Act IV: Miss Independent
Lucy could barely recall the details of the new semester. What she did remember was this: she had done it. She had returned to the straight path.
No improv club. No Joseph. No Bella. No daydreams spiraling into panic.
She finished her assignments on time, memorised every accounting formula, read every page of the textbooks. She became, once more, the diligent student her parents trusted her to be.
She almost believed it herself.
Evelin the Strong
In class, her classmates no longer seemed quite so intolerable. A little dull, perhaps, but not unbearable. One day, in the grey drift of an accounting lecture, Lucy noticed a girl she had never paid much attention to before: Evelin.
Evelin sat further back, never rushing to answer questions, her grades unremarkable. But at the semester’s end, during the group presentations, Evelin took the podium—and something shifted.
Her analysis was sharp, precise: balance sheets of real estate and energy giants broken open, patterns laid bare, stories of power and capital rising from numbers like smoke. Her voice carried the authority of someone who had glimpsed the adult world and returned to translate its secrets.
Lucy stared, rapt. Evelin was not playing at adulthood—she was it.
After class, Lucy approached cautiously, clutching her notes.
“Your report was brilliant. Could I… maybe ask you some questions sometime?”
Evelin smiled, as if she had been waiting.
“I’ve been expecting you, Lucy.”
The Meetup
They met at Evelin’s chosen place, a café in the city. Lucy rarely ventured into such “adult” spaces; she usually ate with classmates in the canteen. But Evelin worked part-time at a firm downtown, and so Lucy made the trip.
The café was hushed, lined with professionals in suits, their voices low, their coffees dark and bitter. Lucy felt out of place until Evelin arrived, heels clicking, a tailored dress hugging her frame, light make-up completing the transformation. Lucy exhaled in relief—as though Evelin were not a peer, but a guardian sent to collect her.
“Lucy, sorry to keep you waiting,” Evelin said, sliding into the chair with effortless poise.
“No, not at all,” Lucy stammered.
Evelin’s presence seemed to reshape the room. She was no longer the unassuming girl from lecture but one of them—the polished, sophisticated figures who belonged here.
“I knew we’d be friends,” Evelin said, eyes warm but steady. “You’re the best student in class.”
Lucy shook her head. “Maybe on paper. But your presentation—I could never do that. My report was childish.”
Evelin leaned closer. “Lucy, your grades are perfect. But grades aren’t enough. You need experience. An internship. Without that, talent gets wasted.”
Lucy blinked. She had never thought of internships; her education had been about theory, exams, discipline—never application. She dreamed often of other lives, yet never of herself as a professional, never as someone with responsibility, like Evelin.
“You think I’d have a chance?”
“My aunt is a manager at one of the Big Four. I can recommend you.”
A flicker of excitement ignited in Lucy’s chest. For the first time she felt the pull of adulthood—not as a cage, but as a calling.
“I want to,” she said, breath quickening. “I think about it all the time.”
“Then give me your CV,” Evelin said smoothly. “I’ll push it through.”
Lucy opened her laptop, showing her neat but sparse document. Evelin chuckled, kind but cutting.
“Your resume is... adorable. Worry not. Here, copy mine.” She tapped her phone, sending over her résumé.
Lucy’s eyes widened as she scrolled. A catalogue of internships, competitions, awards, leadership roles—line after line of proof that Evelin had lived in a world Lucy barely knew existed.
Shame prickled her skin. She thought herself diligent, but beside Evelin she was a child.
That night, back in her dorm, Lucy read Evelin’s résumé again and again. She erased Evelin’s lines, tried to replace them with her own, but found her life too bare. Still, she cobbled together a version to send back, cheeks hot with embarrassment.
In her diary she wrote: Evelin, I am grateful. Then, suddenly, she realised she did not even know Evelin’s Instagram. She searched, but found nothing.
When she asked, Evelin replied: I don’t use social media. I don’t like exposing my private life.
Lucy stared at the message, unsettled. Bella had thrown herself online without shame, wild and unguarded, daring the world to look. Evelin, by contrast, lived in a different register. Opportunities, credentials, the glow of competence: all present, yet never flaunted. She was practical, purposeful, moving forward without the need for spectacle.
Lucy found herself drawn to both, though in ways she couldn’t untangle. Did she want Bella’s fire, or Evelin’s steel? Was freedom louder, or quieter? She couldn’t tell. All she knew was that whichever path she looked toward, the other one whispered back, asking why she hesitated.
First Day Everything
Soon after, Lucy received the offer. Her grades had outshone every other applicant.
On her first day she stepped into the office, breath caught in her throat. The hum of printers, the faint smell of coffee, the rows of desks—all of it felt foreign, almost theatrical, as though she had wandered onto a set.
She met the other interns: Mike, tall and muscular, his voice surprisingly gentle when he introduced himself; and Park, slighter in frame but carrying himself with a calm authority that made him seem twice his size.
At first, Lucy tried to speak to them as she might with classmates, expecting the usual chatter about exams or balance-sheet formulas. But the conversation swerved differently here.
Mike leaned over his screen, tapping numbers with an easy rhythm. “The client’s cash flow looks solid, but the reporting cycle is messy—we’ll need to reconcile that before the partner sees it.”
Park nodded, adding smoothly, “And don’t forget their overseas subsidiary. If we don’t factor in currency fluctuations, our recommendation will look naive.”
Lucy froze for a second, pen hovering above her notebook. It wasn’t like the classroom at all. There, numbers were abstractions—ratios, formulas, neat examples lifted from textbooks. Here, they were alive, tethered to real people, real companies, real stakes. Every sentence felt weighted, as if their words were part of a language she’d only just discovered.
She stole a glance at Mike’s broad shoulders, at Park’s steady eyes. They looked ordinary enough—like any other students on campus. Yet here, in this office, their voices carried differently: grounded, confident, speaking in a dialect that belonged to the adult world.
Lucy’s heart quickened. She realised, with a sudden clarity, that she had stepped into a new country without leaving the city. A place where she didn’t yet know the customs, but desperately wanted to belong.
And in that moment, she thought: this what feels like to be an adult.