When she left with Marie, Lewis trailed behind them.
"I can't believe you spoke to Professor Forester that way," Marie hissed. People had forgotten all about this little encounter the moment they went out of class. That was how easily people forgot about things that intrigued them a few minutes prior.
Anna had to say that when she listened to Ladislas, she was interested. He was a good professor.
"He was being an ass, you saw it with your own eyes," Anna said lightly. Lewis had caught up to them by then and stared at Anna without saying anything. She noticed his stare but didn't pay too much attention to it.
"He was not being an ass. He was just like every other professor. Why does he bother you so much?" she asked curiously. "This is not the first time you two have butted heads."
Anna looked at her in shock. "I have seen him once before. And he was the one who called me out. I saw him staring right at me when he spoke. He was taunting me," she said matter-of-factly.
"Or you imagined it," Marie prompted.
Anna shrugged. "Maybe I did. But I just…"
"Can't stand him," Marie finished. "To be fair, Standing him is hard. I would rather sit on him," she giggled.
Anna scrunched her brow in distaste.
"Oh," Lewis sighed beside them.
"Yes, oh," Marie called. "Be careful, Anna. It's all 'fuck you, Mr. Forester' at first. But then, it might become 'fuck me, Mr. Forester.'"
"Disgusting," Anna said under her breath. She moved away from Marie to show the same and heard the other laugh.
"Come on. You have a class in two minutes. I'll go smoke up with Lewis."
Anna nodded, feeling relieved that the conversation ended there.
As she walked away, Lewis looked disturbed. "She lied," he whispered suddenly.
Marie looked at him in shock. "Who?" she asked immediately. The thought that Anna could lie was a foreign concept to her.
"Anna… I took her out for dinner and she kept looking in the other direction." He looked down at the path he was walking on. "Professor Forester was there. She went to the bathroom after seeing him and then left," he said quietly.
Marie shook her head in disbelief. "She really gets bothered by him. It's strange," she commented. "It might not have been him, though. She doesn't bother hanging around if she is not interested."
Lewis' head jerked up. "What does that mean?" he hissed.
"It means that she turned you down and you should accept it already."
And the conversation turned stale after that.
.
For the next three days, Anna spent most of her time avoiding Ladislas but finding out everything about the people around him. The woman he had been on a date with? High Priestess or some nonsense of a cult.
She knew of it because members of the said cult were stationed at various curbs, complimenting people on their aura. It was a luring tactic and she always bypassed those stops knowing how obsessive cult people were. They never forgot a face. Weird people.
But what really bothered her was the first assignment Ladislas set for the class.
Ladislas had given the students an assignment that required great thought. He had taught a similar course earlier and the hot potato of conversations and scandalized look had given him a smile more than normal. He knew that even the best students struggled with this course because it shook their ideologies about life. It also meant they had to actually use their brains to hold on to and defend their ideals in life. It was not about textbook knowledge of philosophy or history.
So, Ladislas was rather amazed when the class turned in average or decent work. He had seen most of these students waste their time and had been impressed by their crazy life, but to think they weren't as stupid as he had previously thought…
This thought, was, of course, cut off by Anna. The one he had thought wouldn't even turn in her work to spite him. She turned out to be an ideal student. She submitted the assignment, near-perfect by his standards and complete with a plethora of arguments that denounced everything Ladislas had taught in class.
He breathed in her words and mulled over them, fascinated by what she had to say. The aggression in her arguments was unlike her meek exterior and sweet retorts. It showed a grave understanding of power and the system that made him wonder just how much she knew about the world.
It was almost comical how he had been teaching for a while now and the most interesting part of his job was one snarky student. He had to pat himself on the back for instigating the girl into fighting him. To think that he could have passed the opportunity to listen to her deepest thoughts and moral frameworks.
So now, Ladislas stood outside the lecture theater, buzzing with excitement before entering. Ladislas, half-demon, too old to care about his age did not have his grand villainous plan to entertain him. No, instead, it was a twenty-something-year-old who looked like an addict and thought like a NASA scientist was who made him itch to get out of his house every morning.
He entered the room and scanned through it. Lo and behold, she sat at the center of the room, not at the back or the very front. The girl who she was always with sat beside her and made eyes at him. He put his briefcase down and started the lecture.
His ears perked up every time she raised her hand and sarcastically called, 'Sir?'. He looked up and saw the smirk on her face. What followed was a slaughter. She presented a well-thought-out debate. Countering every point of his with three of her own. So, Ladislas had to make a change in his conception of her.
She was spiteful.