Page 32 of Damsel in Disguise

As the lecture winds down, I add without emphasis, “The supplementary material I mentioned will be uploaded tonight. Review before next session. You can go.” then dismiss the class.

The class empties almost immediately. A few students murmur acknowledgement, some discussing today’s topic or already slipping into gossip, except for her.

I notice Ariella hasn’t made any friends yet. That alone means nothing—freshers often orbit uncertainly before choosing alliances. Or perhaps she doesn’t need them. Either way, I don’t care enough to pursue the thought.

What unsettles me is that she doesn’t pack her bag like others. I get the distinct impression she’s waiting for me to move first. Why? I can’t tell.

So I take my time. I shut down my tablet deliberately, fingers unhurried as the screen darkens. In my peripheral vision, I see her mirror the motion a beat later.

She slides her tablet into her bag with the same economy of movement, no wasted gestures. The timing isn’t a coincidence. It’s calibration.

Then she lifts the bag and places it on top of the desk.

Purple.

My eyes widen for a fraction of a second before discipline reasserts itself.

Kuromi.

I turn my head before I consciously decide not to. The motion is sharp enough that there’s no disguising it. I know she feels my attention because her silhouette reacts subtly, like the way a fox’s ears flick at a sensitive sound it pretends not to hear.

The resemblance is too uncanny. The plushie I have sits on the shelf in the room where I record live lectures. Viewers might think it’s of my kids (too bad, I don’t want one), but it’s actually the last thing my mother ever gave me. She had a strange fondness for dressing me in things that defied expectations.

Mom starved herself for months to buy the best Kuromi plushie available in the store back then. Skipped meals. Lied about being full. All so she could place it in my hands with a smile that pretended it costs her nothing at all.

That alone is why I’ve kept the stupid thing for eighteen years.

I look away first.

When I finally step down from the podium and calmly walk out of the class.

From the confrontation with the council last night, I’m certain they didn’t send a Synthète after me. First time my intuition went wrong.

There are nearly 59 million people living in England, around 35.3 million are female and approximately 25 million of them are over 18. And who knows how many of them are involved with secret organizations. It can be anybody.

Even though the list can go for miles, I’ll start with the strangest of the lot, the one I know in person. Stalkers are always the one who gets ignored the most just because they’re different that ordinary people. And that’s why they get away with their strange fascination.

Ariella Keinston.

The first and youngest student to be in my lecture in seven years of being a senior professor here at Oxford University.

Ariella exits without haste exactly three seconds after I exit the classroom.

I register her presence without looking back. The rhythm of her steps is controlled, measured to avoid echo yet close enough to be detected without announcing itself.

She doesn’t glance over her shoulder when she passes by me in the corridor.

We diverge without acknowledgment—me toward my office, her toward wherever she intends to disappear.

There’s an hour before my next lecture. So I drop into my chair feeling the leather giving beneath my weight as I lean back and exhale. My intent is to relax at the faculty office but then again I straighten and open my desktop.

Data doesn’t lie.

I access the attendance logs and performance metrics, cross-referencing submission timestamps, error margins, deviation curves.

Ariella Keinston.

Her profile fills the screen—fewer submissions. Higher precision. Almost no redundancy. Her errors are conceptual as if they’re born from probing limits rather than failing to understand them. She ranks high enough to justify attention. More than that, she ranks high enough to warrant scrutiny.