fool's paradise ✶ batman begins

❝ CHAPTER. 00 ❞

★ 。 ׄ ׅ ⋆ ｡ ˚ ⋆ 🦇 ₊ ˖
❝ FOOL'S PARADISE. ❞
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"Prologue."
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trigger warning for
violent crime
word count: 9,333

OCTOBER 25th, 1997

THE BRIGHT FLORESCENT LIGHTS were stark in contrast to the dark wood of the desks on each tier of the lecture hall. The folding chairs squeaked harshly as people filled the room and found their seats. The faint rumble of voices filled the hall and the sounds bounced off the blue acoustic panels that surrounded the room.

Posters littered the walls of the lecture hall ranging from information on tailgates for the schools football team to safety requirements. One poster in particular stood out to Nadia. It was on a bulletin board at the very front of the lecture hall. The poster persuaded students to participate in an experiment the psychology students we're running. It gave the students information on what the experiment was about and the contact details of those who were running it.

Despite all the other posters in the room, Professor Shiel has decided to put that singular one on the board behind him. Nadia couldn't help but wonder why.

Nadia glanced at the other students as she walked down the center aisle of the hall to reach to front row of desks. Most sat with their friends and seemed to be engaged in conversation. She did see a few people opening their notebooks in preparation for note taking during the class and others with their heads down, completely slumped.

Nadia couldn't blame them. With the level this psychology class was at, the course work was heavy and gave very little room for mistakes. It only made sense that people would need to catch up on sleep after spending days on the homework alone.

Once at the front, Nadia slid into one of the chairs in the middle of the first row. The lecture hall was still fairly empty, only ten or fifteen people had taken up residence in the seats for the duration of the class. Nadia checked the large clock that hung from the pale white walls of the lecture hall.

Fifteen minutes to go until class started. Usually, people would start coming in around ten minutes before the lecture started and after that the seats filled up quickly. If someone were to get here on time, there would be no seats left. Which is exactly why Nadia always got to class early. She able to pick whatever spot she wanted for the class and didn't have the hassle of walking past the other people in the row to get to seat she wanted.

About five minutes before class started Professor Shiel walked in. He set his bag on the podium and grabbed a black expo marker. In big letters he wrote "FEAR" on the whiteboard behind him. He then returned to the podium and put his glasses on, flipping through a binder that contained the material for the class.

Nadia squinted. Even from the first row she couldn't see the words written on whiteboard. That's one of the reasons she hated this class. If she forgot her glasses she wouldn't be able to see what was written on the board.
Professor Shiel was very old-fashioned. He taught strictly on a whiteboard, so unless you were in class, you wouldn't learn the material for that day.

The other reason Nadia hated her Psychology of Fear class just sat next to her. The only person in the world Nadia hated was Jonathan Crane. She used to think that hate was a word too harsh to describe the way she felt about someone until the semester started and she was partnered on a project with Jonathan. That's when she discovered there was one person that she did hate.