Statistically Significant
CHAPTER SIX: Withdrawal Effects
Paige Bueckers x Azzi Fudd
contains: college!pazzi, researcher!paige, participant!azzi, angst, obsessive behavior, boundary violations, emotional manipulation, unethical research practices, morallygray!paige, unhealthy attachment
word count: 9k
masterlist
A/N: after almost a month, i am finally able to post ch6 for you guys! i am so sorry for the wait. i’ve been so busy, while also struggling a bit with getting my ideas for this chapter written out the way i wanted them. if you need a refresher, skim back over ch5! anyway, here it is. sry, there are a lot of pov switches in this chapter. lmk what you think!
CHAPTER SIX: Withdrawal Effects
Monday morning felt different before Azzi even left her dorm. She woke up the way she always did— by her alarm, a groggy reach for her phone, and the glow of the screen filling the room.
But, something about it felt off. She unlocked her phone automatically, and notifications filled the screen. Some group chat messages from her family, a reminder from Canvas about a soon due assignment, and a TikTok Caroline had sent to her after midnight.
Azzi stared at the lock screen for a moment longer than usual before she opened Instagram. Her thumb moved automatically toward the DMs icon, just from muscle memory, but halfway there, she stopped herself.
She knew nothing would be there. For the first time in weeks, pbsbaseline hadn’t messaged her. No late-night analysis, no strange observations about something she had said earlier, no questions, and no oddly comforting paragraphs about human behavior that somehow ended up being about her.
Azzi swallowed thickly, then locked her phone again before she sat up in bed. It had only been one night since everything went down. Technically less than twelve hours. She knew space was what she needed, but that didn’t mean it was going to be easy.
She sighed, then swung her legs off the bed and tried to focus on getting ready for class.
By the time she left the dorm, the thoughts about Paige had already returned. Her phone felt heavier in her jacket pocket than usual, like it was missing an important piece, or maybe even waiting for something.
Azzi told herself she was imagining it and that it was just a matter of broken habit. The last few weeks she and Paige had messaged constantly, so of course it felt weird now.
She crossed the quad, weaving through clusters of students heading toward their Monday classes. Her molecular biology lecture didn’t start for another ten minutes.
Normally, she would have cut straight across the center lawn and stopped to have a coffee from The Lantern Room on the way. Paige would already be there, sat at their regular table with that quiet and observant look on her face.
Azzi slowed down as she approached the path that led toward the building. Her chest tightened up, then she turned in a different direction. Instead of heading down the route that passed by The Lantern Room, she took a longer sidewalk that curved around the archeology buildings. It added three minutes to the walk, but it also meant she had less of a risk of seeing Paige.
This is temporary, Azzi told herself as she kept walking. I’ll only feel this way for a few days.
—
Monday afternoon passed quietly. Azzi had a few classes, then went to lunch at the dining hall with a couple of girls from her lab section. Everything was normal… mostly.
Every half hour or so, Azzi caught herself reaching for her phone in her pocket. She’d unlock it and open Instagram, and every time, her thumb wanted to drift toward the message icon again.
Every time, she stopped herself. She didn’t need to look, because she knew the conversation was still sitting there exactly the same way they had left it.
The last message Paige had sent before everything exploded.
azzifudd: i will be there around 6:30 then :)
pbsbaseline: i will be awaiting your arrival.
Azzi had reread it twice on Sunday night after she left Paige’s apartment, then she’d closed the app before she could scroll further up. Now, she was forcing herself not to open it again. Instead, she checked some stories, liked a couple of posts, and scrolled aimlessly. Anything except clicking on that thread, because if she opened it, she knew what would happen.
She’d see weeks of messages, late-night conversations, and jokes with observations mixed in between, that slow shift from a shared article to something… more.
Azzi shoved her phone back in her pocket and tried to focus on quite literally anything else.
Tuesday was somehow even worse. The silence had settled in. It wasn’t just the absence of DMs from Paige, but the absence of expectation.
For weeks, Azzi had gotten used to Paige appearing in her day— sometimes physically, but digitally, too. A DM between classes, a weirdly insightful response to something she’d said, or a question about what she was doing later. Now, the spaces where those things should have been just… stayed empty.
Azzi noticed it most when she walked across campus. Her feet kept trying to take those familiar routes, but each time, she corrected herself and turned in a different direction.
On Tuesday afternoon, she actually got herself halfway across the quad before realizing she was heading straight toward the psych building. Her stomach dropped when she noticed. She stopped walking, and for a second, she just stood there and watched the entrance from a distance.
Students were coming in and out. Someone held the door open for a girl carrying a stack of textbooks. Another group lingered on the steps, laughing about something. Paige was probably inside, running her study or walking down the hall, looking the exact same as always.
Azzi turned sharply and walked in the other direction.
Wednesday morning, the habit became too hard to ignore. Azzi woke up and opened Instagram before she was fully conscious. Her thumb tapped the DM icon automatically, and she opened up the thread.
pbsbaseline
Her stomach dropped, and she froze. There it was again, their last conversation, sitting exactly where it had been for three days now. No new messages, no typing bubble, nothing. Azzi stared at the screen for a long moment, then she backed out of the messages and locked her phone.
You don’t need to talk to her, she told herself. You shouldn’t talk to her.
She missed Paige in a way that didn’t feel right. She should’ve been ready to completely distance herself from Paige, because she had logged literally everything. Every conversation, every moment, and even the stupid things Azzi had said without thinking.
The memory of the laptop screen flickered through her mind again. Pages of notes, photos, and bullet points.
Attachment markers.
Azzi pressed her lips together. The humiliation still burned when she thought about it, but another memory from Sunday night kept intruding too.
