Nightlife ✓

18 | wardrobe

WHENEVER I USUALLY WOULD BE studying with Quen in the library, I now found a quiet corner as far away from the library as possible to do my work.

I didn't want to accidentally run into Quen after I had told him I would be with Viv and Jake, so the safest bet was finding a new study place. I wasn't the type of person who needed the exact right volume level, lighting and atmosphere to be able to concentrate. I could get work done anywhere—though I just preferred my room—which was helpful when it came to exam season. It meant I could make myself focus at will.

So my only guideline as I wandered around campus on Monday morning, the week after I'd put my emotional distancing plan into action, was to put physical space between myself and Quen. Geographically, that meant going to the Business building.

The senior Business students had a horrible habit of wearing pressed, collared shirts tucked either into pencil skirts or trousers. It was like they were prepared for a job interview at the drop of a hat. I knew I stuck out like a sore thumb in my ratty high school graduation hoodie and navy sweats, but there was no rule that students couldn't study in another Faculty's building.

I slid into a one-person table, one of many pushed against the wall of a hallway. After plugging my laptop into a power socket, I pulled out my Histology textbook. To me, succeeding in cellular biology was a matter of rote learning. There was nothing too hard about understanding the structures and functions of organelles, but there was a lot of it to understand.

It wasn't like Physics or Maths at all, which only had so much you could memorise. After you knew the core principles, theorems and formulae, at a certain point you had to start relying on your own intuition when proving solutions or calculating answers. You had to feel your way through the different choices of tackling a problem—whose theorem applied best, which formula was appropriate for the given variables—with little guidance.

I could make a misstep and screw myself, for sure. But those that were good enough could do extremely well with little revision, an outcome that was impossible for everyone taking Histology, unless their memory was eidetic. Sometimes my answers to a Biophysics question would just flow, pulling all the different concepts I knew to form a cohesive solution. That was more satisfying than blurting out a paragraph of unoriginal content, and that was why my preference for Physics over Biology persisted.

After a half-hour of solid Histology revision, a person slid into the chair opposite me.

His sandy blond hair fell just above his eyebrows, and he was wearing a periwinkle blue collared shirt. I couldn't see anything lower than his ribcage, below the table, but I was completely certain he would have his shirt tucked into trousers, a neat belt around his hips and polished, laced brogues. Business majors.

"Noah," I acknowledged politely, purposefully omitting a greeting.

"Krista," he returned smoothly, his eyes twinkling amusedly. "Is the Science building getting old? I haven't seen you around here before."

Two things were made clear to me by those words. Firstly, he remembered that I was a Science major, which I'd told him once in the Topaz VIP lounge and while he had been drinking, no less. Secondly, I sat high enough in Noah's consciousness that he noticed my absence. Not good.

"A change of pace is always good."

He arched an eyebrow, but when I made it obvious I wasn't going to elaborate further, he just shook his head and hummed. "Hm."

That response was weak enough that I wasn't socially obligated to say anything else, so I just resumed reading from my Histology textbook. I still had half an hour before the Histology lecture began, so as long as Noah kept his mouth shut, I wouldn't mind him sitting there at all.