Knokke Out
The Freshmen – Part IV

After the storms of baptism, humiliation, and the delirium of student hazing, he finally breathes a new air of freedom. The calotte has been "deflowered" at a corona, the twenty-four hours bike race of Louvain-la-Neuve is behind him, and for the first time he dares to whisper to Stéphanie the words he had long carried in silence: "I love you."

But love is never simple.

Stéphanie, luminous and untouchable, holds him close while keeping him at a distance. She imposes her rhythm, weaving tenderness with restraint, laughter with provocation. And when she invites him to Knokke, on the Belgian coast, he finds himself in a seaside exile where desire, waiting, and the trials of patience test him more cruelly than any hazing ever could.

Around them, the fever of student life continues: lectures, debates, parties, friendships, betrayals. Yet beneath it all runs the same undercurrent, the fear of losing dignity, the urgency of growing up, and the longing to prove oneself worthy of love.

Knokke Out is a story of passion suspended, of waiting as initiation, and of the bittersweet confusion of youth caught between innocence and experience.