Title: The Freeschool Fairytale
She floated into his life like a dandelion seed — barefoot, bangles, and brilliant.
Her name was Liva. A real Vrije School girl: all patchouli, paint-stained hands, half-formed philosophies, and a voice like honey dripping from a cracked jar.
Her mother was a performance artist who once lived in a yurt. Her father? “An open wound with a beard,” Liva said. That was enough.
But Liva… Liva was magic.
She painted her dreams, played the saw, drank oat milk, and called Jona her “blonde god” after a week of dating.
“You’re better than him,” she whispered once, referring to her ex — the so-called Black Adonis she’d spent three years trying to forget. “You’re lighter. Safer. Beautiful in a way that doesn’t scare me.”
Jona smiled.
He believed her.
For a while.
**
They made love like art students — messy, intense, and occasionally surrounded by candles. She read him Rilke at 3 a.m., made him tea with mysterious herbs, and told him he was the first man who didn’t try to “colonize her aura.”
But then came Finn.
A friend of Jona’s. Tall, tanned, and toxic in all the right ways. Same haircut. Same smile. Just… add amphetamines and poker debt.
“I just… I don’t know what happened,” Liva said later, tears streaming down her perfect cheeks. “We were high. It felt like art. I needed… chaos.”
Jona stared.
No anger.
Just the dull hum of repetition.
She reached out to touch him.
He didn’t flinch. Just said: “You had peace. You chose noise.”
And she nodded, like a child who’d dropped a crystal and still wanted a hug.
**
She left the next week. Not just Jona — the city, the flat, everything. Ran off with Finn on a “spontaneous soul journey” through squats and festivals and the back of shady campervans.
He saw her once more on Instagram. Dreadlocks now. A bad tattoo of a mushroom on her hip. Caption: “growth is never linear 💫🪷🫀”
**
He didn’t like the photo.
Didn’t block her either.
He just put down his phone, stood in the quiet of his apartment — clean, safe, too quiet — and whispered:
“Oh. Oh yeah. Oh no. Yeah no. Oh. Very unfortunate.”
Then he made tea.
Because no matter what, some rituals stay sacred.
End of Chapter Five.