Chapter 18 | Aicha

The following Monday began the way all Mondays have the bad habit of beginning.

Same room.

Same light, far too white for such an unfair hour.

Same rows of tables aligned as if someone had sincerely believed a little geometry could save students before nine in the morning.

The board was still covered with formulas left by the previous class, black and blue marker traces that made it feel like the day had started without us.

I sat down beside Nawal. She placed her coffee cup on the table with the gravity of a surgeon at the end of a shift.

“I’m dead.”

“It’s nine.”

“Exactly.”

She took a sip with her eyes closed, as if she truly hoped to find a reason to continue in it.

“Monday shouldn’t exist. We could very well go from Sunday to Tuesday. No one would lose anything.”

“But then Tuesday would become Monday…”

She turned her head toward me with sincere concern.

“I refuse to live in that world.”

Reda arrived a few seconds later and collapsed onto the chair behind us with the noise of a bag, a jacket, and accumulated fatigue.

“If anyone talks to me about finance before ten, I’m leaving university.”

Nawal raised a finger.

“Serious promise?”

“Absolutely.”

“Can we test you?”

“No. Because I also need this degree.”

Youssef arrived next with a backpack visibly too full for someone who was clearly not only carrying university stuff. He let it drop to the floor with a great theatrical sigh, then spread his arms while looking around the room.

“The weak are talking a lot this morning.”

“The strong are still sleeping,” Reda answered.

“Geniuses still come anyway.”

“Geniuses first remove the pastry crumbs from their sweater,” Nawal said.

Youssef looked down at his sweatshirt, blew on it as if that would solve the problem, then sat down with all the dignity possible in a situation that allowed none.

I smiled slightly.

This kind of morning would have exhausted me a few months earlier. I would have listened, laughed a little too late, waited for the right moment to speak before letting it pass.

Now, I was there, in the middle of them, without really having seen the passage open. There had been no big shift. Just a series of tiny nothings. Coffees, breaks, repeated jokes, habits settling in.

Before, I often stayed at the edge of conversations like someone waiting to be told he had the right to enter.

Now, I found myself inside before even asking the question.

Aïcha arrived a few minutes later.

Her hair tied up quickly, with that face of mornings where she had probably slept too little while deciding to behave as if she had the situation perfectly under control.

She slid her bag against her chair and sat down beside Nawal.

“Hi everyone.”

“Hi,” Nawal answered.

“You look alive,” Youssef observed.

“Barely. But I’m creating the illusion.”

Then she threw me a look.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

Her voice was calm.

Neither cold nor really close.

For several days, our relationship had looked like that.

Perfectly normal moments, almost easy, then, without warning, a small invisible distance. As if something stepped back the moment I felt like I was finding it again.

It was never clear enough for me to reproach her for anything.

Just enough for me to feel it.

The professor entered the room with his stack of documents under his arm and the satisfied air of a man who was clearly happy to exist at nine in the morning.

The conversations gradually stopped.

Class began.

One hour. Then two.

Columns of figures, reasoning, methods.

The sound of pens, laptops discreetly opened for something else, class files.

Reda yawned at least six times, or seven. Youssef wrote something on his sheet that clearly had nothing to do with accounting, since Nawal smothered a laugh while reading it.

At the end, the professor placed his marker on the desk and turned toward us with that small suspended moment that announces either a catastrophe, or vaguely exciting information.

“Before you leave, I have an important announcement.”

Immediately, the room lifted its head.

Even Reda, who had looked like he had physically left his body for half an hour, returned among us.

“Next week, we are organizing an educational trip.”

A murmur moved through the lecture hall.

“You’ll be leaving for three days.”

This time, the murmur changed nature. There was something livelier in it, younger, almost joyful.

“Several companies will welcome us for visits. There will also be conferences and workshops.”

Small pause.

“And you will be staying on site, at a hotel.”

The noise exploded all at once.

“Ooooh!”

“Where is it?”

“We’re sleeping at a hotel?”

“Three real days?”

“With the other programs too?”

The professor raised a hand, uselessly.

“Calm down.”

No one calmed down.

