Chapter Text
The first day of the semester always felt like a costume party, everyone dressed up as the person they thought they were supposed to be.
Everyone sat a little straighter than they would next week. New notebooks open, pens lined up like they were auditioning for a commercial. A girl two rows ahead had a latte balanced on her knee, the cardboard sleeve covered in tiny doodles. I spent a full minute trying to make out the shapes instead of listening.
Professor Glazer stood at the front, leaning one hip against the desk, a stack of syllabi fanned in his hand. “Welcome to Financial Analysis 301,” he said, with the same energy you’d use to list emergency exits on a flight. The first slide, “Course Objectives,” was projected in pale blue, and I knew without reading it that at least one bullet point involved “critical thinking.”
I uncapped my pen and wrote the date in the top corner of my notebook. The rest of the line stayed empty.
Junior year was supposed to be the start of the real stretch: past the guesswork of freshman year, past the detours of sophomore year. This was the part where you started building something. Or so I’d been told.
Glazer’s voice carried over the steady hum of the vent. “Your midterm will be worth thirty percent of your grade.” I wrote down the number, then boxed it in with a shaky rectangle. My hand kept going, tracing lines around the box until they warped into something more like a frame.
The guy in front of me typed like the room was on fire. Across the aisle, a girl flipped through a color-coded planner, each tab like a tiny flag marking her future. I didn’t have one of those. I had a textbook I might have bought in the wrong edition and a growing suspicion that I wouldn’t notice until it mattered.
“…and I expect you to keep up with the reading,” Glazer said, glancing over the rows like he could spot the ones who wouldn’t. I straightened automatically.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t keep up. I could. I’d done it for two years already. Sit in the right rows, turn in the right assignments, collect the right grades. It all added up to something my parents could point to and call progress.
I looked up at the ceiling: eight tiles across, fourteen down, one in the corner sagging with a dark water stain. Glazer clicked to the next slide, “Learning Outcomes,” a polite promise that by December, I’d be someone who could “apply financial models to real-world scenarios.” My eyes skimmed over the words without taking them in.
Somewhere behind me, a phone buzzed. Louder than it needed to be, like it was reminding us there was still a world outside this one. I checked mine out of reflex. Nothing.
“Any questions so far?” Glazer asked.
No one spoke. The kid with the bullet points didn’t even twitch.
Glazer nodded, satisfied. “We’ll wrap early today.” Chairs scraped against the floor, backpacks unzipped. I slid my notebook into my bag without closing it, the box around “30%” still visible, and followed the current toward the door.
It felt automatic. Like part of the choreography of being here.
The hallway was a funnel of voices and footsteps, everyone spilling out toward their next thing. I ended up walking with two girls from my row. Maya and Erin, I was pretty sure. We’d had a class together last spring, enough to exchange nods when we recognized each other, but not enough to have ever sat down for coffee or swapped numbers.
“Glazer hasn’t changed in three years,” Erin was saying, balancing her laptop on one arm like she’d carried it this way her whole life. “I swear he’s still using the same slides from freshman year.”
Maya grinned, pushing her hair back with a perfectly manicured hand. “Bet he still thinks memes are called e-cards.”
They both laughed, and I smiled just enough to count as participating, even though I didn’t find the joke that funny. My contribution to the group dynamic was mostly nodding in the right places.
We passed a bulletin board layered in the usual early-semester noise: bookstore discounts, volunteer sign-ups, tutoring schedules printed in twelve-point font no one would actually read. One poster stood out from the rest, printed in electric blue: “SGU SKYSTRIKE ESPORTS TRYOUTS THIS FRIDAY.”
Three cars in midair dominated the center of the page, chasing a glowing ball, their positions stamped in bold beneath them. The motion in the image was so sharp I could almost hear the crowd that wasn’t pictured.
Maya slowed just long enough to skim it. “God, imagine wasting your college years on video games.”
“Right?” Erin snorted. “I’d be embarrassed to tell my parents.”
The laugh they shared was easy and unbothered, the kind that rolled right over any alternative opinions.
I kept my eyes on the floor tiles, counting them as we walked.
