Chapter 15 #2
I was lost. I swore the room numbers were going up, then suddenly they just stopped.
Where on earth was this class? I hated to be late on my first day of college.
Butterflies flitted in my stomach with excitement.
I was a real college girl. I scanned the interior of the computer science building.
There were so many bright colors on the inside, with multiple levels like an Escher painting.
“Do you need help?”
The confused look combined with the map in my hand must’ve given me away as a lost freshman.
The smiling girl with glasses and braids looked like my kind of person, so I accepted her help.
She pointed me to the outside, where the building’s cement and glass exterior seemed better suited to the art department.
Apparently, the larger lecture rooms had only exterior doors.
I found the closest exit and circled around the building.
On the side opposite the man-made lake and on the inside of our stadium-shaped campus, I finally found the correct door.
It led into a room where curved tables stepped like a ziggurat downward to the sunken platform where the teacher’s podium stood.
I found a spot close to the stairs, toward the middle of the room.
I hated the distractions of those who sat in the back, but I didn’t want to be noticeable in the front.
The room was filling with students trickling in and sitting scattered about.
You could tell who already knew others by how they sat in clusters.
The teacher arrived, apparently a TA—a teacher’s assistant—who would begin most of our lectures.
Our professor arrived after the regular business was taken care of.
He made me smile, reminding me of Lin’s dad, but with more gray in his hair.
Also, he wore glasses and talked more like Charisse.
Luckily, the syllabus, homework, and other important information would all be posted on the class page.
I couldn’t imagine anyone in the world who could keep up with writing notes, even though my own typing speed was more than decent.
I hoped he would stop at one point so we could ask questions—not that I needed to.
Everything we were covering was pretty basic stuff.
I understood that the school needed to make sure we had strong fundamentals before moving on, but if you were a computer major and didn’t know what binary code was, then you should pick another major.
Most of the students had out their laptops, and the soft click-clack of almost constant typing combined with the hum of whirring batteries and zipping fluorescent lights.
College was so different from high school.
No chatting in the back, sleeping heads on desks, or paper balls being tossed across the room.
Of course, it was day one in a computer class, so all my classes might not be like this.
The door shut, and I turned my head. As I looked back at the teacher, I caught sight of a familiar profile, two empty seats to my right and one row ahead. No—it couldn’t be.
It was hard to tell from the angle I was at. I turned back to the teacher, but my attention kept drifting to the brown-haired guy.
Nope. Those brown waves were too long. I continued writing as best I could, longhand.
My laptop hadn’t made it through the dragon’s sabotage.
I still wanted to kill her. No one could blame me for sliding an imaginary sword through her middle and slaying the dragon, right?
So while I waited for a new laptop, I had to write everything out by hand.
It took me back to high school and when I was mad at IK.
Though he hadn’t really been to blame, whereas Stephanie was.
I tried to focus. My grades were even more important now, to meet scholarship requirements.
Yet my gaze landed on that guy again...there was something.
He turned his head and reached for his backpack, and my heart pounded.
What was Ni doing at my school? In my department?
In my class? It had to be just a trick of the eye.
My knee bounced and my notes grew more haphazard.
College was supposed to get me away from him, so I could start over again, fresh.
And IK, the guy I really liked, was around here somewhere.
As the class ended and we packed up, I saw that familiar smile head-on.
He didn’t notice me, yet I escaped as quickly as I could.
But he sat near me in the next class, and the one after that.
All in all, he was in three of the five classes I had that day.
The next day was the same, and all week I felt like he was following me.
Walking down the same hallways I trod, sitting just near enough to distract me in about three-quarters of my classes.
Who knew he had an interest in computers?
I mean, he had taken that programming class with me, but lots of non-computer majors had too.
I’d put up with him at DragonByte, never expecting to see him again.
I’d thought he wouldn’t be a part of my future.
But now my college life was going to be full of him.
Needing a moment of peace, I found a willow on school grounds—tucked away near the center of campus, close to several of my classes.
It reminded me of the one in the game, and IK’s sensible advice.
The sunlight filtered through the leaves as I drank my favorite grape soda.
Having Ni in the lecture class made sense—it included everyone in computer related degrees.
Out of thousands of students at this college, he was in most of my smaller classes as well. He couldn’t be interested in being a game dev too, could he? What were the chances that both Ni and IK were good at sports, but wanted to major in computers and were attending SCAD?
I shook my head. Lots of guys were into both.
I was just seeing shadows where there weren’t any.
That was the problem; I was feeling a bit like I was cheating on IK.
We weren’t officially together, and I wasn’t willing to take a step like that sight unseen.
Which meant...I should meet him. But after how it had gone with RogueStriker, I wasn’t sure if I could. And what if he didn’t want to meet me?