As the students bowed their necks in concentration, Jim slouched in his seat with his ankle on his knee and fixed his gaze to a point in the room. – The silence in which these two hours would be spent was as close a relative to solitude as he’d achieve, yet it lent little in the way of commiseration as each minute seemed eternal. Distance of mind, partition, he’d thought, would subvert them. After what he felt had been several, Jim raised his phone only to see that his effort had been in vain. It was a mere half-past eight. He dropped his head back and groaned.
Despite indulgence of caffeine and the forces of compulsion ( the limits of extenuation per semester ), Jim’s bones felt like the unsettled frame of a house and were in full cry for the warmth and refuge of his bed. Gratefully, the curriculum did not oblige him to conversation. Howbeit, his spirit could not and would not be prevailed upon before the hour of ten. Premature labor for anything beyond civility would have a consequence of the opposite.
Whapping the butt of his pencil against his tablet, Jim was content to forgo practice in favor of scourging himself for a decision counseled by the want of virtue. In the midst of this, he took another, more indignant gander of the heads in the room. His gaze eventually centered itself on a young woman, the likes of whom he couldn’t account for, sitting frontmost in the mixture in unhindered view of the model. – Save for the Romantic accent of a long, honey blonde braid, there was nothing in her raiment or countenance, no discrepancy or condemnation, none of the usual idiosyncrasies that could reconcile his curiosity. All he had was the possibility she had exchanged courses.
Self-assurance had much stronger government than imminence. His sensibilities often conspired in preventing his being daunted by certain dangers, such as his appraisal being realized and considered discriminating. Studying a science that discarded the cosmetics of scruple and encouraged liberty seemed to him to make the intrusion less incorrigible. Affectation of modesty, in redressing the nakedness of his stare, would be fraudulent to himself. So when she felt his presence and acted upon her senses, he did not.
Due to the reality that all prior knowledge of classroom behaviors had been garnered from the likes of television shows and films depicting the hapless exploits of high school students, Rapunzel had entered the lecture hall encumbered with an air of the resolute. Selecting a seat in close proximity to that of the professor, she arranged her books with the utmost care alongside her seat. However unlikely it was that close attention would paid to such organizational prowess, she chose to heed the anxieties prickling the back of her mind in spite of the concession. To her dismay, Rapunzel soon discovered that the room filled from the farthest side of the circle inwards — contrary to her previously held belief that a nearness to the teacher would be deemed desirable.
While a majority of places were eventually taken, even those close to her, she found her mind prone to wandering as the teacher’s speech droned on. The lecture had begun to derail into personal anecdote, relying less on information or exercises. Pencil in hand, Rapunzel drew the charcoal tip along the page of her paper, coloring it with light sketches as opposed to notes. It was a short while after that she became intrinsically aware of eyes watching her, perhaps containing judgement concerning her lack of attention. A rosy flush rising along her cheekbones akin to a child caught up past bedtime, she glanced upwards.
Instead of the acumen she had been prepared to witness, Rapunzel caught the affected gaze of her peer. A blink of surprise punctuated her countenance. Was there something on her face? No, — her hair! Rapunzel reached for her braid, lithe fingers searching for a misplaced leaf or twisted set of locks, yet located none. Tilting her head in quiet questioning, she deigned to react in kind: propping her chin in her hand, she maintained the stare between blue and green, even as the blush surfacing on her skin traveled to the tips of her ears.
Soft light pouring through the windows towards the back of the room drew her notice to the golden ring placed in the boy’s left earlobe as it caught the rays with ease. Tapping her index finger against her own cartilage, her lips slowly curved into a grin. Rapunzel had never been allowed to pierce her ears growing up, and had failed to do so in the past two years despite her enjoyment in the notion of it; but oh, she liked his!