The couch, Paige’s flushed face, the way she’d looked surprised when Azzi teased her, and the way Paige had kissed her back.
Azzi shut her eyes briefly. Stop, she told herself, before she grabbed her backpack and left for class.
It was colder outside today, and Azzi was really feeling the low temperatures as she crossed the quad. The midweek crowds moved quickly around her. Someone biked past too close and a group of freshmen laughed loudly near the fountain.
Azzi kept her head down as she walked. Her molecular biology class met in a building on the far side of campus. The easiest path was one that cut directly past the psychology building. It was the fastest route, but Azzi knew— from the past few days— that she was avoiding that building like the plague.
She had a chance of seeing Paige in places like The Lantern Room and the library, but near the Psychology Building? It was pretty much a guarantee.
For a second, Azzi let herself imagine Paige inside 314C, running her study, watching someone the way Paige had watched her. She was probably analyzing them, and logging their behavior. The thought made her stomach twist.
Azzi inhaled slowly, then of course, instead of taking the straight path toward the building, she took the long way around the quad, the route that curved along the far edge of campus. It added nearly ten minutes to the walk in the freezing cold, but it kept the psych building a good ways away from her.
Azzi adjusted the strap of her backpack and kept moving.
Temporary space, she reminded herself. Just for a little while, until things stopped feeling so complicated. Until she stopped missing someone she wasn’t sure she could ever trust again.
—
Monday began the same way that it always did.
Paige woke up at 6:27 a.m., three minutes before her alarm. She turned it off before it could sound, sat up in bed, and mentally organized the day’s schedule before her feet touched the floor.
Classes, then lab hours. She had two confirmed participants, possibly three if the waitlist student from Friday still wanted a time slot. This was her routine. It was predictable and efficient. It had just been kind of… thrown off by Azzi’s presence these past weeks.
Paige usually could slip back into a routine fairly quickly. She got dressed in khakis and a gray sweater, then pulled her hair into the same tight bun she wore almost every day. She put her contacts in, then zipped her backpack with careful precision.
By 7:00, she was already walking toward campus. There was no reason to delay.
After two morning classes, she headed straight to the Psychology building. She ached to be somewhere that felt stable.
Her study required ongoing participant recruitment, and after the weekend gap, she had a backlog of small administrative tasks to complete. She had been slacking some recently. Her mind had been… elsewhere.
Consent forms needed to be reprinted, participant ID logs needed to be updated, and stimulus files needed to be checked.
This would occupy her next hour or so, which was ideal.
Room 314C smelled faintly like printer toner and disinfectant wipes when Paige unlocked it. The space was exactly as she’d left it Friday afternoon— a chair by the computer table, pulse sensor cables neatly coiled beside the monitor, and the eye-tracking camera angled precisely toward where the participant’s face would be positioned. Everything was orderly and familiar.
Paige exhaled quietly as she set her backpack down and pulled her laptop out, before setting it on the corner desk. This was routine, which felt good, because routine meant forward movement.
She powered on her laptop and immediately opened the study interface. Participant 223080 was scheduled for 10:30 a.m.
She printed a stack of new consent forms in the copy room while the system booted. The printer hummed, and paper slid nearly into the tray. Paige stacked the sheets, aligned the edges carefully, walked back to 314C and placed them beside the intake clipboard. The preparation took exactly four minutes.
When she finished, she checked the clock. 10:22. Right on schedule.
Participant 223080 arrived two minutes later.
They were a sophomore psychology major, just like her. They displayed a mildly nervous demeanor, and avoided eye contact.
Paige guided them through the introduction with practiced efficiency— consent form, explanation of the stimulus sequence, and sensor placement.
The student just nodded along politely while Paige attached the pulse monitor to their wrist and calibrated the eye tracker. Everything proceeded normally, exactly as it always did.
When the stimuli began playing— audio clips, short videos, and emotional prompts— Paige moved to her usual seat in the corner of the room. Her laptop screen filled with the incoming data stream. Heart rate variability, pupil dilation, and fixation points. Numbers and graphs appeared in slow real-time increments, and Paige watched, observed, and recorded the data carefully.
For months, human responses translated into measurable data had been the most interesting part of her day. She was enamored with the patterns that emerged from raw reactions. But now, as she watched the readings accumulate, a strange thought surfaced.
The signals felt… flat. The participant’s heart rate shifted slightly during one of the emotional prompts, and the eye tracking followed the expected stimulus patterns, but the overall variability was minimal, predictable, and unremarkable.
Paige frowned slightly as her fingers hovered over the keyboard, then she typed a note into the study log.
comparative cognitive engagement significantly lower than Subject 220175 baseline
The line glowed quietly on the screen, and for a moment, Paige simply stared at it.
Subject 220175. Azzi.
The realization, that she was comparing this participant’s responses to Azzi’s, arrived slowly but firmly. She was doing this automatically, without really intending to.
Paige leaned back slightly in her chair as the data stream continued to scroll across the screen. Heart rate fluctuations, micro-saccade tracking, and routine physiological responses.
Now that she’d noticed the comparison, it was impossible to ignore. Azzi’s dataset had been… unusually complex. She displayed layered emotional reactions, nonlinear engagement patterns, and unexpected physiological responses to certain stimuli.
Paige had spent hours analyzing those anomalies. Now, watching the graphs from 223080, the differences felt obvious. Too simple, less dynamic, and uninteresting.
The session finished seven minutes later. After the participant left, Paige sanitized the equipment, reset the system, and prepared for the next scheduled slot.
223091.
The process repeated almost identically. Consent form, sensor attachment, stimulus playback, and data monitoring.
Again, Paige observed the graphs appearing on her screen, and again, the same quiet thought surfaced: the responses were technically valid, but they lacked depth.
