“I didn’t catch her name,” I said, not wanting to say I’d met Princess Gwendoline. “Long blonde hair, brown eyes, a bit shorter than me.”

Miles rubbed his chin. “Blonde…. Wait, you remember her eye colour?”

“Where else would I be looking while speaking with her?”

He didn’t answer that. “There’s a few girls I know that it could be, though I suppose there’s no point guessing.”

Of the three, she was definitely the most interesting. The princess who would have been queen if not for her father’s (perhaps justified) bout of paranoia. A title that should have garnered respect being neglected, showing how fragile and ethereal this aristocracy truly was. Even Queen Victoria could, if she stepped too far politically, be replaced without any fuss. Nobility in name alone.

That decision quickly felt like it hadn’t been much of a decision at all, Miles saying nothing more on the matter. I hadn’t exactly hidden my reluctance to choose any of them, so it wasn’t strange for him to pick up on it.

My school life otherwise carried on like at the boarding school. Lessons weren’t challenging, but they required effort to memorise what I needed to memorise. I did enjoy them more, though, the topics less boring and even some I liked. English literature, Dickens was the only Victorian writer I’d known, so I was happy to find other things to read. It was also the only class boys and girls shared. I didn’t care about that, but it seemed to motivate the other boys to attend and be on their best behaviour.

It wasn’t just the lessons that were (more or less) the same. Before, the other children had all been nobility, but mostly not all that important and they mostly knew that. These boys now were snobbish. They complained about their rooms, they complained about the food, they complained about having to attend oh so many classes every single weekday. It annoyed me, hearing that whining tone again and again. I quickly tuned them all out.

Miles felt similarly. Like with the boarding school, he didn’t find anyone here he actually wanted to be friends with (other than me, for some reason). He seemed to value my hard work, how I didn’t gossip, that I spoke my mind, which were all things rather uncommon in this school. These children were all about confidence, putting on a smile, trying to appear clever. Basically politicians, except even less convincing.

I wasn’t sure, but I thought they had tried to bully me. It was more like the girls in the old life than at the boarding school—talking about me when I was nearby, looking at me and then laughing, that sort of pathetic stuff. They probably did other things that I missed entirely, naturally ignoring them as I really didn’t care at all about them. That was one nice thing in this time period: very little group work. By now, Miles knew it didn’t bother me at all, so he didn’t let it bother him, even though it still did a little bit. Maybe some of my snark had rubbed off on him, the way he spoke to the other boys when he thought I wasn’t listening.

Other than not being bullied, I spent my time trying to avoid the three heroines. That was easy enough, only sharing one class and otherwise hardly ever seeing any girls, but I did have to give up the library, no doubt Beatrice often there. Otherwise, none of them sought me out, so that wasn’t a problem at all.

What was a problem was my dancing. After a month had passed, I was worried—for a reason. There was to be a debut ball for the first-years and I would be expected to dance with some random girl for half an hour. While I didn’t care about my reputation, I didn’t want to end up ruining her evening. Every night, once I’d finished my homework and revision, I practised, trying to get to the point where I at least wouldn’t step on any toes.

The day came, a Sunday like for all the balls the school held.

Three sharp knocks interrupted my afternoon reading. I would have ignored them, but Miles knew how to persist—probably because I ignored him if he didn’t. After closing my book, I shuffled over to the door.

“How do I look?” he asked.

“With your eyes.”

He tutted, sliding past me and into my room. “Come on, that joke’s getting old.”

“Well, it’s a good joke,” I said, shutting the door.

We joked a little more, picked out what I’d wear (black trousers and suit jacket, white shirt, school tie) and I kicked him out while I changed. Suited up, I met him in the hallway, and then we wandered around until it was time.

The ballroom stood in about the centre of all the buildings, behind the manor. Two smaller rooms jutted out of it, the gendered entrances. Miles and I went in, joining the rest of the first-year boys, waiting for it to start.

A teacher soon came in, the chaperone-in-charge for the evening. He led us out into the ballroom, a spacious hall with a small orchestra at one end, chairs and tables the other end, a dance floor in the middle. We were lined up beside the dance floor, the girls shortly after led out and lined up opposite us, a few paces away.

Off to the side of us, the teacher cleared his throat. “Would all those who have a partner take to the floor.”