Freshman year, I wouldn’t have needed the poster to know when tryouts were. I’d been there, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the esports lounge during sign-ups, pen trembling slightly as I wrote my name down. One semester on the roster. One slot I hadn’t been sure I deserved but somehow managed to keep.
It hadn’t lasted.
By December, I was back in my parents’ living room, explaining that yes, I’d passed all my classes, but no, I couldn’t guarantee I’d keep my grades up if I stayed on the team. The conversation wasn’t loud or angry. Just firm. Gentle in tone, unmovable in substance.
Focus up. Keep your eye on the bigger picture. Hobbies were fine as long as they didn’t take oxygen from what mattered.
By spring semester, I was “too busy.” At least, that’s what I told my friends on the team. And myself.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, sharp enough to break me out of the thought.
“Hey, Mom,” I said, letting Maya and Erin drift ahead toward the staircase.
“Hi, honey. Just checking in. Have you started those internship applications yet? Deadlines sneak up faster than you think.”
The words were light, practiced. Not quite pressure, but balanced with just enough weight to make sure I felt it.
“I’ve been looking at them,” I lied, because it was easier than saying I hadn’t opened a single link she’d sent.
“That’s good,” she said, already moving on. “I was talking to Marissa’s mom the other day. Remember Marissa from high school? She said Marissa already has interviews lined up with three different firms. Finance firms, Dina. The market’s competitive, so you’ll want to get ahead of it.”
“Mhm,” I said, watching sunlight stretch across the tile.
“You’re in such a good position right now,” she continued. “Don’t let the semester get away from you. You know how fast things pile up.”
We passed another poster for tryouts. I didn’t look at it this time, but I could still see it in my mind: the bright blue, the blur of motion, the ball just out of reach.
“I’ve got class in a bit,” I said, which wasn’t true, but it was the only way I knew how to end the call without making it a thing.
“Okay, sweetheart. We’ll talk soon.”
I slipped the phone back into my pocket and fell in step behind a cluster of students I didn’t know, my attention drifting to the backs of their jackets, the worn straps of their backpacks.
It was still the first day. There was plenty of time for all the right choices.
—
I cut across the student union instead of going around. It added a couple of minutes, but I liked the way the space felt in the first week of the semester.
The floor-to-ceiling windows pulled in as much light as the day would allow, and the air still smelled faintly of new carpet from the summer renovations. Clusters of tables were already full: people bent over laptops, friends swapping schedules, one guy with a guitar case propped against his chair like he was just waiting for his moment.
The hum of it all sank into me the way it always did. This was the part of school I didn’t mind, the everyday life between the obligations.
Outside, the quad opened up in a long stretch of grass crisscrossed by narrow brick paths.
A group was playing frisbee on one side, their laughter carrying on the wind, while a handful of students lay sprawled on blankets with textbooks they were only pretending to read. The sycamores along the walk were just starting to give up their leaves, one here and two there, each one spinning lazily before hitting the ground.
It hit me sometimes, walking here, how good the place looked. Like it knew it was being photographed for the admissions brochure and didn’t want to disappoint.
I took the long way toward my next class, skirting past the little lake at the edge of campus. It wasn’t much, more of a pond that had gotten ideas above its station, but the university kept it clean and stocked, and the boardwalk along the far side always had at least one person with a fishing pole dangling over the railing. Today it was a guy in a red hoodie, one leg hooked over the edge like he planned on staying there all afternoon.
The dock floated quietly in the middle, empty except for a couple of ducks drifting nearby. I’d sat out there before, back when the weather was warmer, pretending to study while mostly just letting the sun do its work on my shoulders.
It was the kind of place you could lose time without realizing it.
Students passed in twos and threes, voices overlapping: complaints about early classes, plans for the weekend, someone asking if the dining hall still did omelet bars on Thursdays. It was impossible not to feel pulled along by the current of it, even if you weren’t sure where you were headed.
I glanced at the clock on my phone, still ten minutes before I needed to be in my next lecture hall. Enough time to cut across the lawn, maybe grab a coffee if the line wasn’t bad.
