PRESTIGE ACADEMY

Chapter Five: The Quiet Hours

Alexander’s POV

Night always brought stillness. Predictability. A rhythm I could rely on.

Lights off at ten. Curtains drawn. My dorm was colder than most the way I liked it. Nothing but the rustle of wind brushing against the window, the faint hum of the fridge in the common area down the hall, and the ticking of the clock on my desk.

But sleep wouldn't come.

It hadn’t since this afternoon.

Liyana Mthembu.

I could still see her standing in the hallway, slightly hunched from the weight of invisible pressure, gripping the strap of her backpack like it tethered her to solid ground. The scholarship blazer draped over her like it wasn’t made for her but she wore it anyway. With quiet dignity.

I’d seen people pretend to be strong. She wasn’t pretending.

I turned over in bed, then sat up, rubbing my face once, hard.

This was a mistake.

But curiosity is a dangerous thing. And tonight, it was louder than my silence.

I grabbed my laptop from the bedside table and opened it. The glow from the screen sliced through the dark like a blade. I hesitated then opened a private tab.

Search: Ixopo, KwaZulu-Natal

Images loaded first.

Green hills. Dirt roads. Scattered homes. A horizon that stretched far wider than the world I knew. It looked nothing like Sandton or Cape Town or Monaco. There were no towering buildings, no black-tinted Range Rovers, no press walls or private jets.

It was… real.

I clicked on a travel blog “The Soul of Ixopo: Life in a Quiet Town.”

Photos of markets, schoolchildren, women selling handmade crafts on sidewalks. I imagined her there Liyana, with her neat curls and soft eyes, blending into a crowd that looked nothing like the polished, platinum painted people at Prestige.

She belonged to this place. You could tell by the way she carried herself. With history. With roots.

I leaned back, one hand still resting on the trackpad. I didn’t know why I was doing this. I’d never googled anyone before not even people who wanted something from me. But with her… it wasn’t about control.

It was about understanding.

Who was she before Prestige tried to sand her down?

I found an old school newsletter from a local high school “Ixopo High’s Top Achiever Receives National Scholarship”. No photo, but her name was there. Small print. Brief mention. Not even a quote.

I stared at the screen for a long time.

She didn’t come from power. She wasn’t born into influence. She’d worked her way here, one test, one day, one fight at a time.

And now she was walking through the same hallways I had spent years learning to disappear in.

How long before this place tried to change her?

How long before she started pretending just to survive?

I closed the laptop slowly and stared at the ceiling again.

It felt different now. Like the air had shifted.

There was no logic in this. No reason for me to care. But something about Liyana stirred a part of me I didn’t realize still existed the part that remembered what it felt like to want something real. Something untouched by power or performance.

I knew I should let it go. Stay in my lane. Play the part.

But maybe… just maybe… for the first time in a long time, I didn’t want to.