“The details will be sent to you by email,” he continued. “Departure Monday morning. Return Wednesday late afternoon. I’m counting on your seriousness.”

That sentence made several people laugh, as if it already contained its own contradiction.

Then he packed up his things.

“Have a good weekend.”

The room exploded a second time, even more freely.

Chairs scraped, bags snapped shut, phones were already out to check emails that, obviously, had not arrived yet.

“Three days!” someone shouted at the back.

“It’s going to be chaos!”

“We’re never going to sleep.”

Reda turned toward us with the expression of a man who had just learned he was being offered the legal right to do anything within an academic framework.

“Guys.”

“Yes?” Nawal said.

“We’re going to do incredible things.”

“We’re mostly going to try not to get kicked out.”

“No promises.”

Youssef placed a hand over his heart.

“I officially announce that this trip will mark the history of this class.”

“Especially if you forget your charger and become unbearable after six hours,” Nawal said.

I looked at Aïcha.

She was smiling slightly.

A real smile. Not huge, not loud. Just real.

And for one second, everything seemed to become simple again.

As if nothing had slipped between us lately.

As if this trip were only one more piece of good news in an ordinary day.

Then the second passed.

The following Monday, the bus was waiting in front of the university.

A large white bus, slightly too clean to transport a group of students who had all, in one way or another, underestimated the concept of three days away from home.

Bags were piling up in the luggage compartment, some reasonable, others visibly packed for a survival expedition.

The morning air was cool. Not exactly pleasant, but sharp enough to keep people standing.

“I hope we’re not sleeping four to a room.”

“I don’t want to sleep with Reda.”

“Why?”

“You snore.”

“That’s false.”

“It’s scientific.”

“You have no proof.”

“I survived an integration weekend with you. That’s already an expert report.”

I got on the bus with Nawal and Youssef.

Inside, it smelled of warm fabric, air conditioning not yet turned on, and biscuits already opened too early.

We found several seats together, roughly in the middle. Reda settled just in front of us and immediately declared that he now controlled the zone.

Aïcha got on a few seconds later.

She stayed for a short moment in the aisle, long enough to look at the available seats, the people already settled, the bags placed anywhere, the social geography of the bus.

Then she sat beside Nawal.

“We’re good here.”

Youssef immediately turned around.

“Excellent choice. This is the elite section of the vehicle.”

“It’s mostly the loudest section,” Nawal said.

“So the best,” he concluded.

The bus started in a mix of poorly coordinated movements, seat belts fastened at the last moment, and laughter for no real reason.

For the first few minutes, everyone kept that excitement that comes at the beginning of a trip. We hadn’t been gone long enough to get bored yet. We were no longer quite in everyday life, and not yet arrived somewhere else.

Someone put music on a little too loudly at the back. Others pulled out bags of chips as if supplies were a major logistical necessity.

A smell of coffee, perfume, and sweet biscuits began to mix in the bus air.

After an hour, the atmosphere already looked less like an educational trip than a summer camp run by people who had abandoned every attempt at discipline.

Youssef turned around in his seat with the dangerous look of someone who had just had an idea.

“Right then.”

I immediately became suspicious.

“This is starting badly.”

“Serious question.”

“I never believe you when you say that.”

“Big mistake. If you had to choose a dish to seduce someone, what would you make?”

The bus, or at least our corner of the bus, suddenly became very attentive.

Reda turned around.

Nawal put down her phone.

Aïcha looked up.

I took time to think about it.

Not because I wanted to give a brilliant answer. Just because my brain often refuses to cooperate when several people are waiting for something from me at the same time.

Then I answered:

“Lasagna.”

Small silence.

“Lasagna?” Youssef repeated, visibly scandalized, as if I had just confessed to a crime.

“Yes.”

“Why lasagna?”

I lifted my shoulders slightly.

“Because it takes a long time to make. So the person knows you really made an effort.”

One second of floating, then laughter burst out.

“But that’s terrifyingly logical!” Nawal exclaimed.

“A strategist,” Youssef said, striking the top of the seat. “A real one.”

Reda applauded.

“Respect. Truly. It’s romantic and organizational.”

“Plus, it’s good,” Nawal added. “I approve.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Aïcha looked up at me.