She typed another small notation in the log.
engagement variability remains within expected parameters
Then, almost unconsciously, she added a second line.
still below Subject 220175 baseline
Paige stopped typing and her eyes lingered on the screen. It was becoming clear that the comparison wasn’t going to stop. Azzi’s dataset had effectively recalibrated her expectation, and every participant would now be measured against it— against her.
Paige closed the log window and moved on to the next task.
By early afternoon, Paige had processed three participants.
223080.
223091.
223111.
Each session ran smoothly, and each dataset populated the system without errors, but each one felt… increasingly unremarkable.
Paige sat at the desk between sessions, sorting printed consent sheets into a neatly labeled folder. Her laptop screen displayed the cumulative dataset for the week. Rows of participant IDs and columns of behavioral metrics.
Ordinarily, the visual order of it all brought her satisfaction. The clean data, clear patterns, and the progress. But today, the numbers seemed oddly distant.
Her attention drifted repeatedly, not to anything specific, just away. Paige noticed the shift immediately— the distraction, a cognitive drift, which was unusual.
She opened the study log again and typed a brief observation.
research engagement subjectively reduced
possible comparison bias introduced by atypical dataset (220175)
She stared at the line for a moment, then closed the file. She had acknowledged something and documented it. No further analysis was required.
By the time the final participant left that afternoon, the hallway outside 314C had grown quiet. Most students were already heading to their final late-day classes or back to their dorms.
Paige powered down the computer systems and began organizing the desk. She made sure the monitor cables were aligned, the consent sheets were stacked, and the sensor wires were coiled neatly. The routine steadied her breathing. Structure always helped restore equilibrium.
When she finished, she reached down and opened her backpack, and her fingers brushed against something new, but familiar.
Paper. Paper that was thicker than the usual study materials she carried. Paige pulled it out, and let her eyes land on the field notes notebook. The one Azzi had given her the night before. It looked almost out of place among the rest of her research materials.
For a moment, Paige simply held it in her hands. Her thumb traced the edge of the cover slowly, and the memories began to surface without warning.
Azzi standing in her apartment— takeout bag in one hand, the small wrapped gift in the other. The quiet and almost shy way she’d said: It reminded me of you.
Paige felt something shift in her chest— a brief and unfamiliar pressure. Her grip on the notebook tightened slightly. She could still picture the exact moment Azzi handed it to her. The warmth in her voice, and the expectant and hopeful way she’d watched Paige open it.
Paige’s throat felt strangely tight. The sensation lingered for several seconds, then she closed the notebook and slid it carefully back into her backpack, before her breathing steadied again.
There was no reason to dwell on the memory. The object itself was simply a tool, a portable extension of her logging system, that was all.
Paige zipped the bag shut and turned off the lights in 314C. Routine would resume tomorrow. It always did.
—
By Friday, the quiet had settled into something heavier. It wasn’t sharp anymore, and not really immediate, just constant.
Azzi sat cross-legged on her bed with her laptop open in front of her, that displayed a half-finished molecular biology assignment blinking back at her. The words on the screen blurred together after a while, not because she didn’t understand them, but because her focus kept slipping.
Her phone sat beside her thigh, face-up and silent. She had checked it less today— not because she didn’t want to check it, but because she already knew. There was still nothing.
She was well aware that she was the one who put space between her and Paige. She also knew that she missed having that connection with someone. She felt split down the middle about the whole thing.
Azzi reached for her phone anyway and unlocked it, before scrolling through a of couple notifications she didn’t care about. Instead of opening Instagram, she opened her messages with Caroline.
Her thumb hovered for a second. It had been some time since they talked about anything beyond surface-level. Not complete silence— they had sent each other things, like short replies. But nothing like before. Before Paige.
azzi: you busy tonight?
azzi: come over?
caroline: oh??
caroline: you actually wanna hang out with me?
Azzi huffed a quiet laugh through her nose.
azzi: shut up
azzi: i always wanna hang out with you
caroline: mhm
caroline: i’ll be there in 15
Azzi set her phone down before she started to think too far into it.
—
Caroline didn’t knock. She never did. Azzi heard footsteps coming down the hall, then her bedroom door swung open like it always had, and Caroline stepped in with the same easy familiarity— her messy ponytail, oversized hoodie, and a bag of snacks tucked under her arm like she planned on staying a while.
“Hey,” Caroline said, like nothing had changed.
“Hey,” Azzi echoed, just as casually.
Caroline kicked the door shut behind her and dropped the snacks onto Azzi’s desk before flopping onto the bed beside her. “Your room’s feels weirdly cold,” she said, tugging the sleeves of her hoodie down over her hands.
Azzi shrugged and tried to keep a lump from forming in her throat. She had been keeping her room cold this week. “It’s not that bad.”
“It is,” Caroline said immediately.
Azzi forced a faint smile, and Caroline stopped there. This felt normal and easy. That was one thing she liked about spending time with Caroline— things didn’t feel tense or forced.
She leaned back against the headboard and pulled her blanket loosely over her legs as Caroline grabbed the remote and turned on the TV without asking, before flipping through all the channels.
For a few minutes, it was just background noise. The TV was playing something neither of them paid attention to, and Caroline had opened a bag of chips and offered some without looking. Azzi took a handful. This was familiar and comfortable, but something sat underneath it. Something unspoken.
Caroline noticed, because she always did. “You’ve been weird this week,” she said, not looking at Azzi. “Well, for more than a week,” she clarified. “But, more so, recently.”
Azzi didn’t react right away. She just crunched down on a chip with her eyes still on the TV. “I’ve had stuff,” she said after a second.
Caroline glanced at her then. “What kind of stuff?”
