Lundi 21 octobre

Monday, October 21 is a temporal marker for a sequence set around Central Washington University and Ellensburg, placing ordinary campus routines alongside private crises. The day’s scenes move between Jungkook’s morning, Cassiopée’s return from a fraught family visit, Shelby’s self-harm, and a later afternoon at the Onyx Hotel; together, they show how distress continues beneath the surface of student life.

Campus Morning

The date is introduced at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, at 8:00 a.m. Jungkook has been woken by Namjoon, whose energy is unusually high. When Jungkook asks what has made him so lively, Namjoon does not answer. The scene begins the day with a small unresolved exchange rather than an explanation, while the campus setting establishes the familiar routine around which the more difficult episodes unfold.

Family Tension and Self-Harm

Cassiopée’s return to student life follows an unpleasant weekend at her father Ryan’s home. She and her younger brother Theo have long disliked their stepmother, Ella, whom Cassiopée regards as malicious and materialistic. Theo, who was only two when Ella entered the family, has witnessed repeated arguments between Ella and Cassiopée. He spent much of the weekend with his sister, preferring her company to being in the same room as Ryan and Ella. Ryan is distressed by his children’s distance but, as Cassiopée sees it, fails to question his own part in the situation. Her account makes the family conflict more than a clash between stepmother and stepdaughter: it also concerns a father who does not act on what his children are showing him.

In another scene, Shelby’s anxiety escalates into panic as she searches for something her inner turmoil seems to demand. She notices that the first pocket of her bag is open and finds her Zippo lighter inside, though she does not remember opening the pocket. After looking at the lighter, she ignites it and brings the flame to the skin of her left forearm. The heat first feels pleasant, then becomes unbearable; the familiar pain intensifies until she grimaces. The lighter turns an inward crisis into a deliberate physical injury, a recurrence of self-harm within Shelby’s longer struggle with trauma.

Afternoon and the Wider Arc

At 4:20 p.m., a scene at the Onyx Hotel finds Jungkook waking from a short nap beside an unnamed blonde sexual partner after four hours together. The shift from the morning’s campus setting to the hotel places another kind of intimacy beside the day’s scenes of distress, without making it a resolution to them.

The date’s significance is therefore less a single turning point than a compact view of lives proceeding on parallel tracks: Jungkook and Namjoon’s familiar friendship, Cassiopée’s unsettled family ties, and Shelby’s painful vulnerability. Elsewhere in the broader narrative, Shelby speaks about the consequences of her trauma, receives psychological support, and eventually moves forward with Jungkook. The book presents that progress as gradual rather than immediate: its ending describes both of them finding ways, separately and together, to leave their inner demons behind.