Monday arrived with Haruka knocking on his door at 7:45 AM, the ti they had agreed upon. She wore a light blue jacket and carried her bag, exuding the nervous energy of soone who had been awake for a while.
"I’m not late, right?" she said.
"You’re exactly on ti," Mike said.
"I set four alarms," she said. "Just in case, and force of habit since I was at school, hahaha..."
’Yeah, no lie, Japanese are disciplined at stuff like that.’
Petricia was in the lobby when they ca downstairs, which Mike had not expected but also had, in so part of his thinking, prepared for in the way you prepare for things you can’t confirm but can reasonably anticipate.
She was holding two wrapped items that turned out to be sandwiches.
"It’s your first day as new college students," she said. "I thought you might be too busy to have a proper breakfast this morning."
Haruka expressed her gratitude with such sincerity that Petricia appeared taken aback. She accepted the sandwich with both hands, a gesture that conveyed genuine appreciation.
Mike took the other one and briefly t Petricia’s eyes over Haruka’s head. She held the gaze for exactly as long as she intended before turning to Haruka.
’I notice that look... I can already tell that she probably wants it more, huh?’
She explained the best route to Valcrest from the District 4 transit station, highlighting the path that avoided the transfer point currently running late due to maintenance, and described how to reach the administration building from the Valcrest stop by the most direct route.
She had researched the information, not out of necessity, but because she wanted to offer them sothing useful.
Mike filed that away.
"Good luck," she said, returning to the office with the practical energy of soone who had accomplished a task and was ready to move on.
"She’s so nice," Haruka said on the pavent outside.
"She is," Mike agreed.
"I’m going to make her sothing, but I need to figure out where the grocery store keeps all its ingredients first."
"You already know where the grocery store is," Mike said. "We went Saturday."
"I know where the grocery store is," Haruka confird. "But I’m still working out the ingredients part because they’re different than the ones in my country."
She adjusted her bag and glanced at the transit map on her phone. "Okay, Petricia ntioned the District 2 line."
...
They took the District 2 line.
Valcrest University of Erosyne spanned a block and a half in the northern section of District 2. The first indication of the campus from the transit stop was the stone gates, aged in a way that suggests considerable effort had been made to maintain their antiquity.
Beyond the gates, the buildings featured a blend of nineteenth-century architecture alongside more recent constructions designed to blend in with the older styles, though with varying degrees of success. The entire campus was organized in a sprawling layout, reflecting a developnt that had occurred over many years, yet always with careful planning.
The Monday morning of the first week was bustling with people in the surrounding streets, all exuding the unmistakable aura of those embarking on a new journey. Groups huddled together, consulting maps, while individuals walked with a slightly too-deliberate pace, as if they knew exactly where they were going but were trying to project an air of familiarity.
There was a unique social energy among the hundreds of strangers, all on the brink of being thrust into a shared environnt, acutely aware of their collective experience.
Haruka stopped just inside the gates and looked at all of it.
"Okay," she murmured to herself.
"I can’t believe that I have to go to college again," Mike said with a low tone.
Then he thought. ’I’ve dropped out several tis due to various incidents... yeah... related to my encounters with won, including professors.’
She turned to him. "Do you ever get nervous?"
"Eh, not really," he said.
"That’s annoying," she said, though there was no real annoyance in her voice. "Let’s go."
The first stop for new students was the administration building, a large hall with a sign outside telling freshers to go left and postgraduates to go right. They were staffed by a mix of university employees and second-year volunteers, who wore lanyards and exuded a vague air of importance.
Mike and Haruka’s programs separated them here.
"I hope we can spend ti together here too, Mike." Haruka waved at him. "I’ll see you later."
"Yeah." Mike nodded and gave a quick wave.
She went left into the undergraduate welco stream, which had considerably more people and a longer queue, and he went right into the postgraduate registration, which was smaller and faster.
The postgraduate process involved presenting identification, receiving a student card, signing two forms, receiving a welco packet that contained a map of the campus, a guide to the library system, and a printed titable, and being assigned to a faculty ntor who would be available for questions during the first two weeks of term.
Mike’s docuntation, as always, was perfect. The student ID ca back with his photo on it and the na HAWK, M. printed underneath in the clean font of institutional bureaucracy.
He looked at it for a mont.
Mike Hawk, postgraduate student, International Economics. Scholarship holder. Valcrest University of Erosyne.
Mike found this extrely funny because it was all manipulated by his system.
’I don’t know how you did it, but this shit is fucking genius.’
He pocketed the card and went to find the lecture building.
The postgraduate economics program included twenty-three students in the first-year cohort, most of whom were between twenty-four and thirty-two years old and ca from twelve different countries, as stated in the welco packet.
The seminar room designated for the orientation session featured large windows overlooking the central quad, with rows of seats arranged in a horseshoe shape around a central table.
Mike chose a seat toward the back of the horseshoe configuration on the right side, allowing him to see the door, both windows, and most of the other seats. It was an old habit. Over the next ten minutes, the room gradually filled with students.
He observed the room, noting twenty-two other students displaying various levels of first-day nerves. Among them were at least seven won, each possessing varying degrees of appeal.
He noticed several individuals already engaged in conversation with the others, indicating they had either t before or were simply the type to initiate dialogue before knowing anyone.
Two of the won he could see were wearing rings, while three were not. He couldn’t see the hands of two more won from this angle.
’This is fucking perfect...!’ Mike smirked. There are two young wives in this class, huh? Fucking peaked.’
He was still assessing the situation when soone took the seat to his left.
"Hi," she said, glancing at him. "Is this seat taken?"
"Not at all," Mike replied.
The woman who had sat down had brown hair, interspersed with a few strands of pink, styled in a way that suggested she had dyed it herself at so point and allowed it to grow out instead of redoing it.
She leaned back in her chair, relaxed, like soone who was used to being comfortable in strange rooms, which either ant she was confident or had learned to fake it well.
"Maya Laurent," she said, extending a hand.
"Mike Hawk," he said, and shook it.
"You’re Arican?" she said.
"I’ve been a few things," he replied. "And what about you?"
"French, technically. I grew up in three countries." She surveyed the room with the sa discerning gaze he had been using, which he found intriguing. "What’s your area of focus?"
"Trade infrastructure," he stated, noting that it was the focus emphasized in the system’s forged academic record. He had dedicated enough ti to studying it over the past two days to sustain a conversation indefinitely.
"Policy or market?" Maya inquired.
"Market, mostly. With crossover."
"That’s mine too," she said. "Good. I was hoping soone in here would know what a Heckscher-Ohlin model actually predicts in practice rather than on paper."
"It predicts what the person building the model wants it to predict," Mike said.
She looked at him. Then she smiled, not with the warmth of soone being polite but with the specific sharpness of soone who has just heard sothing they agree with that they weren’t sure anyone else would say.
"Yes," she said. "Exactly."
The faculty coordinator entered, and the session began. Mike concentrated with only about one-third of his attention, using the remaining two-thirds to observe the room.
By the ti orientation concluded and the day’s actual seminars comnced, he had developed a working understanding of most of the cohort, recognized Maya Laurent as soone worth befriending for reasons beyond re strategy, and sensed that the next two years at Valcrest would be fruitful in various ways.
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