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Content Warning: This chapter contains profanity.
Note: This chapter will be longer in length.
─── ⛧⋆⋅ ♰ ⋅⋆⛧ ───
- 𝙼𝚘𝚗𝚍𝚊𝚢, 𝚂𝚎𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚖𝚋𝚎𝚛 𝟷𝟾, 𝟸𝟶𝟸𝟹 - 𝟷: 𝟸𝟸 𝙿.𝙼 -
• • •
It had been two weeks. Two agonizing, nerve-wracking weeks of trying to avoid Dr. Mikkelsen like he was the physical embodiment of every bad decision I'd ever made. And let me tell you, it was not going well.
Every time I walked into the lecture hall, I felt his presence like a gravitational pull. Every time he spoke, my skin prickled. And every time I caught him glancing at the class, just the class, not me specifically, right? My heart would lurch like it was trying to escape my chest. It was torture. Hot, infuriating torture.
I'd even considered skipping his class, but that felt like admitting defeat. And besides, the man gave out assignments like he was running some kind of academic boot camp. Missing even one lecture would have been a death sentence for my grade.
So, here I was, sitting with my friends in the student lounge, trying to look casual while pretending I wasn't dying inside.
"Dude, I'm so fucking over this class," Ethan groaned, his head dropping onto the table with a loud thud. "I didn't even sleep last night. Mikkelsen's assignments are straight-up medieval torture."
"No shit," Jessica chimed in, her eyes bloodshot as she cradled an oversized coffee cup like it was the only thing keeping her alive. "I had, like, three breakdowns trying to finish that essay on cognitive dissonance. What the hell even is cognitive dissonance? I'm too tired to dissonate anything."
"It's when your actions and beliefs don't align," Eloise said without looking up from her laptop. She was typing at lightning speed, completely unbothered.
"Of course you'd know," Jessica shot back, rolling her eyes. "You probably finished the damn thing a week ago."
Eloise shrugged, still not looking up. "It wasn't that hard."
"Oh, fuck off," Ethan muttered. "We get it, you're a genius. The rest of us are barely holding it together, okay?"
I glanced at Eloise, who remained calm as ever, her fingers flying across the keyboard. How the hell did she do it? The rest of us looked like extras in a zombie apocalypse movie, and she was over there looking like she just strolled out of a productivity seminar.
"I'm telling you," Jessica continued, her voice dripping with exhaustion, "if I don't pass this class, I'm suing him for emotional damages. I've aged ten years since the semester started."