I couldn’t imagine anyone did, not so close to the start of the year. Half the point of this school was finding a fiancé or fiancée, so it wasn’t like someone would come if they were already engaged. And to walk up to some random girl, that was horrible. In The Key To Her Heart, it gave me the option to have Albert do that, but that was a game. Besides, I was pretty sure it was a trick choice, making the girl I chose dislike me for it.

Lost in my thoughts, I didn’t pay attention to the light footsteps. There was no way anyone would come and ask me to dance.

She held out a hand.

Gwendoline (of house) Hanover.

She led me to the dance floor, and I couldn’t help but be confused, unable to come up with any possible reason for this to be happening. The chaperone hadn’t paired us up (unless I’d gone deaf). If he had, it was the boy who was supposed to go to the girl. Now lost in these thoughts, at least I didn’t worry about the dancing.

Soon enough, we were joined by the couples decided at the whim of a pointing finger and the words “You and you”. Then the music began, though it wasn’t yet time to dance.

She looked at me, and I guessed she was desperate to say something, the corner of her mouth twitching, her gaze flickering between my nose and mouth, unable to look me in the eyes.

“Hullo, ma’am,” I said.

A relieved breath slipped through her lips. “I am sorry for this,” she softly said. “When I thought of how I would have to introduce myself to someone, and then I saw you there, my feet moved on their own accord.”

“That’s a lie, is it not?”

She smiled, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “I thought, if I were to put you in such a position, you would again offer me your hand out of pity.”

“How honest of you.”

“There’s a feeling I have, which says you can see my very thoughts.”

That was fair, having sort of abused my memory of the game to give her directions to the headmaster’s office before she’d asked when we’d last met. Though, this time, it was more that she still couldn’t meet my eye after that apology.

“My dancing leaves something to be desired, so I hope you don’t come to regret appealing to my kindness,” I said.

“To have some kindness along with the pain is more than I could hope for.”

Her words crawled over my skin, bringing to mind those morbid images from the “good ending”. Her smiling face, hand caressing the back of Albert’s head, his blood pooling on the ground. But it passed quickly, and I tried to remember I wasn’t in the game—I was in a real world, with real people.

We had a little longer to wait before the chaperone-in-charge instructed us all to, without further ado, dance. Not exactly settled by her words, I was still anxious as I offered her my hand. She held herself with grace, sliding close to me, closer than she really needed to. The couples moving around us, I began to lead, my worry replaced with concentration.

Harder than any exam, more challenging than any homework, I moved my feet. Fortunately, she followed my lead well, even though it must have been difficult for her to match my stride when I forgot to shorten it. No words were spoken, we simply looked into each other’s eyes. It didn’t feel like a passionate gaze from her. If anything, it felt… hollow, like she was looking at me and saw nothing there.

I wasn’t bothered by that. She had a lot going on and didn’t need to bother with me.

One song (about ten minutes long), a minute break, another song, another break, and a final song. It left me sweating, a suit not the best for exercise, but otherwise I’d managed fine. She seemed to take it all in stride, a touch of a sheen to her and a slight flush to her cheeks, yet her breaths steady, eyes focused.

We stepped apart. She curtsied, and I bowed, the dancing done for the day. To cool down, I went over to the tables and sat down with a drink—a glass of wine. I didn’t condone underage drinking, but one glass every few months was probably okay, and I was really hot. While some people left right away, others grouped up, chatting, exhausted.

Before I finished my drink, Miles joined me, and he said nothing. His eyes stared deeply into his wine, something about the maroon colour fascinating. In little sips, he gradually emptied his glass.

“You do know who that was, do you not?” he quietly asked.

“She didn’t give me her name.”

Wherever I looked, I caught the glances sent my way, and I heard my name whispered on the wind, her name.

He sighed. “I would be a fool to expect a life without surprises while being your friend.”

“You would be a fool to be my friend,” I said, correcting him.

Chuckling, he put down his glass and stood up. “You’re not wrong.”

He said nothing more on the topic of the princess, not on the way back to the dorms or the days following. In those days, I couldn’t help but listen whenever I heard her name, rare as it was coming from the boys. While some things had changed from the game, from what I overheard, this part of her story seemed the same.

Come the end of November, it was time for another ball. This one included the upper years as well and only the first dance was mandatory, which was how the rest of the balls would be. Miles and I went through the almost scripted conversation on the day, my joke falling flat like it always did. Then we wandered the grounds for a bit, sat in the cafeteria for a bit longer (the cold sharper than last time).