I let the path curve me toward the academic buildings, the lake and its quiet folding back into the background. Whatever else I thought about my major, my schedule, and my future, this campus still felt like mine.
—
The computer science building always felt different from the rest of campus. It was newer: sleek angles, glass walls, bright LED lighting instead of the yellowish bulbs in the older lecture halls. The classrooms hummed faintly with the machines even before you powered them on.
This one was already half full when I got there.
Rows of wide monitors gleamed under the overhead lights, each with the kind of ergonomic chair you didn’t find anywhere else on campus. I slid into a seat near the middle, dropping my bag on the floor and waking up the machine with a tap.
“Intro to Game Systems Design.”
The words on the syllabus slide made something in my chest tighten in a way I didn’t entirely want to name.
If I could’ve filled my schedule with nothing but classes like this, I would have. I liked the clean logic of code, the way a blank screen could turn into something alive with the right set of instructions. The idea of building whole worlds from scratch, of giving people a place to escape to… that was the kind of work that felt like it mattered.
But “game design” had been one of those phrases my parents couldn’t say without the hint of a smile. Not mocking, exactly. Just the kind of amused disbelief reserved for toddlers announcing they were going to be astronauts.
Coding, though, that was respectable. Marketable. Something you could work into a “real career.”
So here I was, with a finance major to make them happy and a CS minor to make me feel like I wasn’t completely handing my life away.
Students trickled in until the professor closed the door. He was young for a professor, mid-thirties maybe, and wore a black hoodie with the name of a game studio stretched across the chest. After a quick introduction, he launched into a question about design principles and player engagement.
Hands went up around the room, answers landing in neat, predictable arcs: storytelling, balance, progression. I typed notes half out of habit, half because I liked the sound of it.
That’s when the door opened again.
A girl slipped inside, hair pulled back under a baseball cap, a messenger bag slung across her shoulder. She glanced around like she was taking inventory, then made her way to an empty seat two rows ahead of me.
I didn’t recognize her, which was rare this far into junior year. Faces started repeating after a while.
She unpacked her laptop with quick, practiced movements, like she was used to catching up on the fly. When the professor posed the next question, about designing for player agency, her hand went up without hesitation. Her answer was sharper than the others, less like she was reciting something she’d read and more like she’d actually thought about it. The professor nodded, smiling in a way he hadn’t for anyone else yet.
I kept typing, but I found myself glancing at her once or twice as the discussion moved on. Not in any particular way, just the idle curiosity of trying to place a new person in the mental map of a class you’ll be in for months.
She didn’t speak again for the rest of the hour, but I noticed she stayed half-leaned over her laptop the entire time, fingers moving fast, like she was chasing a thought before it got away.
When the professor dismissed us, she was one of the first out the door, gone before I’d even zipped up my bag.
—
By the time I stepped out of the computer science building, the light had shifted: later afternoon, softer, shadows stretching long across the quad. The air had that faint, early-autumn crispness that made me wish I’d brought a jacket.
I cut down the side path toward the dorms, dodging a pair of skateboarders who swerved past without slowing. That’s when I heard my name.
“Dina!”
Jesse was coming toward me from the opposite direction, a duffel bag slung over one shoulder, the strap digging into the sleeve of his T-shirt. His hair was slightly mussed, and there was the faintest crease on his cheek like he’d been leaning on his hand for too long.
We’d been paired up for a training drill during my brief semester on the Skystrike roster. He’d made a joke about my terrible warm-up aim, and somehow that had turned into coffee, and then dinners, and then this.
“Hey,” I said, stepping into his orbit without thinking about it. “Scrims run long?”
“Not really. Just more reps than usual. We’ve got a new striker and she’s already shaking things up.” He adjusted the bag on his shoulder. “Keeps us on our toes.”
“New striker?”
“Yeah, Ellie Williams. Transfer. You’ll probably meet her soon enough. She’s good.”
The name didn’t ring a bell, but something in the way he said it told me Ellie wasn’t going to be just another name on the roster.
“What about you?” he asked. “First day back treating you okay?”
