Beautiful Paroxysm

Chapter#02

He was looking through the course outline when the knock came. He didn’t raise his head but simply said in a clear and loud voice to ‘come in’. Her silent footsteps informed him who it was, he picked up a file and pushed it towards her.

“You know the kids in the class?” He asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“I need a bit input about all of them. The file had a list of their names. Just write what you know.”

He saw her nod once from the corner of his eyes as she picked up the file and walked towards the far corner of the room, away from him. He was glad to see that she was wary of him and kept her distance.

He opened his laptop and started working on the PowerPoint he needed for the first lecture which he was supposed to give in few hours. He wanted to get this all over with so he could concentrate on his own work. Though he knew he could be careless about it, it wasn’t in his nature to do things to the best of his ability. His work represent him which was probably why Professor Adler chose him. That old man was well aware of his nature.

It was after almost an hour, he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He had been working late last night, his eyes have started to itch looking at the screen. His eyes carelessly went to the girl sitting silently, her head bend over the file and she had her cell open in front of her from which she was copying something. Her hair were pastel pink today.

He looked away when he saw she was done. He started typing on his laptop again when his cellphone rang. He saw Julia’s name flashing and he frowned slightly. Picking it he did need to say anything because she was already talking.

“Why are you not telling me what you are doing? You can’t simply take a whole day off.”

“I have told you I have some personal business to deal with for few months.” Chris replied and found the girl standing in front of his desk. The file in hand. She was simply waiting for him to end his conversation but he pushed his hand forward so she could hand it to him.

“Few months? What kind of personal business is it that you can’t tell me?” Julia had demanded.

He skimmed through the information she had wrote slowly and found that it was detailed, with everyone’s weakness, strengths and attitude. She also added their academic information and recent grades.

“Chris!” He head Julia’s voice and frowned.

“We will talk later.” He said and hung up. Reading the rest of the information slowly he finally ended up where her own name was written. She had not added much detail except strength and weakness. She wrote memory as her strength and lack of concentration as her weakness. He understood why she didn’t see the need to add her academic information. Considering she was on scholarship, he could guess it was good.

“It’s fine.” He put it aside and then went back to his work.

After few minutes he noticed that she was still standing there. He raised his head to look at her in question. Her icy blue eyes also held question as she stared back him.

“That’s it?” She asked and he could hear the surprise in her voice.

He leaned back and took of his glasses as he asked, “What kind of work did professor Adler made you do?”

Her eyes moved from his to look down as she listed, “I made PowerPoints for his lectures, brought him coffee and lunches. Graded his papers sometimes, run errands, things like that.”

He sighed. He didn’t really need to make a kid chase around to do things he could easily do himself but the again Professor Adler have mentioned to him that this kid was an honest one which was probably why he was making her do so many silly tasks. He never understood why they even banned for scholarship students to work but he wasn’t the one to argue.