Azzi hesitated. It would be easy to brush it off, say it was school-related or just stress, some textbook answer and move on, but the quiet from the past few days pressed at her chest.
“She…” Azzi started, then stopped.
Caroline’s expression changed immediately into something more attentive now. “She?” she echoed.
Azzi nodded slowly. “She broke my trust.”
The words felt strange out loud— simplified, like they didn’t fully capture it.
Caroline’s brows pulled together slightly. “Paige?”
Azzi nodded once, and Caroline sat up a little straighter. “What did she do?” The question was careful, not really prying, but she wasn’t letting it drop either.
Azzi’s fingers tightened slightly around the edge of the blanket, and her mind flashed— the laptop screen lighting up, her participant ID at the top, the pages of notes, and her own face, pulled from Instagram, both labeled and categorized. Her stomach turned from the memories.
“I just—” she shook her head. “I don’t really wanna get into it.”
Caroline studied her for a moment— long enough that Azzi felt it, but then she leaned back again and exhaled. “Okay,” she said simply.
A beat passed, then, a little sharper and a little more protective— “I told you, though.” Azzi’s head turned slightly. Caroline’s eyes were still on the TV, but her jaw had tightened just a bit. “That girl has always seemed way too intense.”
The words landed heavier than the tone they were delivered in. Azzi felt something in her chest react immediately— a quick and defensive spark.
“She’s not—” Azzi started as she turned more toward her. The sentence caught halfway out and she stopped, because she didn’t know how to finish it. She’s not what? Not intense? That wasn’t true. Not… wrong? Azzi’s throat tightened.
Caroline glanced at her again and caught the hesitation. “See?” she said quietly. “You can’t even defend her.”
Azzi looked away and her gaze dropped to her hands as her fingers twisted lightly in the blanket. “I just…” she breathed out, slower this time. “It’s not that simple.”
Caroline didn’t push nor did she interrupt, which somehow made it worse, because Azzi could feel the space where she could explain it. To describe what Paige had done, and say it out loud to make it real.
The thought alone made her stomach turn again. If she said it— if she described the file, the notes, and the way Paige had been watching her— it would solidify something she wasn’t ready to fully accept yet. So she didn’t. She just shook her head slightly.
“I don’t know,” she said instead.
Caroline nodded once. That was enough for her for now. “Okay,” she said again, softer this time.
Caroline reached for the remote and turned the volume up a little, like she was giving Azzi space without making it obvious. A few minutes passed like that, then, “You want me to stay?” Caroline asked, more casually now.
Azzi blinked. “What?”
“Like,” Caroline shrugged as she glanced at her. “Spend the night or whatever. We can watch something, or I’ll just knock out. I don’t care.”
Azzi hesitated for half a second, then nodded. “Yeah. Stay.”
Caroline smiled a little at that. “Cool.”
She shifted on the bed and pulled the blanket over both of them without asking, settling in like she always had, like nothing had changed, and for a moment, it almost felt that way.
Azzi leaned back against the headboard again and let her shoulder brush against Caroline’s.
The TV flickered and the room stayed cold. Caroline’s presence was steady, familiar, and safe, but as the minutes passed, Azzi became aware of something she hadn’t expected.
The quiet between them felt… different. Not uncomfortable, just… less. Caroline didn’t ask questions in the same way. She didn’t notice the small shifts in her tone and didn’t pull things out of her before she even knew how to say them.
Azzi stared at the screen that she wasn’t really watching and thought about Paige. About the way conversations with her had felt focused and perfectly intense.
Like she was being studied, yes, but also like being understood in a way that didn’t require any explanation.
Caroline nudged her lightly with her shoulder. “Stop thinking so hard,” she said.
Azzi blinked and forced a small smile. “I’m not.”
“Liar.”
Azzi let out a soft breath. Caroline was here., and everything was normal. This was good. This was what she needed. So why did it feel like something was still missing?
Azzi pulled the blanket a little tighter around herself and leaned her head back against the wall. She didn’t have an answer, and that unsettled her more than anything.
—
Paige preferred weekdays over weekends. Weekdays consisted of class, lab, research, and analysis. The weekends tended to leave her with time to get lost in her thoughts.
Friday night had settled into her apartment without an announcement. There was no shift in lighting, Paige still kept the overhead off with no background noise, and the TV remained untouched. There was just the low and consistent hum of the air vent pushing cold air through her space. Sixty-two degrees, unchanged.
Paige sat at her desk with her laptop open, the glow of the screen casting a light across the otherwise dark room.
The document filled the display.
220175 — Priority Subject
Paige’s fingers rested lightly on the keyboard, then, she began typing.
Week of 10/21, no campus interaction observed.
She paused to review the line. It was accurate. There had been no sightings of Azzi in or anywhere around the psych building, no incidental crossings on the quad, and no overlap in shared locations. Avoidance behavior was likely.
Contact frequency: zero
Subject has not initiated communication.
Her eyes lingered on the words. Contact frequency: zero. The phrasing felt clinical— neutral, even, but the reality it described felt… heavier than that.
Paige stared at the screen for a few seconds longer than necessary, before she scrolled up above the new entries and back through the week, then further. The earlier logs began to fill the screen.
Lantern Room Meeting
Subject appears responsive to selective affirmation strategy.
Paige’s gaze moved slowly across the text, and the memory surfaced immediately. Azzi had been sitting across from her, laughing at something Paige had said, something she hadn’t even intended to be humorous. Paige blinked, then scrolled further.
Library Interaction
Subject initiated physical contact (forearm)
Paige’s fingers stilled on the keyboard. She could still feel every physical interaction her and Azzi had ever shared. The brief pressure of Azzi’s hand against her arm, warm, casual, and unprompted.
Paige had logged it as a behavioral marker, but now, the memory carried something else with it— something less defined. She scrolled up more.
