A couple of days passed and I got officially enrolled with a new teacher. Ralph Something, who I still think was jealous of the way I played. That motherfucker didn't want to approve my concert, saying I wasn't ready but never explaining why. 

“Well you know what? Maybe I don't need to play that goddamned concert, fuck you all in this inefficient university, I'm going to get transferred into another one."

***

Dear Herrmann,

I hope you are having a beautiful day. I'm just writing to kindly ask you to remove myself from the student registry, please. I'm going to need my documents ready to start my registration process somewhere else. Either way I need to wait for an acceptance letter, so we are not in a rush yet. Thank you so much for everything.

Best regards,

- 930218JGF21.

***

I sent letters to different universities explaining my situation and waited for their responses, and while waiting, I spent my days practising and writing music, finishing a small chamber concert for a string quartet and piano, which represented how it was to live with depression and anxiety—with a shattered perception of life. It was inspired by this minimal approach to music from composers like Philip Glass, with sad, mellow melodies like the ones in the instrumentation Oren Lavie used for his 2007, The opposite side of the sea. I decided to entitle my concert—Falling inside oneself.

By the end of November, I was already working full time and booking now more private lessons with new clients. I even opened my first Facebook account just to promote myself as a private teacher/tutor. It wasn't a steady source of income, though. Sometimes I was teaching piano, others guitar, and sometimes I was being contacted by students from my now former university, asking me to help them with the theoretical concepts.

I was planning to look for musicians to start recording my concert, but I decided to buy a better laptop and use it to produce my music independently with the help of several pirated software packages. Instead of buying the official licenses for my new digital tools, I decided to start investing in cryptocurrencies, which caught my eye when I saw one article saying that the University of Nicosia was already accepting bitcoins.

One day I saw one comment left on a forum saying that there were people paying bitcoins to users who helped them manage files, and in the comment, a link was attached. It was a Tor address to a forum for paedophiles. Many users were looking for alternatives to keep their paraphilia safe. And what did I do? I saw a market, of course. I bought a couple of HDDs and asked my friends to help me with the setup of a small, safe and private server while we were on Skype. Later, I was charging a more-than-a-decent amount of dollars (in bitcoins) for a chunk of gigabytes to three or four random users on the other side of the world.

By December, after the holidays, I received an e-mail from another university, saying that they had accepted me to study with them. They wanted to meet me, and they wanted me to make an extensive musical analysis of any of my compositions.

***

"Congratulations. You are in, monsieur. We will send you the documents we need. Do you have everything in order? Oh, yes, your deregistration process. Fine, just go and kindly ask them for your documents, bring them here and you will be starting with us in mid-January."

***

"What the f... What you mean I'm still registered as a student?! Where is Herrmann?" I asked the lady behind the desk.

"Herrmann passed away, young man."

"Oh... shit."

"Indeed. So, according to this, you're still with us so you'll have to pay the charges for November and December and then we can start with the deregistration process."

"Fine. Can I use my credit card?"

"Cash, please."

"Oh, fuck. All the money I have left is in my bitcoin wallet."

I googled the fastest way to exchange my money and found a very convoluted way to transfer my Bitcoin to my personal bank account, but just the amount I needed to pay the monthly charges of my soon-to-be former university. I also transferred another amount of money just for paying the registration fee of my soon-to-be new university, and finally, a little bit more for the upcoming moving expenses.

When I came back, they told me that Herrmann did read my e-mail and he did something with my documents, so they didn't know where they were.

“I need my fucking papers!”

"We are very sorry! Everything got worse since he left us. It's just chaos. I think we can do something, but I don't know how long will it take. The principal's never here, you know? Everything is always a mess in here."

"Sigh... I know."

***

Dear Sir,

About your documentation:

We are very sorry to hear about the complications you are dealing with. The administration here is very strict with this kind of issues, and if we don't have those documents, we cannot start with your registration process. We have to notify you that we work now with a different administration and the mid-year registration process is no longer available. In other words, we need everything in order within the next five days, but if you happen to miss this 2014 registration process, we can keep your place, and you can start with us in January of the following year.

Thank you, and have a great day.

Best regards,

- K. Stewart, from Administrative & Support Services.

***

This is a message from ffsd79g6fs5g7fs8.

I need more more storage. I can pay half the total one month and other half next month. Want this or want other arrangement? It is emergency.

***

To whom it may concern,

This is a message from your Nation's Tax Collection Agency in regard to the latest transactions from your personal bank account.