that all it took was logic, reasoning, and applying their method to secure a good grade, but the reality was quite different. Everything depended on the examiner grading the paper. Either they liked the reasoning laid out on the page, or one could forget about passing the exam altogether.
However, Yves remained unfazed. He had memorized essays, theses, references, and formulations to ensure he would appeal to the examiner’s favor.
The topics were distributed, and once everyone had one, the candidates were allowed to turn them over. Very quickly, two expressions dominated the faces of the students—joy and despair.
Yves was neither. He was... perplexed by the prompt.
'What is audacity?'
With a few references he had memorized to perfection, he could produce a satisfactory paper. The key was simply to try. So, without wasting another minute, he began his draft. Half an hour later, without quite knowing why, Yves looked up and fixed his gaze on the menacing young man.
He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
The young man was asleep, arms crossed on his desk, his head resting on them. Yves blinked, then thought it over. After all, he had noticed that the boy looked terrible, with unmatched dark circles under his eyes. Perhaps he hadn’t been able to sleep due to exam stress, and fatigue had finally caught up with him at the worst possible moment.
Yves allowed himself a small smile at the thought. Maybe it was wrong, but it didn’t matter. Seeing a competing candidate sabotage himself was satisfying—it meant one less rival, and thus, better chances for him.
Hours passed. The candidates completed their essays, and finally the allotted time ended. When the proctors in the hall instructed the students to descend calmly to the office to submit their papers, the young man in the dirty T-shirt and oversized jeans was the first to get up.
He managed to descend the stairs without difficulty, as almost no candidate had finished writing their conclusion. Everyone was trying to steal a few extra seconds to complete a word or correct punctuation.
Yves might have been the only one not staring at his own paper, instead watching the menacing young man submit his exam, which appeared almost blank. Nevertheless, the proctor accepted it, slipped it into a folder, and nodded to him. The young man retrieved his backpack and left the lecture theatre.
"Put your pens down, the exam is over!" shouted a proctor stationed at the top of the hall.
"Excuse me, can I get through?" asked a young girl in the same row as Yves, who also wanted to submit her paper.
"Oh, yes, of course"
Once done, Yves went back up to the top of the lecture theatre, retrieved his backpack, and returned to his seat to pack his things, making sure to peel off the sticker with his name from the desk. Just as he was about to leave, an unfamiliar curiosity—one he couldn’t quite name—urged him to take a detour. He went down, counted three rows from his own, and slipped into the now-empty row that had held that so... peculiar guy.
Yves had remembered where his seat had been, and as he approached the desk, he leaned over to read the name on the sticker: 'Lucien Chevalier. Candidate number: #000080.'
The young man read it several times to make sure he wouldn’t forget it. Though the first and last name were common enough, they struck him as oddly distinctive. Then he glanced down at his own sticker, which he had peeled off: 'Yves Cavalier. Candidate number: #800000.'
A coincidence—certainly some kind of coincidence. The young man tucked the sticker into his pocket and left the room. His feelings were a mix of confidence in what he had accomplished, underpinned by an inexplicable curiosity—one he refused to admit, even to himself—about the blue-eyed young man.
***
Lucien left the room after his oral exam with the same composure he had shown when entering. Ten minutes speaking in two different languages on a variety of topics—that was what he had just done, and he found it utterly pointless. So much so that he hadn’t even prepared for this exam, and as he had predicted, he had succeeded. At least, that was the impression he had.
For the second time that week, he left the Faculty of Medicine—a place he hoped never to see again. Yet there was still something, or rather someone, he wanted to see again. Unfortunately, he didn’t get that chance. The oral exams were scheduled throughout the week, and Lucien had been called for the afternoon session the day after the written tests, while Yves could just as easily have been scheduled in the morning or on another day.
The young man sighed. Perhaps he would never see him again, and if that were the case, it was truly a shame.
He had enjoyed watching him, admiring him... his elegant, impeccable attire suited him perfectly. Too perfectly. What luck he had... why didn’t he have that kind of luck?
Why had he had to steal a pair of shoes, and something decent to wear for those ten meaningless minutes of an interview? Why couldn’t he enjoy the luxury of a fresh complexion and a confident build, instead of looking like a skeleton? Why didn’t Lucien have the right to have everything he had?
Envy clawed at every muscle, every fiber of his body, while his mind imagined a thousand schemes, and his heart seemed to swell with a new, burning feeling.
Yes, he envied that guy who had everything, who was superior to him, and who had dared to look disgusted upon seeing him. Lucien wanted to make him regret that expression; he wanted to put him in his place, to show him just how, even in his misery, he was a thousand times better. Yes, Lucien wanted to see him suffer.
Yet at the same time... this young man, his age, seemed so perfect... so handsome, so pleasing to look at from down below... his gaze, his features, his attire. Everything about him was striking, everything desirable.