Interpersonal discussion (Caroline)
Subject response: reflective and receptive.
Paige’s jaw tightened slightly. That had been a pivotal moment. There was a shift in the dynamic. Increased reliance and increased trust. She had noted it clinically at the time, but looking back, that conversation had felt… significant in a different way. Not just strategically, but personally.
Paige stopped scrolling, and her eyes moved lower on the document, toward the most recent section.
Subject Departure
The line sat alone. As Paige stared at it, the events of the night replayed with precise clarity. Azzi standing across from her, speaking with a shaky voice.
You documented me.
Paige swallowing, and trying to explain. Paige trying to correct the misunderstanding, but the door had closed anyway. Happy birthday.
Paige’s fingers curled slightly against the edge of the desk. There was something wrong. Not with the log. The log was accurate and consistent, but something about her current state didn’t align with her usual internal framework.
Paige sat back slightly in her chair and allowed herself to focus inward. She attempted categorization and emotional response analysis.
She ran through the usual classifications. Stress? Not really. Her physiological indicators didn’t match. Anxiety? Partially, but incomplete. Disappointment? That felt insufficient. The sensation was more persistent than that, more… intrusive.
Paige frowned slightly, because this was unusual. She could not clearly define the emotional state she was experiencing, and that rarely happened.
Paige turned abruptly and reached down beside her desk chair, where her backpack sat partially unzipped. She pulled it closer and opened it fully, her fingers moving quickly until they found the object she was looking for.
The field notes notebook. She pulled it out and set it on the desk before flipping it open to the first blank page.
Unresolved emotional state following subject departure.
Symptoms: distraction and intrusive recollection.
The pen paused and hovered as Paige stared at the words she’d written. Unresolved emotional state. The phrasing was imprecise, but accurate. Her attention had been inconsistent all week— during lab sessions, during class, even now, while attempting to log data. Her thoughts kept returning to the same subject— Azzi.
Intrusive recollection. That was also accurate. Memories were surfacing without intentional recall. The Lantern Room, the library, the couch, the kiss…
Paige stopped, and her breath caught slightly in her chest. She set the pen down and leaned back in her chair, while letting her head rest briefly against the backrest.
The realization settled in slowly, that this wasn’t just about the study anymore. It wasn’t just about the data. It hadn’t been for a while.
Paige’s eyes drifted back to the laptop screen, to the file. To the weeks of logs documenting Azzi’s behavior, her responses and patterns. Paige had spent hours analyzing, mapping, and understanding those entries, but now, there was a new variable. One she hadn’t accounted for initially— her own.
Paige inhaled slowly. She missed Azzi. The thought arrived fully formed, clear, and undeniable. Azzi wasn’t just a subject or a data source. She missed her presence and the conversations, the way interactions with Azzi had felt engaging and stimulating, different from anyone else Paige had encountered.
Paige’s chest tightened slightly again, but she didn’t attempt to categorize it this time. She already knew it didn’t fit cleanly into any existing framework.
Instead, she reached forward and closed the notebook gently and set it beside her laptop. Her eyes stayed on it for a moment, then they shifted to her phone. It sat just to the right of her keyboard. The screen was dark and inactive.
Paige stared at it, had a brief internal hesitation, then picked it up and unlocked it. She opened Instagram quickly, and her thumb moved to the search bar.
After typing az, Azzi’s profile appeared instantly. Paige tapped it, the page loaded, and her feed filled the screen. They were all images she’d already seen, cataloged, and analyzed.
The gym mirror selfie, the one with Caroline, and a candid from earlier in the semester. Each one was exactly where it had been before.
Paige scrolled slightly, then stopped. There were no new posts, no visible updates, and no indication of the last five days at all.
Her thumb hovered near the message icon. She could message, reinitiate contact, and provide clarification, but— Azzi had stated she wanted space, very firmly, to be exact.
Paige lowered her hand, locked her phone, and set it back down on the desk. The apartment returned to silence as her laptop screen still glowed softly in front of her.
The file was still open, waiting for more entries, but Paige didn’t type anything else.
—
Azzi had stopped going to the third floor of the library over the past week. She told herself it wasn’t intentional— that it just happened, that the first time she chose a different section, it was because it was crowded. The second time, because she was already nearby. By now, it had become a quiet rerouting.
She sat at a table near the back of the second floor with her math notebook open in front of her and her pencil resting loosely between her fingers. The overhead lights buzzed and casted everything in that same flat and neutral tone that made time feel like it was going by slower than it actually was.
Around her, people worked, typed, and whispered. Azzi stared down at the problem in front of her. Limits, something she knew how to do, and something she had done before.
She exhaled softly and rubbed her temple with her free hand. “Focus,” she muttered under her breath. She leaned forward slightly and began trying again.
As she rewrote the equation and broke it down step by step, her brain felt slower than usual. Not incapable, just uncooperative, like it kept reaching for something that wasn’t there.
Her phone buzzed lightly against the table and Azzi glanced at it instinctively.
caroline: i just saw the weirdest guy in the dining hall
caroline: he had like three plates of just eggs??
Azzi let out a quiet breath and a small and automatic smile formed on her lips.
azzi: maybe he’s bulking
azzi: or just insane
caroline: no like. it was aggressive
caroline: i felt judged just sitting there
azzi: 😭😭
azzi: you’re so dramatic
caroline: i’m serious
caroline: i think he was watching me eat my cereal
Azzi continued to smile, but it didn’t quite reach all the way through. Her fingers hovered over the screen for a second longer than necessary before she locked her phone and set it back down.
Her attention returned to the notebook. The equation sat there unfinished and waiting. Azzi stared at it, then, without meaning to, her mind shifted to a different kind of conversation.
