A Lesson in Despair

Chapter 1

The morning sun cut a precise rectangle across Leon's desk, bisecting his color-coded notes on cell metabolism. He'd arranged his textbooks by subject, then by importance, then alphabetically—a system that worked until he reorganized it weekly out of habit. His highlighter stood at attention beside his flashcards, and his laptop sat at a perfectly perpendicular angle to his notebook.

The door slammed open. "Brother, you are wasting your youth."

Leon didn't look up from the flashcard in his hand. "Good morning, Carlos."

Carlos Oliveira exploded into the room like he'd been fired from a cannon, a half-eaten glazed donut clutched in one fist and his backpack dangling from a single strap. He clapped Leon on the shoulder hard enough to rattle his coffee mug.

"Look at this." Carlos gestured at the desk with the donut, raining crumbs. "Who organizes their study space before eight a.m.? On a Thursday?"

"The kind of person who wants to be a doctor and a cop." Leon gently nudged Carlos's hand away from his pristine flashcard stack. "And the kind of person who wants to pass Professor Wesker's biochem lecture."

"Wesker." Carlos stuffed the rest of the donut in his mouth, chewing loudly. "He's the new guy, yeah? The platinum-haired robot?"

"Brilliant researcher. Published extensively in virology." Leon finally looked up, a flicker of genuine interest crossing his usually guarded features. "Rumor is he's consulting for some major pharmaceutical companies."

"Rumor is he scares the shit out of the seniors." Carlos wiped his hands on his jeans, leaving a faint glaze stain. "My buddy Andre had him for intro chem. Says the man has never blinked, not once, in an entire semester."

"People exaggerate."

"People don't exaggerate about a six-foot-seven biochemistry professor who wears sunglasses indoors and answers questions with other questions." Carlos leaned over Leon's desk, his expression turning sly. "You like him already, don't you? I can tell. You get that look when you find something new to obsess over."

Leon straightened his spine, aligning his shoulders with the edge of his chair. "I appreciate excellence. The pre-med program is competitive. My GPA needs to be—"

"Your GPA needs to be a number, not a personality."

"It's a 3.94."

Carlos grabbed Leon's arm and hauled him out of the chair before he could protest. "And today it becomes a 3.94 and late if you don't move your ass. We've got seven minutes."

Leon allowed himself to be steered toward the door, casting one last possessive glance at his organized desk. "Seven minutes is sufficient. The lecture hall is only four minutes across campus if we take the west pathway."

"You've timed it."

"Of course I've timed it."

They emerged into the campus quad, where the morning sun filtered through oak trees and painted shifting patterns across the brick walkways. Somewhere in the distance, a saxophone student was aggressively butchering a jazz standard. A pair of girls in sorority letters laughed too loudly near the fountain. The hum of a hundred simultaneous conversations created the white noise of normalcy.

"—and then the kitchen is filled with smoke, and my mother is screaming in Portuguese about how I've disrespected her grandmother's recipe, and my roommate has opened every window, and the fire alarm is going off—"

"Let me guess," Leon interjected dryly. "You forgot the chicken broth."

Carlos's dramatic gestures halted mid-air. "How did you know that?"