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When it was time, we went to wait in the room with the other boys. Surrounded by the older boys, I felt unusually short, me being one of the taller boys in the first year. We first-years had to wait until last to be led out, which was a bit of a bonus really, the poor third-years having been waiting out on the dance floor for nearly ten minutes already.

Boys lined up one side, the girls lined up opposite right afterwards. I couldn’t help but catch Gwendoline’s eye as she glanced over. Distant.

“Would all those who have a partner take to the floor.”

Looking at her, I didn’t have to wait long for her to glance at me, our eyes meeting. I wasn’t someone who tried to be cruel, which wasn’t the same as someone who tried to be kind. In a small gesture, I turned my hand out, and she bowed her head the slightest touch.

With that, I walked over and took her hand, led us to the dance floor, all the older students already there. It was almost definitely my imagination, but the room suddenly seemed quieter, colder. A few other first-years followed us by a noticeable few paces. The rest were then paired up at random.

Finally, the music began.

I’d not been all that worried this time, not about myself. However, dancing drained away the tension anyway, my mind focusing on the task at hand. I was better than before thanks to all the practising, still pitiable but I made it easier for her to avoid my clumsy feet.

And I looked at her. I’d been so focused last time that I hadn’t paid attention to much more than her eyes. Now that I saw her face, she was average looking. It was the modern sort of average, though, where no one who saw her would say she was ugly, and if she dressed up she would be pretty cute—a seven out of ten. That wasn’t too surprising, princesses being the most beautiful women in the kingdom probably old propaganda and to do with access to the best makeup and most skilled attendants.

I also noticed her hairstyle was something she could’ve done by herself. Most of the other girls, they’d put the extra effort in, probably a friend helping them with their hair. The pale colour of her lipstick, soft blue of her dress—understated, not meant to catch the eye. Most of the other girls wore vivid yellows, strong greens, bold blues.

The song ended. She curtsied and I bowed, and that was it. I walked off to a table in the corner and she disappeared in the crowd. But she didn’t leave my thoughts, not while I drank my (single) glass of wine, not while Miles talked nothings with me, not while I sat in my room and stared at the crescent moon.

As the next week came to an end, the school broke up for All Hallows’ Tide. Miles and I shared a coach back, dropping him off in Dunstable before me at the Luton manor.

Just like whenever I’d returned from the boarding school, I was ignored, taken to my room by a servant and left there until supper. At the end of the meal, just as always, father said, “Welcome home, Albert.”

“Thank you, father,” I said, bowing my head.

In a disinterested tone, he asked, “How was your time at the school?”

I’d never felt a need to lie before, no part of me wanting to try and impress him. However, I keenly felt the consequences of what I could say. Even though I knew a lie by omission would come back to bite me eventually, I wanted to try not to be cruel. “I settled in well and have taken to my studies. There isn’t a club to my liking at this time, the sports only starting in spring.”

Mother peered at me, and then her gaze darted to see if father would speak or if she could. After a moment, no sign from him, she asked, “Did you attend a ball?”

I showed nothing, gesturing with my hands as I said, “Nothing to speak of happened. I partnered with a girl I didn’t know and managed to dance without embarrassing myself too much.”

Violet tittered behind a hand, Daisy peered at me much like mother had before. Yet later, when I went to see Alice, Daisy had nothing to ask me, steadily replacing me with romance books—she was at that age.

Once the holiday passed and I was back at school, I didn’t have to wait long for the New Year ball. However, I had something I wanted to check first. So, the day before, half an hour until curfew, I left my warm room and ventured out into the cold.

Near no one was about at this time, dark early in the middle of winter as we were. No one was around the sports field, no reason to be this time of year.

Someone was by the river, alone.

I gently coughed as I walked the last steps to the top of the riverbank. Rather than a fence, brambles and such kept us from getting dangerously close to the water. The Thames. I’d seen it so many times in London, hardly ever here in Reading. In a distant memory, I remembered hearing it had often frozen over in olden times, but I wasn’t sure when that stopped being the case. Given this world wasn’t strictly the past of my world, maybe it never did freeze over.

Gwendoline looked out at the water, not even turning to face me.

“Cold?” I asked.

She stilled for a moment, and then she slowly looked around until she saw me. “A touch.”

