The Shadow Kingdom

Chapter 1 - New Girl

I sit down in the front row and take out my laptop and notebook, eager to soak in all the knowledge this place has to offer me. God knows I'm going to have to, considering how much money I had to borrow to come here. After spending four years in this place, I'll be spending the next twenty years trying to pay it all off.

I glance around the large lecture hall, trying to gauge the feelings of everyone else in the room in order to see if they are as nervous as I am. The boy sitting next to me meets my gaze, and he smiles at me.

"Hi, I'm Josh." He extends his hand to me.

I shake his hand and smile back. "I'm Scarlett."

"Are you a first year?"

"Yeah, this is my first time taking a university class," I reply.

Josh wanted to say more, but the professor arrived, and everyone turned their attention to the front of the class.

"Hello, everyone. My name is Adrian Shang," The professor introduces himself. "I will be your instructor for this semester." If I met this man in the hallway, I wouldn't have guessed that he were a professor or even a student. He is extremely well-dressed with a sharp suit, dress pants, and a very smooth shirt and tie all in black. His hair is combed back and gelled perfectly almost as if he just finished a photo shoot.

He begins by giving us the details on all the topics this class will cover; elementary data types, program structures, algorithms, and problem solving. Then he tells us about the marking rubric, and that is when panic strikes. The fact that I managed to pull off a GPA and SAT score high enough to get me into Columbia is a miracle all in itself. The amount of work it's going to take for me to finish with the grades I need for graduate school is hard to even think about.

By the time class ends, all we did was read the syllabus. As if we can't do that ourselves. I collect my belongings and quickly leave for my next class, which starts right after this one.

Now, it's physics times. I love physics! It was always my best subject back in high school, followed closely by math. I repeat the same routine and hope that this professor will actually teach us something. I furrow my eyes when I see who walks in. "Hello, everyone. My name is Adrian Shang. I will be your instructor for this semester." Once again, he distributes the syllabus, and for the next fifty minutes, he reads the thing out loud to us. What a waste of his breath and our time.

I approach him after the lecture to ask a question. "Professor Shang?"

"Please, call me Adrian." He smiles graciously at me, and I notice how young he is. He doesn't look a day over twenty-five, not old enough to have one Ph.D, let alone two.

"My name is Scarlett Whitmore. I'm in your computer science class as well. I want to know if this class is going to cover optics and lenses. You said we cover light and diffraction, but I don't know if that's included."

"No. Optics is a second year topic."

"Oh, ok. Thank you."

I leave the room and find a seat where I can relax until my next class one hour from now. I open a book to help me pass the time. "Hey, we meet again." A male voice greets me. I raise my head, and it's Josh, the boy from earlier. "How did you find that lecture?"

"Rather meaningless actually. It's not as if we need help explaining how a calendar works." He laughs a little too enthusiastically and sits down beside me – very close beside me.

"Have you decided on a major yet?"

"Probably computer sciences." I move over on the couch to give myself more space, hoping that this guy will take the hint and find some other girl to bother.