When he arrived at the underground parking lot that served as a squat for disreputable people like him, Lucien sighed.
It would be such a shame if he never saw him again... but if they were to meet again, what then? To hate him, or to love him?
***
Yves opened the door to his hotel room and slipped off his shoes. The oral exam had gone wonderfully—he was more than certain that he had made a strong impression on the jury.
In short, he was certain he had aced the exam, just as he had with all the ones before. Yves couldn’t wait for the results to be published in a few days. He was eager. Would he be first? Perhaps not, even though he believed he was more than capable. Second place would do; third, however... he would be somewhat disappointed, even if he still made the podium.
Once in his socks, Yves loosened his tie and lay down on his bed. The results would be posted in two days. Luckily, he knew how to be patient—especially when it came to savoring his successes.
Yves stared at the ceiling. He hadn’t noticed it before. In any case, the chances of running into him again during the oral exams, in the hallways waiting for his turn, were slim. And perhaps that was for the best.
After all, with that menacing air, Lucien didn’t exactly put him at ease. He stirred his curiosity—an undeniable fact—even if Yves wouldn’t admit it to himself.
He figured the odds of seeing him again were very low. It was impossible that he had passed the exam, having written almost nothing on his philosophy essay.
Somewhere, the young man found it a shame, as he would have liked to satisfy his curiosity and discover why Lucien had looked at him that way. And why was he in that state? What had driven him to take this exam, when he clearly didn’t seem made for this world?
***
How... how was this possible? There had to be a mistake, it must be. There must be a mistake.
Yves had waited with calm and confidence for the results to be published. He had gotten up, gone to the bakery to buy breakfast, and then wandered through the city until noon. He had stopped at a small restaurant for a quick, reasonably priced meal before heading to the faculty to check the results posted on boards in front of the building.
He had looked at the sheets pinned to the wooden board with calm, even wearing a self-satisfied smile. Yet a knot suddenly tightened in his throat as he failed to see his name among the top three. The further his eyes moved down the ranking, the tighter the knot in his throat became.
He was neither at the top of the ranking, nor in the middle.
Yves felt his stomach twist with anxiety and stress. His eyes moved further down, all the way to the bottom of the list.
His mouth fell open.
He was last.
The very last among all those who had been selected.
Yves felt crushed, as if a weighty anvil had fallen on him. True, he had been selected. He had succeeded.
But he was last. The last of them all.
Rage coursed through him like lightning. He was angry at the exam organizers, even though, in the end, they had accepted him. They had selected him. Ultimately, his hatred shifted to everyone who had performed better than him.
Fueled by this feeling, biting the inside of his cheek, his throat still tight, Yves straightened up and looked at the ranking again. Seeing his name so low... all the way at the bottom... disgusted him. He knew the bitter taste of defeat and failure would linger in his mouth for a long time. His eyes scanned his total score, and then the score of the person just above him—the second-to-last.
They were separated by just one point. Yves felt as if he’d been doused with ice water when he read the name of the one who had beaten him by so little: 'Lucien Chevalier. Candidate number: #000080'
"Damn it! Fuck you!"
***
"So?" asked The Rat.
The Rat wasn’t his real name, but that’s what people called this homeless man, whose nose resembled the snout of the animal. Some said he had once been an old Parisian restaurateur who went bankrupt. Lucien had just returned from the college of Medicine, but this time he hadn’t gone inside. He had simply glanced at the ranking they had taped to the entrance.
"I selected," Lucien replied, his tone indifferent.
In reality, he was jubilant. He had succeeded in being selected, but more importantly, he had beaten him. Him—the perfect little guy—he had beaten him. Now, it was he who was on top.
"Congratulations," Le Rat said, feigning sincerity.
The man gave a sardonic smile, missing several teeth. Sitting on the floor, legs spread but bent, in a dark, empty corner of the underground parking lot, he pulled a spoon from his pocket.
"Shall we celebrate?" he suggested, with the air of a little imp.
Lucien merely shrugged and sat down next to The Rat. The man took a shoelace from his filthy shoe and tied it around the young man’s arm.
As The Rat worked to melt the substance in the hollow of a spoon, Lucien began to imagine. He pictured how he had received the news.
Oh, Yves must have been furious about being last. If only he knew that it was Lucien sitting just above him. His harmonious face must have been twisted with hatred, rage, and perhaps even sorrow.
He probably needed some consolation. Maybe if Lucien had been by his side, he would have offered it. He would have told him that it wasn’t such a big deal that he was better than him—that, in a way, it was justice being served, that Yves had already enjoyed all the things Lucien had been denied. That now it was his turn to suffer, and that was how it was. Yet Lucien would still be there for him, even though he was inferior, even though he was last, to remind him that he still found him handsome, elegant, and captivating.
Even before The Rat pricked him in the crook of the elbow and injected the drug, a smile had already spread across Lucien’s face. The heroin only made it grow wider.