Taking off my coat, I offered it to her. She hesitated, not even reaching out, so I draped it over her anyway.

“It may be unpleasant for you if we were to be seen like this,” she said, a whisper little louder than the river.

“It may surprise you how poorly I am thought of.”

A soft smile showed for a second, and then she hid her face, looking back out at the river.

“You’re being bullied,” I said.

She went to shake her head before she caught herself. Barely moving, she nodded. “Little things. I hear them talk of my father when they know I can hear. They stop talking if I sit at a table with them. In some classes, I am left without a group and expected to work alone.”

It was similar to what I’d gone through in my original childhood, albeit tamer. These posh girls weren’t going to go around actually insulting her or starting rumours—definitely not when they didn’t need to, and it looked like they had already got to her plenty enough. That wasn’t to say her suffering was less than mine had been, that she was weaker, but comparing it to my past helped me to relate.

“You say you are not well regarded, yet you hold yourself well,” she said, having had thoughts of her own while I’d been thinking mine. “Is there a secret?”

Over the years, I had sort of distilled bullying into two sentences: You cannot make people care about someone, and you cannot make a person not care about others. Those were, in my mind at least, the unchangeable reasons why bullying existed, why it couldn’t be “solved”. Especially in children, there were always going to be kids who wanted to pick on others. On the other side, it was normal to react to bullying, to cry or lash out, to be frustrated. But it was those reactions that most of my old bullies had wanted to see. If I could have stopped reacting, then I thought they would have left me mostly alone.

I knew better than to tell her that. Not caring what other people thought wasn’t something learned. It had been almost an epiphany for me, one day realising I didn’t need to let my boss control my mood, that I would rather not hold on to the frustration. And I’d already heard that advice in so many different ways, so many different times, across so many years—useless to me until the time was right.

So I thought for a moment, coming up with a way of saying it that might have helped her take a step forward. “I think they do it to gain control over you. It makes them feel powerful to see that they can affect you, and it feels good to feel powerful.”

“Even though I show nothing?”

I smiled, but it was a sad smile. “You are underestimating how good humans are at reading emotions. Not me personally, though. I’m terrible at that stuff.”

She giggled, the sound strange coming from her. “So says the one who can see my thoughts.”

This “event” happened in the game too, and I thought this was really where the path between the “bad end” and “good end” diverged. One of the options had been to promise her that Albert would stop the bullying, but he couldn’t do anything, less than useless.

I didn’t know what the character thought (what motivations the writer had in mind); however, I could imagine someone (who didn’t know the feelings of being bullied) might have thought that she had felt betrayed by Albert while wanting to keep hold of the one person who had shown her affection. In reality, she wouldn’t believe me if I told her I would stop the bullying. That was the painful truth. Once it reached a point, and it had probably reached that point long ago, she simply wouldn’t be able to trust anyone. She wouldn’t believe anyone who said they wanted to help her. She wouldn’t listen to any advice given to her.

Even though she’d asked me, she had probably dismissed my help as wrong before I’d finished speaking. After all, her first instinct had been to try and disprove it, attack it, change the subject.

After a few minutes of silence, she said her goodbye, returning my coat and thanking me for listening to her complain. I said nothing, didn’t watch her walk away, instead staring out at the river lit by moonlight. In my head, her two endings played over and over again, until just looking at the water made me feel nauseous. Then again, Albert had a phobia of open water in the game—probably because of the incident when I had come to this world, nearly drowning trying to save the kitten. Now that I thought about it, I wasn’t sure if a cat was ever mentioned in the game.

The walk back, lying in bed unable to sleep, all I could think about was her. Just like four years ago, she’d captured me. No, I wasn’t a kind person, but I didn’t want to be someone who watched and did nothing. That was the problem with bullying, though: there was nothing I could do.

The New Year ball. Boys lined up opposite the girls.

“Would all those who have a partner take to the floor.”

I hadn’t caught her eye. She avoided looking at me. I didn’t walk over to her. At my side, it sounded like Miles sighed in relief, but maybe I misheard.

“You and… you.”

A twist of fate, the teacher paired me up with Isabel Reading. She looked cute, crimson a good colour on her, and we introduced ourselves (even though we knew each other) and swapped a few words like we had on the first day of school. I wondered what it would have been like if, all those months ago, I’d pulled an Albert and walked over to her. She seemed nice, interesting. I wouldn’t have hated talking with her now and then.