Paige would’ve said something about this. Not about the eggs, and not about the random guy, but about the way Caroline described it. Her word choice.
Aggressive. Paige would’ve picked that apart. She would have asked why that was the word she chose, and what made it feel aggressive instead of just excessive. She would’ve turned it into something bigger and something more… interesting.
Azzi sighed. She hadn’t even realized she was comparing them, but now that the thought had started, it didn’t stop.
Caroline’s texts were easy, light, and predictable. There was comfort in that, but there was something missing too, something sharper.
Paige never responded the way she expected her to. Every conversation had felt like it mattered, and like it was being examined from angles Azzi hadn’t even considered yet.
Like she was being seen. That word always landed heavier than she wanted it to. She shifted slightly in her chair and crossed one leg over the other.
Her eyes drifted back to her phone screen that was still dark and quiet. No new Instagram notifications, and no messages from pbsbaseline.
Azzi looked back to her notebook and the math problem before writing the next step. It wasn’t long before she stopped again, and her mind slipped once more— this time, more deliberately.
She thought about the way Paige used to look at her during conversations. Not in a casual way, not distracted, but focused and intent, like she was paying attention to every small thing.
The way Azzi phrased something and the way her tone shifted, even the pauses.At the time, it had felt flattering in a strange way.
The things Paige would say, too, like those offhand observations that didn’t sound like compliments at first.
You default to humor when you’re deflecting.
You maintain eye contact longer when you’re trying to prove a point you’re not fully confident in.
You think faster than you speak, but you filter more than you realize.
Azzi felt a slight sting behind her eyes. No one had ever said things like that to her before. No one had ever noticed those things, or if they had, they hadn’t said them out loud. Paige had, casually, like it was obvious.
Azzi pressed her lips together in thought. The realization came quietly. She missed that. She missed the intensity of it. The way conversations didn’t just pass time— they filled it. The way she had felt pulled in and fully engaged, like she had to keep up, like she wanted to keep up.
Azzi frowned as she stared down at the half-finished equation. This was ridiculous. She shouldn’t be thinking about this. Not after—
Her stomach curled as the images came back again. The laptop screen, her ID number, and the pages of notes. Everything Paige had been seeing, recording, analyzing…
Azzi’s hand stilled and her breath caught slightly. She had felt seen, yes. That was true in itself, but… what if it had been too much? Too precise and too intentional.
It hadn’t just been natural observation. It hadn’t just been someone paying attention. It had been structured, documented, and sometimes engineered.
The warmth she had felt in those moments twisted slightly in her memory as her mind reframed things. Was it still the same, knowing what she knew now?
Azzi stared down at the page, but she wasn’t seeing it anymore. What if no one else ever made her feel like that again? The thought slipped in suddenly before she could stop it. Unwelcome, but real.
Because even now, even knowing everything, there was a part of her that wanted that back. The connection and the intensity, the feeling of being understood without having to explain herself over and over again.
But trusting Paige again, that felt… impossible, or at least, not simple. Not after what she had seen.
Her pencil slipped from her fingers and rolled slightly across the page. Azzi didn’t pick it up right away, she just sat there, staring.
She was caught between two things that didn’t seem to fit together anymore. Missing something she wasn’t sure she should want, and not knowing what to do with that.
Azzi leaned back in her chair slightly, her gaze unfocused now, and just stayed there, stuck in the middle of it.
—
Her apartment was quiet again. It wasn’t the neutral quiet Paige preferred, the kind that made it easier to think, to process, and to work.
This one felt heavier and more present, like it occupied space instead of clearing it. It had felt this way since her birthday.
Paige sat at her desk with her laptop open, the Priority Subject — 220175 file filling the screen once more.
She had been here scrolling and reading for a while. Her fingers rested lightly against the trackpad as she moved through the document in small increments, her eyes scanning each entry with careful attention.
Not for data collection, because that part was already done. This was different. She considered this review and analysis.
She was trying to identify where the shift had occurred. Where the reaction had diverged from expectation.
Paige scrolled further up back to the earlier entries. The initial logs— first contact and first extended conversation. Her eyes moved steadily across the text. The tone was consistent, structured, observational, and precise, but something about it felt different now.
Paige paused and scrolled back a few lines to read them again. The content hadn’t changed, but her perception of it had. The entries carried a kind of familiarity now. A subtle recognition, not just of behavior patterns, but of specific moments.
She remembered each Lantern Room conversation. Not just what Azzi had said, but how she had leaned forward slightly when she was engaged. The way her voice had shifted when she got more invested in a topic.
Paige’s gaze lingered on the screen. There was something almost warm about it. Not in the language, that remained clinical, but in the recollection attached to it.
She started to scroll again as her chest tightened. She didn’t even begin to categorize it, she didn’t even pause long enough to. Instead, she shifted her attention to the field notes notebook sitting beside her laptop. Azzi’s notebook.
Paige reached for it without hesitation, pulled it closer, and flipped it open to the next blank space beneath her last entry. Her pen moved quickly.
Continued absence. Subject avoidance behaviors probable.
She paused briefly and reviewed the statement. It was consistent with observed data. No contact and no incidental interaction made active route changes likely.
Paige tapped the pen lightly once against the page, then added another line that was more deliberate this time.
Main hypothesis: subject interpreting documentation as betrayal rather than intellectual interest.
Paige looked at the words. This was the most plausible explanation. Azzi’s reaction had been immediate, emotional, and framed around trust.
You documented me.
The emphasis had been on the act of recording, but Paige’s intention had not been malicious, not deceptive in the way Azzi seemed to interpret it. It had been curiosity, interest, and an attempt to understand, map behavior, and engage more effectively.