A smile appeared.

“That’s not stupid,” she said.

I looked back at her.

For a few seconds, we exchanged that complicit look we often had before. That small space where there was no need to add much. Just a sentence, a smile, and the quiet feeling of being on the same line.

Then she looked away.

And the distance returned.

Not brutally. Not enough for the others to see.

Just like a door closing softly.

The first two days went by quickly.

Too quickly, even.

The days were so full they erased the notion of time.

Early departures. Companies with glass lobbies. Conferences in overheated rooms. Very self-assured speakers talking to us about trajectory, adaptability, corporate culture, and operational excellence with the same tone people use to explain a religion.

There were also the rides, the waits in front of buildings, the groups naturally forming again, coffee breaks too short, the walks too long between one visit and the next.

But above all, there was a lot of time together.

Meals eaten too quickly or too slowly depending on the mood. Jokes that came back from one moment to another as if they refused to die. Evenings at the hotel, where everyone suddenly rediscovered that a group of students, even tired, remains a group of students as soon as it is released outside its usual frame.

The first evening, the whole group ended up in the hotel lobby.

The place had that impersonal decor all mid-range hotel lobbies have: neutral- colored armchairs, lamps that were too well-behaved, a polite reception desk, and a background silence that was immediately destroyed by our class.

Reda had discovered a foosball table at the back of the room.

“It’s war!”

“No,” Nawal said.

“Yes.”

“No,” she repeated. “It’s never just foosball with you, it’s a diplomatic issue.”

Teams formed anyway.

So did the laughter.

Youssef was incredibly bad.

“This is impossible.”

“You just shot against your own goal,” Reda said.

“It was strategic.”

“No.”

“Yes. I’m confusing the opponent.”

“You’re mostly confusing yourself,” Nawal concluded.

I caught myself laughing often.

Much more than usual.

Not that small careful laugh I sometimes serve to make sure I don’t seem too out of place.

A real laugh, coming out without prior validation.

Something had changed in the class.

Or maybe simply in me.

Conversations were becoming natural. Silences too. No one was forcing me to be more than I was, and yet I was more there than before.

I was no longer only the discreet guy. No longer only the one people included because Aïcha had done it first.

I was just there. A member of the group.

Aïcha participated too. She laughed, talked, commented on matches with an energy that made everything around her feel more alive. And sometimes, for a few minutes, everything became exactly like before again.

“Eliott, pass!”

“I’m trying!”

“You play like a child!”

“That’s very offensive.”

“Own it.”

“You’re the one shouting like a toxic coach.”

She had laughed at that, her head thrown slightly back, and for one second I had found something very simple again. Something I missed more than I admitted.

Then, as often, she closed off slightly.

For no visible reason.

A more neutral tone. A half-step of distance. An attention that slid elsewhere.

And I never knew why.

The second evening, we all ate together in a small restaurant near the hotel.

A room a little too narrow, with tables close together, noise everywhere, and that smell of hot food that eventually makes you hungry even when you already snacked on whatever an hour earlier.

The waiter looked overwhelmed at the idea of handling so many students at once.

The table was loud.

“If anyone orders a salad, I’m leaving the table,” Reda declared.

“That’s very radical,” Nawal said.

“It’s a principle.”

“A stupid principle,” Youssef clarified.

Nawal raised her glass, juice, obviously.

“To stupid principles.”

“To stupid principles,” we repeated.

The glasses clinked in a joyful little disorder.

Then there was a long absurd discussion about the most respectable dessert, a discussion Reda took far too seriously.

At one point, I said something about chocolate mousse that made Aïcha laugh longer than the sentence deserved.

I looked at the table.

Nawal was laughing, one hand against her cheek.

Youssef was telling an incomprehensible story with an enormous amount of gestures.

Reda was trying to convince the waiter that two desserts for one person was a completely respectable life choice.

And Aïcha…

She was looking at me.

Just one second.

A soft look.

A sad one too.

Not sad like when someone is doing badly, not exactly. More like she was thinking about something she didn’t want to let fully enter the evening.

Then she looked away, grabbed her glass, answered something Nawal said, and the conversation continued as if I had seen nothing.