After the first dance finished (without any trodden toes, my dancing on the good side of passable), I met with Miles at a table. He didn’t ask about Gwendoline, I didn’t tell. We didn’t talk much of anything.

A couple months later, the Spring ball. She ignored me again. Another twist of fate paired me up with Beatrice Westmorland this time. Though she wasn’t dressed to impress, she had good features, and I thought she would look rather gorgeous if done up. I guessed she had her reasons not to. Though I felt she was probably a worse dancer than the other two, I found it easier to dance with her, no accidents happening. Once the first dance finished and we’d done our curtsy and bow, she looked at me with a maybe curious expression, but she didn’t say anything, so I left her in search of a quiet corner to brood.

Again, I wondered what it would have been like if I’d asked her to dance those many months ago. We seemed to be on the same wavelength (at least when it came to dancing). If she liked reading as much as she did in the game, we probably would have got on well, reading in silence, sharing book suggestions.

The more I thought of those two, the more I ended up thinking of Gwendoline, despite wanting not to. There was nothing I could do. Powerless. Useless. Helpless. When I thought of why I’d downloaded The Key To Her Heart all those years ago, I added foolish to that list. Even though I had realised the game wasn’t supposed to make sense, was supposed to just frustrate me for wasting my time playing it, I still sympathised with the characters. I still empathised with her.

In the game, she was… a hypocrite. Strong and weak. Confident and doubtful. Assertive and afraid. A stray cat, begging for attention, but lashing out if given it. I’d been a real sucker for that. Hard to get.

In real life, she was a sixteen-year-old girl. Lonely. Hurt. Unloved. Abandoned. Excluded.

Hard to forget.

There was one last ball in the academic year. I’d never attended it in the game, the endings all coming the night before. When I thought of that, a loud voice of anxiety sat in the back of my head, worrying me day after day. Not much had happened like the game besides the forced meetings with the three heroines and the meeting at the river.

I couldn’t sleep the night before the Summer ball.

Sitting at my desk, the night outside barely looked dark. It was the sort of darkness where a tragedy could happen.

Eventually, I gave in, changing back to the school uniform. After a check for teachers outside, I opened up my window, carefully climbing out and dropping down to the ground, my shins unhappy about it. There was always a teacher at the entrance to the dorms until around midnight, so I wasn’t coming back for a while.

In the game, the “bad end” for Gwendoline, it was by the river. I skirted around the pair of teachers patrolling, plenty of places to hide with shrubs and trees dotted all over the place. My heart beat painfully in my chest, hands shaking. I crept across the grass as best I could, less cover as I moved towards the sports fields, pulse pounding in my ears. Beyond there, I sped up, sure no one would see me from so far away.

Out by the riverbank, amidst the brambles, I saw someone. It was definitely a lady standing there, the silhouette in the mild darkness matching the girls’ uniform. Long blonde hair.

I walked, step by step, closer to her. My heart hammered at my ribcage. I felt I could collapse at any moment, body strung too tight. Closer, closer and closer.

It was Gwendoline.

If I called out to her, she would hear me. That was all it would take to stop this “bad ending”. It didn’t have to be her end. Even if I couldn’t do anything, change anything, stop anything, I could call out to her.

One word was all it took.

She stepped out.

I stopped moving, my heart stilling. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t standing there. She’d gone somewhere. I couldn’t think where. I couldn’t think.

She’d fallen into the river.

My legs ran, heart tore itself apart, lungs burned and eyes stung, throat closed impossibly tight as I tried to force breaths through it. Right to the edge of the brambles and bushes, I ran, barely stopping in time, looking out at the water.

She floated, lifeless.

Images flashed across my mind’s eye. The scene in front of me, it flickered between night and day. I could feel this crushing guilt, regret. Powerless. Useless. Warm water, cold water. Albert was afraid of open water, but I wasn’t, I hadn’t thought I was, yet I felt paralysed now.

I had died in water. I’d died in water. And it hadn’t been this river.

The fear tore at me, pulling me apart into a complete wreck of disjointed thoughts.

But I wasn’t the sort of person who sat by and watched as something terrible happened. I wasn’t. I tried to remember that until I broke through the paralysis.

Throwing off my blazer, I took two steps back.

And I threw myself into the water after her.