“Surviving syllabus week,” I said. “Which is really just reading the same rules in twelve different fonts.”
He laughed. “And here I thought you lived for that kind of thing.”
“Sure. If it comes with a grade.”
“Speaking of grades,” he said, “want to grab dinner tonight? My treat. Unless you have big study plans.”
It wasn’t a grand invitation. It never had to be. Jesse and I didn’t do big gestures; we didn’t need them. Most of our time together was like this: running into each other between things, deciding to eat somewhere neither of us had to cook.
“Sure,” I said. “Where were you thinking?”
“That place off campus with the string lights on the patio. You liked their mac and cheese.”
“I always like mac and cheese.”
“Then it’s settled,” he said, as if that was the end of the matter. “Seven work for you?”
“Works for me.”
We fell into step together toward the dorms, the easy kind of walk where you don’t have to fill every silence. Jesse talked a little about the tournament schedule and an upcoming match against a rival school. I mostly listened, the rhythm of his voice familiar in a way that felt like slipping into a favorite sweatshirt.
When we reached the path that split toward his apartment, he shifted his duffel higher on his shoulder. “I’ll text you later about dinner.”
“Okay.”
He leaned in and kissed my cheek, quick, unselfconscious, and then headed off, calling back something about not forgetting a jacket if it got cooler tonight.
I watched him go for a few steps before turning toward my own dorm. The quad was quieter now, the frisbee players gone, the grass scattered with leaves that had fallen in the last couple of hours.
Whatever else was waiting for me this semester, it was nice to start it with something that felt steady.
—
The lobby of my dorm always smelled faintly of popcorn and laundry detergent, a mix that never quite worked but had somehow become comforting anyway. A couple of students were hunched over the communal pool table near the vending machines, taking their shots too seriously for the first week of classes.
I climbed the stairs to the second floor, the chatter fading as I reached my hall. Our suite was at the far end, the door propped open with a sneaker, probably left by my new roommate. My old one from the last few years, Jenna, had graduated in the spring, taking her wall of Polaroids and bottomless stash of granola bars with her.
The common room was small but functional: just enough space for a sagging two-seater couch, a coffee table with a ring from someone’s forgotten drink, and a kitchenette with a mini-fridge tucked under the counter. One window looked out over the quad, where the last scraps of sunlight were catching the tops of the sycamores.
I dropped my bag by my bedroom door and noticed the other one, my new roommate’s, was cracked open. Not enough to see much, just enough to register the chaos.
Inside, a tangle of clothes spilled from an unzipped duffel onto the floor. A half-empty pack of mismatched socks sat on the desk next to an open laptop, its screen asleep. The bed was unmade, sheets still wrinkled from the plastic packaging. A stack of game cases - console, by the look of them - leaned against the dresser like they’d been dumped there in a hurry.
It was the kind of mess that said someone had moved in quickly and planned to get organized later, maybe.
My own room was the opposite. The bed was neatly made with the same navy comforter I’d had since freshman year. My desk was cleared except for my laptop, a ceramic mug filled with pens, and a small stack of books. Even the dresser drawers were shut all the way, which felt like a tiny victory over the chaos of moving back in.
I liked order, or at least the illusion of it. It was easier to feel in control of the rest of your life when your own four walls looked the way you wanted them to.
After kicking off my shoes, I sat down on the bed and let my gaze wander to the small corkboard above my desk. A few photos: my best friend Becka and me at a high school gaming tournament, my parents at a family barbecue, the Skystrike team from my one semester on the roster. That one was fading at the edges, the ink blurring from too many moves.
Through the thin walls, I thought I heard the faint hum of my roommate’s laptop fan kicking back on. Then silence again.
I considered knocking to introduce myself, but something about the open-but-not-open door made me pause. It wasn’t exactly an invitation.
Instead, I grabbed my phone, saw a text from Jesse confirming dinner, and sent back a thumbs-up emoji.
By the time I headed to the bathroom to wash up, the sneaker in the doorway was gone and our suite door was shut.
I told myself there’d be time to meet her later. It was only the first day, after all.