The trip had found its rhythm.

Wake-ups too early. Breakfasts too loud. Industrial orange juice. Toast eaten half standing. Students still rumpled with sleep.

Then the buses, visits, too-clean corridors, badges around our necks, jokes moving from one building to another like an invisible thread.

The group worked well.

Very well, even.

Small habits appeared.

Reda always complained about the schedule.

Youssef always found a way to divert a serious conversation toward something absurd.

Nawal commented on everything with that mix of lucidity and irony that made her very difficult to contradict.

And I was there.

Really there.

On the last morning, we arrived at a large consulting firm.

A modern building, far too glassy, with the kind of huge lobby that gives you the impression everyone must automatically walk straight and speak quietly.

The floor shone a little too much. The receptionists had impeccable smiles. Screens displayed numbers, logos, reassuring slogans about innovation and strategic support.

We were given visitor badges.

Then the group split up.

“You may move around freely during the visit,” the speaker explained. “Just try to stay in small groups.”

The students immediately began scattering.

Reda instantly grabbed Youssef.

“Come on, we’re going to see the trading room.”

“There’s a trading room?”

“Surely.”

“Is that a lie?”

“Maybe.”

Nawal rolled her eyes.

“I’ll let you die.”

She left with two other students.

I looked around me.

Aïcha was still there.

“The others left,” she said.

“Yes.”

She lifted her shoulders slightly.

“Should we do the visit anyway?”

“Yes.”

We started walking through the corridors.

The company was silent. Rows of offices behind glass, meeting rooms with perfect furniture, screens everywhere, focused people sometimes lifting their eyes toward our badges before diving back into their files as if we were a weather phenomenon of little interest.

For a few minutes, we barely spoke.

Our steps echoed faintly on the floor.

I read the door plaques to keep myself occupied.

Then Aïcha said:

“It’s weird.”

“What?”

“The offices.”

“Why?”

She looked around.

“Everything is too quiet. It feels like no one has the right to have a personality here.”

I smiled.

“That’s work.”

“Sad.”

“A little.”

She gave a small laugh.

We continued.

We commented on meeting rooms far too large for three people, gigantic screens, green plants visibly placed there to prove the company still vaguely respected the idea of living things.

Then we found ourselves in front of a coffee machine whose interface looked like that of a small spaceship.

Aïcha stopped dead.

“Look at that.”

“It’s a cappuccino machine.”

“No.”

She stepped closer to read the buttons.

“It’s a happiness machine!”

“You’re easily impressed.”

“Yes, and I own it. Look, it does hot chocolate, latte, mocha, cappuccino, hazelnut… At our university, the machine just makes sad coffee and fake cocoa without cocoa, without milk, and without sugar.”

“That’s true.”

“Here, maybe I’d have a future.”

I smiled again.

And for a few minutes, the visit continued like that.

Simple. Almost normal.

Even soft, in a way.

We pointed out stupid details to each other. A small nap room that Aïcha immediately declared suspicious. A large relaxation room with a foosball table she found unfairly more beautiful than the one at the hotel. An immense bay window in front of which she stayed for a few seconds, just to look at the city.

And for a moment, I truly had the impression that the distance of the last few days had disappeared. As if it had dissolved in the fatigue, in the trip, in the strangeness of those places where no one knew us. As if we were simply finding again what we had been before.

Two people talking.

Understanding each other.

Not needing to monitor the exact place of their gestures.

Then, without warning, the silence returned.

Not the quiet silence from before.

Another one.

More tense. More aware.

I immediately felt that something was still stuck between us, still there, even when we pretended otherwise.

The visit ended.

The group gathered in front of the building.

The bus was waiting a little farther away, parked along the sidewalk. The other students were already talking about the ride back, about how tired they were, about how they were going to sleep the whole way, about what they would order that evening once they got home.

“We still have an hour before departure,” someone announced.

“We’re going to get coffee,” Reda said, raising an arm as if leading a military operation.

“Obviously,” Nawal replied.

Everyone started moving.

I stayed a little behind.

So did Aïcha.

