La confiance

La confiance is one of the book’s central relational conditions: it is not presented as a feeling Shelby Anderson Barnum can simply recover, but as a practice rebuilt through repeated encounters in which other people either respect or violate her boundaries. Her fear of being disappointed makes friendship, physical contact, disclosure, and dependence difficult, while the people around her gradually demonstrate that support can exist without coercion. Trust therefore becomes inseparable from trauma, consent, patience, and the possibility of healing.

Definition and Initial Absence

Shelby’s relationship to trust begins in deprivation. When Cassiopée Smith tells her that she would genuinely like them to become friends, Shelby reacts with hesitation to the very word “friends.” The offer matters because it is the first time in several years that someone outside Shelby’s family has told her that they will be there if she needs them. The narration identifies friendship as a beautiful concept Shelby has long lost, replacing it with solitude, a condition that continues to wear her down. Her brief thanks acknowledges the importance of the offer without yet accepting the intimacy it implies.

Shelby’s reluctance is not simple social reserve. In therapy, she tells Sunmi Eun that she no longer believes in friendly relationships because of what happened to her, and when Sunmi asks whether she wants to discuss it, Shelby postpones the conversation. She can identify the barrier clearly: she is completely blocked. Trust has become associated with the danger of later disappointment, so refusing closeness functions as a form of self-protection. The silence around the original harm is also bound up with fear that disclosure might alarm Sunmi or lead the psychologist to speak with Shelby’s father, an outcome Shelby does not want.

Support Without Coercion

The book distinguishes trust from pressure through the way other characters offer help. Cassiopée does not demand a positive or negative answer when Shelby hesitates over friendship. Instead, she tells Shelby that no immediate response is necessary and that she will be present if Shelby needs her. That refusal to force a decision gives Shelby control over the relationship’s pace. Similarly, Sunmi tells Shelby that they can return to the subject in later sessions and that they will work on her difficulty trusting people only if Shelby agrees, while also acknowledging that Shelby must begin again with her.

Cassiopée’s practical support reinforces the verbal offer. When Shelby worries that her classmates might feel obliged to help her catch up with missed lessons, Cassiopée answers that they help because they appreciate her and because helping someone who is unwell is normal. Shelby is moved by this, even while her outward distance leaves her unsure whether to feel reassured or irritated by their persistence. Trust here grows through consistency rather than persuasion: Cassiopée and the others remain at Shelby’s side despite her guarded manner, allowing their actions to contradict her expectation that closeness will end in abandonment or disappointment.

The same principle appears during Shelby’s panic episode in class. After Shelby flees in distress, Cassiopée follows and eventually finds her isolated, crying, covering her pierced ears, and unable to regulate her breathing. Cassiopée initially places her hands on Shelby’s shoulders, but Shelby recoils and cries out in pain. The important movement is what follows: Cassiopée remains calm, approaches carefully, and does not insist on touching her again. Shelby remains curled up and clearly refuses contact, yet Cassiopée addresses her by name and asks her to look at her. The scene makes trust bodily and immediate; assistance becomes credible only when it recognizes that an apparently comforting gesture can itself feel threatening.

Physical Safety and Chosen Reliance

Jungkook Jeon’s relationship with Shelby gives the concept another register. At the Knock Out boxing venue, he finds her trembling and crying in the showers after Chen Wu has left. Jungkook turns off the water, crouches in front of her, and, uncertain how to act, simply stays beside her until she calms. He does not solve the episode or demand an explanation before offering presence. His restraint is significant because Shelby’s distress is met not with interrogation but with time, creating a form of safety that she can approach on her own terms.

Later, when Shelby sees the severity of her injuries in a mirror, she breaks down beside the bathroom wall. Jungkook approaches, crouches, and places his right hand on her knees while apologizing that he should never have taken her there. The contact is not neutral: Shelby is affected by it precisely because she is searching for comfort. Unlike an imposed touch that triggers panic, this moment is received as support, shaped by the circumstances, Jungkook’s apology, and Shelby’s need. The contrast shows that trust does not mean that touch is universally safe; it means that safety is determined through context, recognition, and Shelby’s response.

The clearest test comes when Madison Jefferson encounters Shelby during another panic attack. Images associated with pain and water return, Shelby collapses, covers her ears, and pushes Madison away when Madison tries to calm her. Shelby asks Madison not to touch her and begs not to be harmed, revealing how completely fear has overtaken her reading of the present. Madison understands that Shelby believes she is in danger, stops trying to intervene physically, leaves the bathroom, and searches for Jungkook instead. Her decision transfers the response to the person Shelby is most likely to recognize as safe rather than treating immediate contact as automatically helpful.

When Jungkook arrives, he sits down and draws Shelby against him. Recognizing his “spring” scent, Shelby wraps her arms around his neck and hides her face against his left shoulder. Jungkook strokes her back and speaks softly until her breathing returns to normal and the disturbing sensations recede. The scene does not portray trust as the disappearance of trauma. The panic remains powerful, but a trusted presence helps Shelby move through it. Her active recognition of Jungkook, her reaching for him, and her eventual return to regulated breathing make the moment one of chosen reliance rather than rescue imposed from outside.

Therapeutic and Relational Development

Sunmi’s therapy gives Shelby’s difficulty a language without reducing it to a quick diagnosis or a completed cure. Sunmi identifies Shelby’s fear that trusting people will lead to disappointment and proposes that they work on it gradually. Shelby’s response is guarded and pragmatic—Sunmi is doing her job—but the therapist’s willingness to accept that resistance is itself part of the trust-building process. Shelby is not required to perform openness in order to receive care; the therapeutic relationship can continue while she remains uncertain.

Across these encounters, trust develops through a pattern of boundaries being acknowledged. Cassiopée offers friendship without requiring an answer, then follows Shelby during crisis while adapting after physical contact causes pain. Sunmi invites disclosure without forcing it and explicitly leaves the pace to Shelby. Jungkook stays near her without knowing what to do, later offers touch that Shelby seeks, and becomes the person whose presence she can identify during overwhelming panic. These actions create a gradual contrast with Shelby’s expectation that relationships are sources of harm or disappointment.

Thematic Significance

La confiance connects the book’s treatment of friendship, trauma, bodily autonomy, and healing. Its most important distinction is between dependence and surrender: Shelby does not become safe by abandoning her defenses, and other people do not earn her trust by overcoming those defenses through persistence alone. Trust emerges when persistence is joined to restraint, when help remains available without becoming compulsory, and when physical closeness follows recognition rather than replacing it.

The recurring crisis scenes give the concept a concrete structure. Shelby’s body reacts before she can explain what is happening: breathing accelerates, tears arrive, sound and touch become threatening, and memories transform present people into possible attackers. Against that recurrence, the responses of Cassiopée, Sunmi, Madison, and Jungkook form a counter-pattern of patience, non-coercion, practical assistance, and familiar presence. The decisive change is therefore not that fear vanishes, but that Shelby begins to experience relationships in which fear can be acknowledged without making her entirely alone.

In this sense, trust is both the condition and the measure of Shelby’s recovery. It allows her to receive friendship, therapy, comfort, and protection, while each accepted gesture makes the next act of reliance slightly more possible. The concept remains fragile because the narrative repeatedly shows how quickly contact can become threatening, yet it is also durable enough to survive hesitation, refusal, and panic. Shelby’s movement toward other people is consequently not a simple return to innocence; it is a careful reconstruction of confidence after it has been made dangerous.