Chapter Text
It was a warm but not too sunny late October afternoon, with a little breeze that one could feel in their airmpit hair. Susan was aimlessly walking in the park by her lonesome as she listened to Muse on her brand new yellow iPhone15 Pro Plus. It was a big phone, and she really didn't need all of that bandwith, but she felt like she deserved it after the week she has had.
It had all started that Monday, when they woke up to find Susan dead in the fishtank. Many would have called Susan crazy for naming their fish after themselves, but upon buying the little golden swimmer they had thought it really suited it, and who is she to to be the only bearer of the name? So to avoid confusion her flatmates called the fish Susan Two.
Gazing upon the lifeless orange body of Susan Two bobbing along the surface of the water, Susan One shed a tear.
"It was always bound to happen, my friend", they muttered to the fish. "I hope you were religious and went to fish heaven."
That was quite unlikely, as Susan Two had been known for inciting riots in the pet shop fishtanks before her adoption.
As she wondered which kind of funeral Susan Two would have wanted she noticed it was already 7:30 and she was very, very late. Without thinking, she grabbed an IKEA plastic bag and scooped Susan Two with it and put the make-shift body bag in a tupperware box and that in her backpack. No leaks allowed.
In the tube she managed to bagsy a seat next to a man all dressed in black. She noticed his odd apparel. Some kind of avantgarde-high fashion-goth aesthetic. He looked like a depressed motorbike ninja. He was older than her but still quite young with curly brown hair swept up to the left that reminded her of her emo phase in 2016. It had been a cringe but fun time, and they discovered important things about themselves. Now they had other interests such as scholarships and good rent deals.
The man stared at them. Shit, she's staring too. Susan nodded politely with a horizontal smile to aknowledge the awkwardness of the eye contact and quickly started mindlessly scrolling on her phone to avoid any more unwanted attention.
A calendar alert popped up: "INTRO TO LAW @ 8:30am PROF HOWL CLASS 2A (AKA NAP TIME)"
The man in black exhaled through his nose as to chuckle, but Susan didn't look.
As the train slowed down to their stop the man stood up and darted to the doors.
"See you soon, Susan"
What. Susan's nostrils flared and her throat closed in anger. That's London for you, she thought, full of weirdos and stalkers. She made a mental note to be angry at him and the general state of the world when she wasn't running late.
She sped through the streets enduring the spitting rain. Her shoes were fully soaked now, and she winced at the feeling of the water squeezing out of her soles and in between her toes. In the puddles' reflection she noticed a figure behind her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a tall blond man dressed in pastel. She quickened her pace. He did the same. Was he following her? She turned the corner. So did he. In a moment of bravery, she turned around and stared at the man intently. The man was jolted from the sudden eye contact, lost his balance and fell on his arse in a puddle. Susan walked away chuckling devilishly, smiling for the first time that day.
Approaching the bleak campus building they sighed, anticipating the boredom they would have to endure that day. Criminology wasn't the degree they had expected it to be. Up until now it had been mostly classes introducing varying subjects such as psychology, sociology, economics, and now law. They weren't being taught actual crimes yet. They would sit at the back of the class and try to pay attention, even though they knew any attempt at focusing their mind on one thing was futile.
As she sat down she gulped. The depressed ninja from the tube had just walked in and started writing on the whiteboard.
"Good morning, this is Intro to Law. I'm Professor Daniel Howell and I'll be teaching you the basics of law".
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. The first day of a new class and the professor is a perv. He must've seen the notification on her phone in the tube and thought it funny to freak her out. The whiteboard read "Prof. Daniel Howell [email protected]". And she had written his name wrong. Whatever. There are worse things happening right now. She just had to get through this class and dispose of the corpse in her backpack during her lunch break. But, how had he known her name?
Her train of thought was interrupted as the professor started lecturing. Susan opened her laptop and the professor talked about laws and such. She wasn't really listening. She used the hour productively to doom-scroll through Twitter (she rejected the name "X"), extend her Duolingo streak and reply to emails. An hour passed by quickly after a few rounds of Dress to Impress as the professor kept chattering. What a yapper, Susan thought, no wonder he became a professor—
"How about you, Susan?"
She looked up to see 30 pairs of eyes staring at her, waiting for an answer to the professor's question.
"Um, yeah", Susan mumbled in a panic.
The professor beamed with glee. "Great! At least we have one student participating. I'll see you this evening at 6 to talk over the special project"
Shit.