Without really deciding it, we walked into a small street behind the building. The noise of the avenue moved away a little. There was a park, a few benches, trees casting a bit of shade despite the season, and that relative calm you sometimes find between two busier streets.

We sat down.

The bench was cold.

The silence lasted a few seconds.

I looked ahead. A stroller was moving slowly along the path. Farther away, two employees were smoking near a barrier, speaking too low for us to make anything out. The world continued with perfect indifference.

Then I took a breath.

“Aïcha.”

She was looking at her hands. Her fingers were playing with the sleeve of her sweater, which she sometimes does when she’s thinking or when she’s already looking for how to leave a conversation before it really begins.

“Yes?”

“We need to talk.”

She breathed out lightly through her nose. Not pure annoyance. More that weariness of people who knew the moment would eventually come.

“Eliott…”

“No.”

I shook my head.

“Seriously.”

She finally looked up at me. I saw immediately that she understood very well what this was about.

“I don’t understand what’s going on.”

She stayed silent.

“I mean, yes, I understand that something is going on. But not what. And I’m starting to get tired of pretending it’s normal.”

Her gaze slid toward the park, then returned to me.

“We were close.”

“Yes,” she said softly.

“And now, you act as if…”

I searched for my words. It was always the worst moment. The one where the feeling is clear, but the sentences stay approximate.

“As if you have to be careful with me. As if, all of a sudden, there are moments when I become too much. Or embarrassing. Or I don’t know what.”

She looked away.

“That’s not it.”

“Then what is it?”

Still no answer.

I could feel frustration rising, but underneath it, there was mostly something else. Something more stupid, more vulnerable. The very simple need to know whether I had imagined everything else.

“If I did something, say it.”

“You didn’t do anything.”

“Then why are you pulling away?”

She took time to breathe in. A long time. As if she were looking for a bearable version of the truth.

“Because it’s simpler.”

I let out a small nervous laugh.

“For who?”

This time, she did not answer right away.

I saw her throat move slightly before she spoke.

“For everyone.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“I know.”

“Aïcha…”

I lowered my eyes for a moment before continuing, lower.

“I’m not asking for a big speech. Just the real reason.”

The wind passed through the branches above us. Someone laughed farther away in the park. The kind of insignificant detail that becomes almost violent when you’re trying to say something important.

Then she finally said:

“I don’t have a choice.”

I frowned.

“Of course you do.”

She gently shook her head.

“No.”

“We always have a choice.”

“That’s false.”

Her voice wasn’t hard. She wasn’t trying to contradict me to win. She said it like someone who had already had this discussion alone, several times, and knew perfectly well where it ended.

I looked at her without answering.

Then she continued, more softly:

“My family doesn’t like it.”

The word stayed there for one second before really entering my head.

“What?”

“They don’t like me talking with other boys.”

“But we’re not…”

I stopped.

“We’re just friends.”

“Yes…”

“So what?”

She made an almost imperceptible movement of her shoulder.

“That doesn’t change anything in my house.”

I looked at her, unable to know whether what was rising in me was anger, incomprehension, or simply a very clear form of sadness.

“And you accept that?”

She kept her eyes fixed ahead.

“No.”

“I know it’s not simple, but…”

I stopped for one second.

I didn’t want to sound like someone judging a world he didn’t know. But I also couldn’t pretend all of this seemed normal to me.

“But you talk to me, you go out with me, you spend time with me. And then you step back as if we’re doing something wrong.”

She closed her eyes for one very short second.

“I know.”

“And what am I supposed to understand in all that?”

Her breathing trembled a little, almost nothing.

“You can understand whatever you want.”

That sentence cut me more than I would have thought.

Small pause.

“Did they say something to you?”

She hesitated.

“Let’s say no…”

I very quickly saw again the mall, her brother, his gaze, his way of keeping me at a distance while staying polite, and the way Aïcha had shrunk in the scene.

I looked at the ground.

“So you just prefer to move away.”

She took a few seconds to answer.

“I prefer to avoid making it worse.”

“For you?”

“Yes, for me.”

I turned my head toward her.

She was looking straight ahead, very still, as if moving one centimeter might make something fall.

“Aïcha…”

She continued, faster now, as if once she started she must absolutely not stop.