The disconnect remained. From her perspective, the documentation had been an extension of attention. Of care, even, though she hadn’t labeled it that way at the time.
She had invested time, effort, and focus, all directed toward Azzi. But Azzi had interpreted it as a violation— as betrayal.
Paige’s gaze shifted back to the laptop screen and to the file. To the volume of entries, the detail, and the consistency.
She could see how it might appear excessive from an external perspective, but excessive didn’t equate to harmful. Not inherently.
There was something missing in the equation, a variable she hadn’t accounted for, not in behavior, but in interpretation.
She turned back to the notebook and added a small notation beneath the hypothesis.
Discrepancy between intent and subject perception remains unresolved.
Paige leaned back slightly in her chair with her pen still in her hand. Her mind moved quicker now, running through possibilities.
If the issue was trust, then the solution would involve restoration of that trust. Clarification, reframing, and providing context for her actions. She could explain the purpose behind the documentation. Paige nodded to herself. That was logical, structured, and solvable.
Unintentionally, her attention drifted again back to the memory of that night. The couch, the proximity, and azzi’s voice, softer than usual. The kiss.
Paige’s breath caught slightly. That moment had not been part of the study. It wasn’t planned or structured, and there definitely hadn’t been a framework or predictive model for it. It had just been impulse and response. That didn’t align with her usual patterns.
She lowered her pen to the page again.
Contact withdrawal producing cognitive distraction.
The words were more immediate this time, less observational and more reactive.
Paige stared at the line for a moment, then closed the notebook. Not forcefully, but with a kind of finality.
She set the pen down beside it and turned her attention back to the laptop. The file remained open and unchanged, complete, but no longer sufficient.
The quiet around her felt filled with something she still couldn’t fully define, and that kept her from closing the file.
—
It was late enough that her dorm had gone quiet. Not completely silent— there were still distant sounds in the hallway, a door closing somewhere down the corridor, and someone’s laugh echoing— but inside Azzi’s room, everything had settled.
Caroline was asleep beside her, sleeping over again. She was curled toward the wall, breathing slow and even, with one arm half-tangled in the blanket that they were sharing.
Azzi was lying on her side and staring at her phone, wide awake with the screen dimmed. She had been switching between apps without really thinking. Instagram, messages, then back again. Nothing was really holding her attention for more than a few seconds. Her thoughts kept circling back to the same place. Back to her.
Azzi slowly dragged a hand down her face. This is stupid. You need to stop, she thought to herself. Move on. That’s what she’d been telling herself all week.
Then, before she could overthink it, she tapped Instagram, clicked to add to her story, and set it to Close Friends only. The green circle always felt safer. Smaller and more contained.
She hesitated for only a second before typing.
need advice about something
what would you do if someone crossed a boundary, but you still cared about them?
Azzi stared at the text and read over it twice. It felt vague enough for other people to not realize who she was talking about— detached, with no names or specifics.
It was just a question. She hit post, and watched as the story uploaded. Azzi locked her phone and let it fall back against her chest.
She didn’t expect an immediate response from anyone. Caroline would probably see it in the morning, maybe text her about it later in the day or bring it up casually like she always did. A few other people might reply too with something simple.
Depends what they did.
Talk to them.
Cut them off.
Normal responses and normal advice. That’s what she wanted— something uncomplicated.
Her phone then vibrated. The sound was loud in her quiet bedroom. The Instagram notification lit up the screen.
She unlocked it, and gaze dropped to the message preview.
pbsbaseline replied to your story.
Azzi’s stomach dropped. She had forgotten to remove Paige from her Close Friends Story.
—
Paige was already in bed with all of her lights off when the notification came through.
She had been lying on her back, staring at the ceiling, not sleeping, not working, just… suspended. Her phone suddenly buzzed against the mattress beside her.
Paige turned her head slightly and shifted her eyes to the screen as it lit up. It was an Instagram story notification.
@azzifudd added to their story.
Paige blinked once. That, in itself, wasn’t unusual, but the ring around Azzi’s profile picture was green. This was a Close Friends story post.
Paige pushed herself up slightly against the headboard and picked up her phone.
That was unexpected. She had assumed, logically, that she would have been removed following Azzi’s prior reaction. With her avoidance behaviors and contact withdrawal, exclusion would have been consistent with that pattern.
Paige unlocked her phone and tapped the notification. The story loaded, and the black photo popped up with white text.
need advice about something
what would you do if someone crossed a boundary, but you still cared about them?
Paige read it once, then again, then a third time. Her expression didn’t change, but something in her chest shifted— recognition.
The referent was clear. There was no ambiguity. Someone. Boundary. Care. All the variables pointed to the same conclusion: This was about her.
Paige’s grip on her phone adjusted slightly as her thumb hovering over the reply field. This was an opening. An unstructured and unprompted one, but still, an opportunity for re-engagement.
She didn’t hesitate long. Her response formed quickly, almost automatically, aligning with the framework she had already established— her hypothesis. Clarification of intent and restoration of trust.
pbsbaseline: boundary violations can sometimes be addressed through clarification of intent.
She paused to read it over. It was concise, accurate, appropriate, and neutral in tone. She sent it. As she considered sending more, maybe expanding and providing direct context— my intention was not—
Suddenly, a reply appeared, both immediate and faster than expected.
azzifudd: i am not sure if taking your advice is appropriate during this specific instance.
Paige went completely still. Her eyes remained fixed on the screen as she read the sentence again and again, processing and breaking it down.
Not sure if taking your advice… appropriate… this specific instance.
There was no hostility in the wording and no overt aggression, but Azzi’s implication was clear. This was rejection, not just of the advice, but also of the source. Of Paige.
Something tightened sharply in her chest. She had an unfiltered reaction, that was a bit unfamiliar in its intensity.
