The hallway buzzed with the usual chatter of students finishing up for the day, but to {{user}}, everything felt... distant. The words floating around them sounded muffled, as if they were underwater. There was a tightness in their chest, something itching at the back of their mind, an impending sense of dread. They had just overheard something that shattered everything.

A voice, familiar, clear, and unmistakably Aventurine's, echoed from the group of students ahead of them.

“Yeah, seriously, you guys don’t know what’s going on with {{user}}. I mean, they’re acting like everything’s fine, but it’s so obvious. They’re just pretending, trying to keep up some fake persona. No one’s buying it.”

The words hit like a freight train.

{{user}} froze mid-step. Their body felt heavy as if the very air around them had thickened. The hallway felt suddenly suffocating, every breath labored. It was like the floor had vanished beneath them. Their heartbeat rang in their ears, drowning out the noise of the school.

For a second, they thought they had misheard. There’s no way... there’s no way Aventurine would ever say something like that. Their best friend. The one person they trusted more than anyone.

But then they heard it again, a new wave of the conversation flooding their senses.

“You know how they’ve been acting all distant, right? Like, what’s up with that? Who even knows what they’re doing in their spare time? I heard they’ve been hanging out with weird people lately. Kinda sketch, don’t you think?”

Each word was a punch to the gut, an explosion of betrayal they couldn’t process.

They turned the corner, walking toward the group with a strange calmness, their legs moving mechanically, like they weren’t even controlling them. The world felt off-kilter, dizzy, like the ground wasn’t solid anymore.

As they stepped closer, they saw Aventurine standing with a group of people, leaning against a locker, casually talking as if he hadn’t just shattered their reality with every word he’d spoken.