11. OBSERVE
alistair
In emptiness, systems reveal their intended function. The tiered rows descend toward the lectern in clean symmetry, oak desks polished smooth by decades of restless hands.
I can’t deny that part of me actually prefers the lecture hall half empty. The lesser crowd is easier to grab attention.
I cross to the podium and set my tablet down, aligning it with the edge within a millimeter. The notification shows it’s already connected to the digital board.
I’m already standing behind the podium ahead of time than usual today. What an exception from my side. I don’t like to be either early or late—I like to be exactly on time.
Some students casually begin to trickle in, alone or in clusters, voices low, movements casual until they see me.
The room fills steadily.
Someone enters the lecture hall. Golden-brown hair. My eyes track her motion until she chooses a seat directly in the middle of the room.
It’s then that I notice another one in the same shade of hair color. She’s sitting in the farthest corner, one row down from the last row.
Ariella Keinston was present in the class long before my brain noticed her presence. She knows how to blend in with the background despite not being of the same feathers.
Golden-brown is uncommon on its own. Caucasian or white produces it generously—muted shades shaped by weak sunlight and colder genetics. If this were a closed system, I’d discard the variable immediately.
But the timing is wrong.
Both are in my direct line of sight. Similar shade at first glance—enough to register, not enough to confirm.
Cooler tone. Warmer tone.
Girl A leans forward as I step behind the lectern, eyes bright, lips already parted as if she’s prepared to engage before engagement is required. Then she shifts her attention to a boy sitting beside her.
Performative confidence.
Girl B, Ariella Keinston, has her attention angled—not toward me, but toward the blank board. She’s sober and not talking to anyone. What I assume is that she’s trying to pretend she’s not tracking my movement.
When I finally clear my throat, Girl A’s eyes snap to my face, alert and ready. Ariella’s gaze lifts after the briefest delay.
It’s not disinterest but restraint. Anticipation versus reaction. I log it mentally.
As I begin, I continue watching them both through peripheral focus. Girl A nods at intervals, sometimes too quickly, as if agreement itself is a performance. She writes before she understands, commits ink before structure. Fast mind. Undisciplined.
Ariella writes sparingly. When she does, it’s after I’ve moved on—notations added retrospectively, not compulsively. She doesn’t need to trap the information immediately. She’s already integrated it. Her confidence doesn’t ask for permission.
I shift topics abruptly—introduce a concept out of sequence, something senior students should recognize but not expect so early. It’s a minor disruption, but enough to unsettle the unprepared.
“Assume the system incorporates delayed feedback,” I continue, altering the diagram slightly. “What happens to stability after multiple iterations?”
“It should still stabilize,” girl A answers. “As long as the gain remains below threshold, the feedback corrects itself over time.”
A reasonable answer. Also incomplete.
I don’t correct her immediately and leave it for later. Then my gaze shifts to girl B.
“Miss Keinston, do you have anything to say?”
Ariella looks up at once. “Uh—the feedback isn’t correcting itself,” she says calmly. “It’s remembering.”
“With delay introduced, the error term re-enters the system correlated with prior states,” she continues. “Stability only appears preserved because divergence is gradual. But it compounds. Eventually, the system fails.”
I study her for half a breath longer than necessary, then nod once and turn back to the board.
I feel a familiar tightening in my chest—not attraction, not interest, but alignment. The sensation of a system responding the way it should when pressure is applied correctly.
Still, I don’t conclude.
Hair color alone proves nothing. Behavior can be mimicked. Intelligence can be trained. Even restraint can be learned with enough discipline.
But certainty is harder to fake.
As the lecture progresses, I deliberately pace my movements across the front of the room, adjusting sightlines, testing angles.
As the lecture winds down, I add without emphasis, “The supplementary material I mentioned will be uploaded tonight. Review before next session. You can go.” then dismiss the class.
The class empties almost immediately. A few students murmur acknowledgement, some discussing today’s topic or already slipping into gossip, except for her.
I notice Ariella hasn’t made any friends yet. That alone means nothing—freshers often orbit uncertainly before choosing alliances. Or perhaps she doesn’t need them. Either way, I don’t care enough to pursue the thought.
What unsettles me is that she doesn’t pack her bag like others. I get the distinct impression she’s waiting for me to move first. Why? I can’t tell.
So I take my time. I shut down my tablet deliberately, fingers unhurried as the screen darkens. In my peripheral vision, I see her mirror the motion a beat later.
She slides her tablet into her bag with the same economy of movement, no wasted gestures. The timing isn’t a coincidence. It’s calibration.
Then she lifts the bag and places it on top of the desk.
Purple.
My eyes widen for a fraction of a second before discipline reasserts itself.
Kuromi.
I turn my head before I consciously decide not to. The motion is sharp enough that there’s no disguising it. I know she feels my attention because her silhouette reacts subtly, like the way a fox’s ears flick at a sensitive sound it pretends not to hear.
The resemblance is too uncanny. The plushie I have sits on the shelf in the room where I record live lectures.
Viewers might think it’s of my kids (too bad, I don’t want one), but it’s actually the last thing my mother ever gave me.
She had a strange fondness for dressing me in things that defied expectations.
Mom starved herself for months to buy the best Kuromi plushie available in the store back then. Skipped meals. Lied about being full. All so she could place it in my hands with a smile that pretended it costs her nothing at all.
That alone is why I’ve kept the stupid thing for eighteen years.
I look away first.
When I finally step down from the podium and calmly walk out of the class.
From the confrontation with the council last night, I’m certain they didn’t send a Synthète after me. First time my intuition went wrong.
There are nearly 59 million people living in England, around 35.3 million are female and approximately 25 million of them are over 18. And who knows how many of them are involved with secret organizations. It can be anybody.
Even though the list can go for miles, I’ll start with the strangest of the lot, the one I know in person. Stalkers are always the one who gets ignored the most just because they’re different that ordinary people. And that’s why they get away with their strange fascination.
Ariella Keinston.
The first and youngest student to be in my lecture in seven years of being a senior professor here at Oxford University.
Ariella exits without haste exactly three seconds after I exit the classroom.
I register her presence without looking back. The rhythm of her steps is controlled, measured to avoid echo yet close enough to be detected without announcing itself.
She doesn’t glance over her shoulder when she passes by me in the corridor.
We diverge without acknowledgment—me toward my office, her toward wherever she intends to disappear.
There’s an hour before my next lecture. So I drop into my chair feeling the leather giving beneath my weight as I lean back and exhale. My intent is to relax at the faculty office but then again I straighten and open my desktop.
Data doesn’t lie.
I access the attendance logs and performance metrics, cross-referencing submission timestamps, error margins, deviation curves.
Ariella Keinston.
Her profile fills the screen—fewer submissions. Higher precision. Almost no redundancy. Her errors are conceptual as if they’re born from probing limits rather than failing to understand them. She ranks high enough to justify attention. More than that, she ranks high enough to warrant scrutiny.
I open a new draft and begin composing the email carefully, each word chosen with intent.
I do not include any other student except her.
Time constraints alone justify the exclusion. So does merit. So does my stated interest in a specific analytical approach.
Any oversight committee would agree. Still, the truth is simpler. I’ve already chosen my suspect.