26 septembre

26 septembre is marked in the narrative by a precise morning timestamp at Ares Garden, Ellensburg: at 10:00, Jungkook wakes in the training room with blood on his knuckles and leaves for the university. The date’s clearest significance lies in this abrupt passage from physical aftermath to ordinary campus routines; a separate 16:02 scene at Sunmi Eun’s psychology office places Shelby’s psychological and physical exhaustion within the same wider narrative of trauma and recovery.

The morning at Ares Garden

The calendar heading identifies the setting as Ares Garden in Ellensburg and the time as 10:00. Jungkook opens his eyes still inside the training room. He grimaces as he sits up, notices blood staining his knuckles, and gets to his feet with difficulty. The scene offers no account here of how he came to be there or what produced the blood; instead, it begins with the bodily evidence left behind.

Jungkook leaves the premises and gets into his car. When he notices the scent of vanilla lingering inside, he opens the windows. He then drives to the university, parks, and walks to the dormitory. After a quick shower, he changes into a black sweatshirt, black cargo trousers, and Buffalo London shoes, then goes outside, where he meets Namjoon. The sequence is concrete and mundane—driving, washing, dressing, returning to campus—but its details keep the morning’s physical damage in view. Jungkook is not shown recovering in isolation: after leaving Ares Garden, he re-enters the social setting of the dormitory and finds his friend.

A second clock-marked scene

The evidence also supplies a 16:02 timestamp for a session at Dr. Eun’s Psychology Clinic in Ellensburg. Sunmi Eun greets Shelby and asks how she is doing. Shelby answers that she is tired, both psychologically and physically. The timestamp makes the moment distinct, but the date is not repeated in that scene; it therefore serves as a separate clock-marked point in the material rather than establishing, by itself, that the appointment takes place on 26 septembre.

The exchange is brief, yet it gives the later time a different emotional register from the morning at Ares Garden. Jungkook’s scene registers strain through his bloodied hands and difficulty getting up; Shelby names her condition directly as exhaustion. Sunmi’s question creates room for that answer without requiring Shelby to present herself as well. Elsewhere, Sunmi’s approach is explicitly patient: when Shelby initially declines to discuss a traumatic event, Sunmi accepts that answer, promises to give her time, and reassures her about confidentiality. That broader therapeutic context helps frame the significance of Shelby’s ability to describe her state, without making the 16:02 session itself a dramatic resolution.

The date within the wider chronology

The novel’s chronology places exact dates and clock times alongside experiences that resist neat containment within a single day. Jungkook’s childhood memories, for example, reach back several years to a home in Gangnam, Seoul, where his older brother Ye-jun restrains him from rushing toward his parents’ escalating argument. Sunmi later recalls that Jungkook arrived at her home at sixteen after fleeing his father’s abuse, and that she took him in. These histories are not identified as events on 26 septembre; they establish the longer background to the anger and vulnerability that accompany Jungkook’s adult life.

Shelby’s recovery likewise unfolds across recurring episodes rather than a single turning point. She experiences panic in situations involving unwanted touch, and Cassiopée remains calm when Shelby recoils from her during an attack. Jungkook, too, learns to respond differently: after Shelby discloses her rape, he tells her he believes her, and she reacts with visible relief. Later, during another panic attack, Madison seeks Jungkook’s help; he comes to Shelby, holds her as she reaches for him, and stays with her until her breathing steadies. These scenes are not dated to 26 septembre, but they clarify the broader pattern that the date’s separate images evoke: physical distress and psychological exhaustion persist, while support depends on patience, trust, and attention to what the person experiencing distress can bear.

The novel ultimately describes recovery as something achieved both individually and together, with each person moving forward in their own way. Read against that longer arc, the timestamp at Ares Garden fixes one morning rather than marking a cure or a final change. Its precision—10:00, blood on Jungkook’s knuckles, the drive back to campus—makes a small stretch of time legible within a story whose injuries and repair extend well beyond the calendar entry.