For a moment, she didn’t move, nor type, or even adjust her grip on her phone, because something else had surfaced beneath the initial interpretation. A realization, both small and distinct.
Azzi had repeatedly come to her before for input, perspective, and analysis. That had become a consistent pattern. Azzi would present a situation, thought, or a question, and Paige would respond, break it apart, or provide insight, and Azzi had accepted that. She relied on it, even. Paige was her first point of reference. Her primary—
Paige’s fingers curled slightly around the edge of the phone. Now, Azzi didn’t want her input. The shift didn’t only feel abrupt, but total, and it didn’t align.
The reaction split cleanly into two parts. The first was hurt, both sharp and unpleasant. It was difficult for Paige to categorize, but it was undeniably present.
The second was more structured and familiar. Frustration? Maybe, or something more specific. Possession.
The thought surfaced before she could filter it. She used to ask me. That access, that role, it hadn’t just disappeared. It had been deliberately removed.
Paige’s eyes flicked back to the message. Her mind moved quickly now, trying to reframe and correct it. If Azzi’s response was rooted in her perception of betrayal, then resistance to input would be expected. Temporary, just a byproduct of the unresolved discrepancy. Not permanent.
Paige forced her fingers to move and to respond.
pbsbaseline: your hesitation is likely influenced by the context of the situation rather than the validity of the advice itself.
She paused, then added another line that felt less clinical but still controlled.
pbsbaseline: i can clarify my intent if that’s the primary concern.
She stared at the messages after sending them and waited. The screen remained still for a moment, then, the seen receipt appeared.
Her eyes stayed locked on the screen as she waited for the typing indicator, for a response, for anything.
Seconds passed, then more, but nothing. No typing bubble and definitely no reply. Paige lowered her phone slightly, though her gaze didn’t leave it entirely.
The conversation sat there, open and unanswered, and for the first time since she had sent the message, there was no immediate action to take and no clear next step. Just absence, again.
Paige swallowed once and her jaw tightened subtly as she turned the phone face-down against the mattress beside her. She didn’t lie back down or close her eyes. Instead, she just sat there, waiting for something that didn’t come.
—
Paige couldn’t sleep. She had laid back down and closed her eyes, but her mind hadn’t followed. It stayed active— running, looping, and circling the same sequence over and over again. The message she had sent and Azzi’s response.
i am not sure if taking your advice is appropriate during this specific instance.
The phrasing replayed with exact clarity. She could basically hear Azzi’s tone. The content was definitive— rejection.
Paige turned onto her side, then onto her back, then sat up. The darkness in the apartment felt thicker than usual. Not quite in the way she preferred, not empty, but occupied by absence, interruption, and something unresolved.
She reached for her phone again and checked their message thread. No response, no correction, and no follow-up. The conversation remained exactly where it had ended.
Paige exhaled through her nose, then swung her legs over the side of the bed. Sleep was no longer a viable outcome under the current conditions.
She stood up and moved across her bedroom over to her desk without turning on the lights. Her laptop was still closed, and her notebook was exactly where she had left it.
Paige sat down and flipped on her lamp that she rarely used, before pulling the field notes notebook toward her. She opened it, and the page where she had left off stared back at her.
Contact withdrawal producing cognitive distraction.
That line had proven accurate, but insufficient. Paige flipped to the next page, picked up her pen, and began writing.
Subject rejection of advisory input.
Significant shift in relational dynamic.
Loss of established interaction pattern.
Her thoughts moved faster now, less structured and more reactive, because it wasn’t just a shift, it was a removal. It was a disruption of something that had been consistent, predictable, and functional.
Her role and position in Azzi’s decision-making process was gone. Paige’s grip tightened on the pen, and the next line came without hesitation.
INTERVENTION REQUIRED
The words sat heavy on the page, not observational or passive, but directive. Paige stared at it. Her breathing had into something shallower now and more controlled. Her mind had finally began to reorganize and refocus.
If the current state was unstable, then it needed correction. Avoidance behaviors had persisted for days, and digital outreach had failed.
Paige leaned back slightly in her chair and her eyes unfocused for a moment as she accessed something else. Memory, to pattern recognition, to schedule mapping.
Azzi’s routine surfaced easily, not because Paige had intentionally memorized it, but because she had already logged it. She had observed it repeatedly.
Morning classes, lunch gap, afternoon classes… Paige’s eyes sharpened. Azzi spent her evenings in the library frequently. Third floor, usually, but even if that had changed, the location itself remained probable. Study habits didn’t dissolve entirely under avoidance behavior.
Paige’s fingers tapped once against the edge of the notebook. Tomorrow night. Azzi would have a high likelihood of presence in the library.
Paige looked back down at the page at the words she had written.
INTERVENTION REQUIRED.
Her breathing slowed and finally stabilized, because now, she had a plan. It wasn’t abstract or theoretical, it was actionable. She would make direct contact, clarify her intent, correct the misinterpretation, and restore their dynamic.
Paige closed the notebook, set the pen down beside it, and rested her hands flat against the desk for a moment. The earlier tension hadn’t disappeared entirely, but it had condensed into something more focused.
She turned her lamp off and stood after a moment before moving back toward the bed. Something in her had settled into place— a decision.
Paige laid back down and stared up at the ceiling again. Her eyes didn’t close, at least not yet, but her thoughts had quieted enough to form a single and consistent line.
She had observed, documented, and proven that repeated contact creates attachment.
But absence, she was beginning to understand, didn’t dissolve attachment. It distorted it. It intensified it, and turned it into something harder to control. That, more than anything, made this intervention necessary.
Tomorrow, she would find Azzi, and this time, she wouldn’t leave the outcome to chance.