“You don’t understand how it works. If I start arguing with them about this, it takes up enormous space. It doesn’t stay a discussion.”

I said nothing.

“And I’m tired, Eliott,” she continued. “I don’t want every outing, every message, every simple moment to become a problem to manage afterward.”

She finally turned toward me.

Her eyes weren’t full of tears, not really. But there was that fatigue inside them that you don’t act.

“So yes, I stepped back. Because you disturb me. Because it doesn’t suit me, but I can’t do anything about it. Because it tires me. Because I’m sick of all this.”

Something in me calmed and tightened at the same time.

“A classmate,” I said.

She lowered her eyes.

“Yes.”

The word hurt in an almost ridiculous way. Because it was ordinary. Because it was true, technically. And because it had also been used to reduce us.

“It was awful,” she added immediately. “I know it was awful.”

I stayed silent.

“But you do it.”

“Yes.”

Her honesty, there, disarmed me more than any excuse.

I passed a hand over my face, not to hide anything, just to gain one second.

“And when were you planning to tell me?”

She gave a small sad smile.

“I don’t know. I was maybe hoping it would pass. Or that you wouldn’t feel it that much.”

I let out a breath.

“That failed.”

“Yes.”

The silence fell again.

Less opaque this time. More painful, but clearer.

I looked at the trees in front of us, the shadows on the ground, the park that had no idea what it was being used to contain.

Then I asked, without thinking enough to stop it:

“And me, in all that?”

She looked up at me.

I felt the question after saying it. A question that probably had no place here.

“You matter,” she said.

I looked at her.

And maybe that was the saddest part. Because it wasn’t a clear rejection. Not something you can file away into a simple, clean pain. It was worse. Real affection, caught in something bigger and more important than itself.

“Then why do I feel like I’m the one removed first when things get complicated?”

She lowered her head.

For a long time.

When she spoke again, her voice was very low.

“You’re not the one I removed first.”

I stayed still.

She had said it simply. And that was exactly why the sentence hurt so much.

I felt something hollow out in my chest. Not a brutal shock. More a sad obviousness finally taking up all the space.

“Okay.”

I didn’t know what else to say.

She looked at me with discreet worry, as if she were trying to measure the exact place where her truth had just fallen inside me.

“I’m sorry.”

I shook my head slightly.

“It’s not your fault.”

“Not completely,” she said.

I turned my eyes toward her.

“You could have told me earlier.”

“I know.”

“You could have stopped letting me think I was inventing everything.”

She briefly closed her eyes.

“I know.”

This time, there was nothing to add.

She was no longer trying to defend herself.

And I no longer really wanted to know more.

The wind passed through the trees of the park. Far away, students were laughing too loudly. The city continued, perfectly intact, while something between us changed shape.

“It makes me sad,” she said after a while. “Really.”

I looked at her.

“Me too.”

A small sad laugh escaped her.

“We’re really bad at this.”

“Yes.”

“And the worst part is, I liked it when it was simple.”

“Me too.”

We stayed a little longer on the bench without talking.

But that silence was no longer the same. There was no mystery in it anymore. Just a not very pretty truth, placed between us with enough softness not to completely break what remained, and enough clarity to prevent going back.

Then someone shouted in the distance:

“The bus!”

I stood up.

So did she.

We walked together toward the group.

Not pressed together. Not far either. At a strange distance, almost precise, as if our bodies had understood before us that we now had to be careful with something new.

The ride back was much quieter.

Many students were finally sleeping, exhausted by the three days. The bus had lost its first euphoria. All that remained were necks falling at odd angles, badly adjusted earphones, low conversations, and windows crossed by late-afternoon light that made everything a little blurrier.

Reda was snoring with no shame at all.

Youssef was watching a show on his phone with absurd concentration.

Nawal was reading something in silence.

I watched the road pass by through the window.

Aïcha was sitting a few rows ahead.

She was looking outside too.

We didn’t speak again.

But for the first time in several days, I at least understood what had happened. I understood the distance, the hesitations, the unexplained steps back, the looks that turned tender again only to close right away.

And even if that didn’t make anything easier, even if part of me still hurt from this story…

It was something else now.