Episode 3 — My Best Friend Is Also Trapped Here And I Have Never Been More Relie

The class ended and the hallway filled up fast with the noise of students pouring out of classrooms, bags swinging, conversations overlapping. Caelum walked through it all with his hands in his pockets and his eyes pointed at the ground and his brain somewhere else entirely.

(How do I get out of here.)

That was the only thought running on a loop. Not the Valentine's Day chocolates still sitting in his bag. Not the math class. Not Sylvian's voice in his ear. Just that one question, steady and persistent like a dripping tap.

(I fell asleep reading a manhua. I woke up inside it. There has to be a way back. There is always a way back in these kinds of stories. I just have to figure out the rule.)

He turned a corner without really seeing it and walked directly into someone.

It happened fast. A small collision, a startled sound, and then the instinct that had been drilled into him by thirty years of basic human decency kicked in before his brain had fully caught up. His hand shot out and caught her by the wrist before she could stumble, steadying her with a grip that was firm but careful.

"Are you okay?" he said.

The girl looked up at him.

She was small, dark haired, with wide eyes and a face that was currently cycling through about four different expressions at once. She looked at his hand on her wrist. She looked at his face. She looked at his hand again.

And then she grabbed his wrist right back and started running.

"Wait...." Caelum said.

She did not wait.

He ran because she was already pulling him and also because letting go seemed somehow worse. She moved fast for someone her size, cutting through the crowd with the confidence of someone who had mapped every exit in this building, and within thirty seconds she had pulled him through a side door and down a narrow corridor and into what appeared to be a small unused storage room with shelves of old textbooks and a single dusty window letting in pale light.

She shut the door behind them.

Caelum straightened up and looked at her. "What!?"

"What's your real name," she said. Not a question. The tone of someone who already knew the shape of the answer and just needed to hear it confirmed.

He opened his mouth. Closed it. (Don't say it. You don't know who she is. You don't know what she knows.)

"Caelum," he said carefully. "Caelum Voss."

She gave him a look that said she was not impressed by that answer at all. "Your real name."

A silence stretched between them.

"How do you know," he said slowly, "that I'm not."

"Because," she said, crossing her arms, "I have been in this story for three months and I have watched Caelum Voss from a distance for most of that time and he has never once in his entire fictional life caught someone when they stumbled and asked if they were okay." She tilted her head. "He would have stepped over me. Possibly on purpose."

Caelum looked at her for a long moment.

"Someone transmigrated into this story," she continued, "and they are walking around in Caelum Voss's body being polite to people and following Sylvian Ashcroft to class voluntarily and it is genuinely alarming." A pause. "So. Real name."

He studied her face.

Something about the way she was looking at him. The set of her jaw. The specific brand of exasperated patience in her eyes that he had seen directed at him approximately four hundred times across the last several years.

His brain went very quiet.

Then he grabbed her by both shoulders and said, "Maya."

She blinked. "What!"

"Maya. It's you. It's actually you." He stared at her face, at this face that was not quite her face but had all of her expressions sitting in it, the same raised eyebrow, the same slight pursing of the lips when she was caught off guard. "You sent me that link. You told me to read it. This is your fault."

A beat of stunned silence.

Then she grabbed his arms back and said, "Caelum? You're Caelum?"

"Yes!"

"Oh my god." She exhaled. Then she pulled back and looked at him properly and the relief on her face was so immediate and genuine that something in his chest unknotted just slightly. "Oh, okay. Okay. I thought it was someone else. I've been watching the villain's body for a month waiting for someone to show up and I thought." She stopped. Shook her head. "It's fine. It's good that it's you. At least I know you."

"At least you know me," he repeated flatly. "Maya. I woke up this morning next to the male lead."

She stared at him.

"He was sleeping right there. Golden hair. The whole thing. I looked in the mirror and I was Caelum Voss and Sylvian Ashcroft was just...."

"Wait." Her expression shifted into something that was trying very hard to be neutral and not quite managing it. "You woke up next to him?"

"Yes."

"In the same bed."

"We are roommates. Assigned. I read the whole story, I know..."

"Caelum." She pressed her lips together. A suspicious brightness came into her eyes. "Do you know what it means in omegaverse terms when an alpha and an enigma sleep in the same bed?"

He opened his mouth.

"It means," she continued, "that at some point they were close enough for that to happen naturally. Which in this designation system is not a small thing." A pause. "Also. You weren't wearing anything when you woke up, were you."

The silence that followed was extremely loud.

"We have separate beds," Caelum said. "In the same room. That is all."

"But you woke up in the same."

"I don't know the full context of what happened before I arrived in this body and I am choosing not to think about it."

Maya made a sound that was definitely a laugh disguised as a cough. "It's good that you're not pregnant at least."

"I'm sorry, what."

"Well," she said, composing herself with visible effort, "in this world's biology, omegas can get pregnant from alphas obviously, but there are some rare cases and I want to stress the word rare where if an alpha and an enigma are properly bonded, the alpha can also"

"Stop."

"I'm just giving you the information"

"I don't need that information. I need to go home."

"Right, yes, okay." She took a breath and switched into the more serious version of herself, the one that showed up when things actually mattered. "So here's what I know. The story has already changed. Things that weren't in the original manhua are happening. The fact that you woke up next to Sylvian" she held up a hand before he could object, "whatever the reason, that was not in any chapter. The story is shifting around you."

Caelum leaned against the shelf behind him. (Well... nothing can just be simple.)

"Also," Maya added, "you need to be careful about getting too close to the ML."

"Why."

"Because the real MC the original omega protagonist of this story is still out there somewhere. And that character's relationship with Sylvian is the whole spine of the plot. If you get too tangled up in it before the real MC shows up, things could get complicated."

Caelum nodded slowly. That made sense. He understood narrative logic. He had read the whole thing. "Fine. I'll keep my distance."

"Good." She nodded. Then something occurred to her and she looked at him with a new expression, something edging toward sympathy. "By the way.... which character do you think I ended up in?"

He looked at her. At the small frame, the wide eyes, the omega designation that practically radiated off her now that he was paying attention to it.

"You're an omega..?" he said.

"Yea i am an omega," she confirmed.

He blinked. "So that means..."

"Yes."

A pause.

"Maya," he said, very carefully, "are you telling me that you, my best friend, are an omega in this world, and I am an alpha, which means biologically speaking"

"Do not finish that sentence," she said immediately.

"I wasn't going to say anything alarming"

"You had a face. I know your face." She pointed at him. "We are best friends. That is the only relevant information. Everything else the designation system wants to imply can go directly into the trash."

Caelum raised both hands. "Agreed. Completely agreed."

A beat of silence. Then despite everything, despite the storage room and the omegaverse and the entire impossible situation, the corner of his mouth pulled upward just slightly. And she saw it and shook her head but she was smiling too, the same way she always smiled when things were genuinely absurd and they both knew it.

"I can't believe," he said, "that you sent me that link."

"I didn't know this would happen!"

"You said I would love it."

"I thought you would love it as a reader! Not as a participant!" She pushed his arm lightly. "Also for what it's worth you are very convincing as a villain. You have the jawline for it."

"Thank you. That means nothing to me."

She laughed. A real one this time, quiet and warm in the dusty little room, and Caelum thought that of all the things he had not expected to find in a fictional omegaverse university, his best friend's laugh was somehow the most disorienting and also the most steadying thing of all.

.

.

End of Episode 3

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