Nora refused to believe that the evening walk was a fragment of reality. That the sachets of coffee were from a sari-sari store and not some convenience store that her not-ex conveniently working in the graveyard shift – looking like the piece of shit that she is. But she only has her memory to poke around, maybe Julia too but communicating the other girl was unneeded.

Her heart was beating fast, the heel of her foot shaking. Her department has its own separate building shared by similar courses but Nora can’t keep her guard down at all. There’s a chance they’ll meet again, that was for certain despite how wide the university is.

STEM majors are always grouped together just like the abbreviation they represent.

The loud typing coming from keyboards can be heard throughout the classroom. The air conditioning hums as well. Nora knows that the work in her screen amounts to sixty percent of her grade and with each evasion she has done on facing the screen – failure would be an inevitable result.

She sighs, deeply. Reclining her back on her chair and continues writing a line of codes.

Her body tensed as she hears footsteps shuffling from behind, the hums she hears rings into her ears. The smell of the professor’s perfume was… undesirable. The quantity she saw her professor sprayed themselves with have the mild scent into a putrid odor.

Nora just held in her breath. They were checking around her area before walking off, murmuring. She glances to her side, noticing the panic on Harold’s face with his fingers hovering on the keyboard.

“May I remind you that you could hardly cheat in my class?” Nora snaps her attention away from her friend and continues on working, typing. The stress she accumulated have made her sweat despite the cold air emitting from the air conditioning.

Deep breaths, it was the only remedy she could think of. Slowing down meant nothing when the time is already close to the deadline and Nora is almost at the end of her work.

Someone from her row stood up and everyone just halts. The silence deafening and her other classmates’ expressions ranges from shock to envy, but the smug on the guy’s face didn’t dissipate from the attention. Knowing them, they live for it.

They stretched their arms wide. Their yawn was exaggerated, their sigh was as well. The professor didn’t berate their behavior, unfortunately.

“Congratulations, Mr. Santiago. I always applaud your time management with quizzes but to think that exams weren’t an exception. You’d make an excellent engineer someday.”

Nora rolls her eyes, looking back to her monitor and tries to finishes her work before everyone else does. It wasn’t like she yearned for validation but she wanted to – just not by her professor.

So, she types louder than anyone else in the classroom. The school were too cheap to provide a better model of keyboards but it’s an expected ignorance. Only a niche group care about keyboards, rarer if they’re older than forty, less if they weren’t well-versed with the internet beyond Fakebook.

Harold looks at her like she was crazy and maybe she is. Her professors tell her to pipe down with her typing but Nora was ignited by the little petty victory she wanted from this class. It’s the distraction she needed from her Julia-filled mind and as she finally sends her work.

She, too, stretches her arms wide. Lacking the yawn her classmate had done a while ago but reclines back to her chair as she exits the program, staring back at the default wallpaper of her monitor.

Moments later, she bid her professor farewell. Aware that she received was a scoff after she turns her back at him.

She left the classroom, with whatever victory she can find from her stunt, but Nora still can’t let go of Julia.