Opening
Online fame catapults Frances Janvier into a spotlight she isn’t ready for just as Aled Last fights to keep his identity hidden. Results day brings triumph without joy, and a midnight campfire draws Frances, Aled, and Daniel into a fragile circle of honesty where names, futures, and fears come into the open. A memory of Carys’s last night becomes the spark that forces Frances to question everything she’s built.
What Happens
Chapter 31: FEBRUARY FRIDAY
Frances’s announcement as the new artist for Universe City sends her follower count soaring overnight. Praise mixes with harassment as fans flood her inbox demanding the Creator’s identity, a barrage that exposes The Power and Dangers of Fandom and Internet Culture. When Frances shows the messages to Aled, he spirals, terrified that anonymity is slipping away.
To divert the frenzy, Aled tweets from the official account: “February Friday – i still believe, i still listen.” Instantly, the fandom pivots to one of its oldest conspiracy threads. A wiki entry within the chapter lays out the lore: “February Friday” is the mysterious person Radio addresses with intimate, possibly romantic messages. Fans insist February is real and beloved by the Creator. Now privy to the truth, Frances asks who February is. Aled refuses, calling it an “ultimate secret,” and Frances backs off—an early, crucial test of their Platonic Friendship and Love.
Chapter 32: UNIVERSE CITY: Ep. 32 – cosmic noise
A transcript of a “Letters to February” episode takes over. Radio speaks in cosmic language about distance, absence, and yearning, capturing the ache of Loneliness and Connection. He fears he is “only ever walking where you’ve walked” and wonders if February has “exploded already, like a star,” leaving only afterlight to see and hear.
Across the void, Radio keeps shouting, unheard, yet refuses to fall silent. The episode ends on determined hope, embodying Finding Your Voice and Pursuing Passion: “Either way, we are going to bring beautiful things into the universe.”
Chapter 33: THE BIG SCHEME OF THINGS
It’s AS-level results day and Aled’s eighteenth birthday. Frances wakes to cold fear, the distilled essence of The Pressure of Academia and the Education System. Four A grades arrive—perfection on paper, emptiness in her chest. Frances's Mum tells her, “It’s just school,” but Frances knows it defines futures.
A memory slams back: the day before Carys Last disappears, standing with Carol Last after GCSE results. Frances overhears, “Really quite pathetic,” and sees Carol’s hand biting into Carys’s arm—an image of Abusive Family Dynamics that doesn’t fade.
Back in the present, Raine Sengupta shrugs off bad grades and smiles. A text from Aled confirms four A*s and a Cambridge place. Between her numb success, Raine’s lightness, and Aled’s achievement, Frances feels unmoored, her carefully crafted identity cracking—a hinge moment in her Coming of Age.
Chapter 34: THE CIRCLE OF EVILS & POWER STATION
Frances plans a quiet night until Daniel Jun shows up in an ancient, too-small school uniform. After barbed banter, he admits he’s arranging a birthday meetup for Aled and needs her to come. In a Batman onesie, Frances follows him not to Aled’s house but to a field, a tent, and a fire.
They drink and talk. Frances gifts Aled a skyscraper-shaped radio whose windows light up with sound—Universe City made tangible. Daniel puts the pieces together: Frances knows Aled is the Creator; Aled confirms she’s the new artist. Results come up. Daniel beams about biology. Aled, detached, says, “I just don’t think I care about anything that much,” except Universe City, a clear fracture line in his Mental Health and Well-being.
Chapter 35: KANYE WOULDN'T HAVE LIKED IT
The rest of the night blurs—fireside warmth, drowsy confessions, sudden clarity. During “Never Have I Ever,” Aled says, “Never have I ever wanted to go to university,” laughs, and doesn’t take it back. The joke lands like truth, exposing the rift at the core of his Identity and Authenticity.
Frances and Daniel open up about names and belonging. He wishes people called him by his Korean name, Dae-Sung; she imagines using her Ethiopian father’s surname, Mengesha. Later, Frances notices a charged closeness between Aled and Daniel by the fire, a flicker of LGBTQ+ Identity and Representation that complicates what she thinks she knows. Finally, memory—maybe dream—returns: the night Carys ran. Drunk and raw, Carys tells Frances, “You’ve got so much more power than you think you do. But you just waste it. You just do whatever anyone else says.” Then the echo that won’t stop: “Nobody listens to me.”
Character Development
Frances, Aled, and Daniel step out of roles—Study-Frances, Future-Cambridge Aled, antagonistic Daniel—and into something messier and truer. The campfire becomes a temporary sanctuary where each risks honesty and finds a version of self they might actually want.
- Frances: Achieves perfect grades and feels nothing. Begins to interrogate the identity she performs and the future she’s been chasing; Carys’s words lodge like a directive to change.
- Aled: Panic over exposure intensifies. Admits he never wanted university, and that only the podcast still matters, signaling deep burnout and depression beneath the Cambridge sheen.
- Daniel: Engineers kindness under the guise of teasing. Shares his Korean name and history, shifting from foil to friend and grounding the trio’s newfound bond.
- Carys: Through memory, emerges as a catalyst—her refusal to be minimized pushes Frances toward agency.
- Carol: Revealed as controlling and emotionally abusive, the source of much of Aled’s and Carys’s pain.
Themes & Symbols
The academic machine grinds loudly here: Frances’s numb triumph and Aled’s indifference indict a system that confuses metrics for meaning. The chapters ask who we become when grades and prestige drown out curiosity and care, and whether success without selfhood is failure by another name.
Identity work threads every scene. Aled hides the part of himself that feels alive, Daniel reaches for his real name, and Frances hears Carys’s challenge to stop outsourcing her choices. Loneliness reverberates in the “Letters to February,” but the campfire answers with connection—imperfect, temporary, enough to let truth surface.
- The Campfire: A liminal space of warmth and safety where confessions feel possible; it turns survival into community for a night.
- The Skyscraper Radio: A fusion of Aled’s voice and Frances’s art—proof that they see and reflect each other’s inner worlds.
Key Quotes
“February Friday – i still believe, i still listen.”
This tweet deftly redirects a hostile fandom while revealing Aled’s reliance on myth to protect himself. It taps into a shared lore to buy safety and shows how stories can both shield and expose their creators.
“Either way, we are going to bring beautiful things into the universe.”
Radio’s vow reframes isolation as a creative engine. Hope becomes an action, not a feeling—an insistence on making despite distance, which mirrors Aled’s and Frances’s need to create to feel real.
“I just don’t think I care about anything that much.”
Aled’s flat confession unmasks the polished future others celebrate. It reads as burnout and depression: achievement that no longer connects to desire, only obligation.
“Never have I ever wanted to go to university.”
Packaged as a party game, this is a declaration of refusal. Aled tests the truth in plain sight, signaling that the path laid out for him is misaligned with who he is.
“You’ve got so much more power than you think you do. But you just waste it. You just do whatever anyone else says.”
Carys names Frances’s core conflict and hands her a blueprint for change. The line reframes Frances’s compliance as a choice—and therefore something she can unchoose.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters pivot the story from secrecy and performance to voice and choice. External pressures crest—fandom scrutiny for Aled, academic expectations for Frances—until they crack the facades the characters have been maintaining. The trio coalesces into a support network that exists outside school hierarchies, giving each of them the courage to speak truer.
Most crucially, Carys’s words flip Frances’s arc from passive excellence to active authorship of her life. Aled’s confessions mark the beginning of open conflict with the future imposed on him. The campfire night lays the emotional groundwork for the coming confrontations: with parents, with institutions, and with the selves they’ve been pretending to be.