I would choose you

First class

I woke to light.

A a silvery, quiet light that felt more like fog had wandered into the room than anything the sun was doing. I blinked once, twice. My eyes adjusted slowly. Hannah was already up - sitting cross-legged on her bed with a blanket around her shoulders, writing in a little leather journal.

“Good morning,” she said, not looking up.

I mumbled something in response, voice still tangled in sleep.

We dressed quickly. I layered up without thinking: wool tights, long sleeves, a heavy skirt. Hannah was deciding between two beautiful dresses: brown, like her eyes, and light-blue. You could tell that she was a little spoiled by being the only daughter; Outside, the fog hadn’t lifted. It curled at the windowpanes like breath on glass. Everything looked bleached.

We walked across the quad toward the dining hall, hands tucked in our sleeves. I noticed more students now, emerging in twos and threes from dormitories, their voices low, their coats long. Some looked as new as I felt. Others - older students, I guessed - walked like they had been here forever, chatting and laughing. One day I will be as confident here as they are.

Breakfast was surprisingly good. The food was warm - eggs, toast, jam, butter, porridge. Wood-paneled walls, long tables, old teapots. Hannah ate quickly. I sipped coffee.

At nine, we joined the other freshmen in the chapel hall for orientation. There were only about forty of us in total: students from psychology, fine arts, languages, philosophy, and literature. It struck me then how small this place really was. No crowd. No line. Just forty people who would likely know one another far too well by the end of the year.

We sat on oak pews beneath arched windows. A few professors stood at the front: some stiff, some soft, some who looked like they’d rather be anywhere else. A woman with cropped silver hair gave a speech I can barely recall, something about tradition, academic excellence, self-governance, reputation.

But then, they introduced the department heads.

And he stepped forward.

Professor Emiliano T.

Young - the youngest of them, and far younger than I’d expected, around 35 years old. Tall, dark hair, sharp features and a charismatic smile - he looked like a typical Italian. He wore a dark turtleneck and blazer, and looked like someone who had stepped out of "Dead poets society". Everyone leaned in a little closer. I did too.

He spoke only briefly. “The study of literature,” he said, “is not the study of stories. It’s the study of consciousness. Of obsession, contradiction, destruction. You’ll learn to read what you’re afraid of reading. You’ll learn to look at yourselves.”

I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant, but felt it in my spine.

After the speeches came a brief tour of the campus. I found myself walking beside Hannah and a girl I didn’t recognize: fair skin, dark curly hair, high cheekbones, quiet. She introduced herself as Maria. She was also in Literature. Shy, but intelligent, her eyes darted toward the buildings as though she were memorizing every window. My new friends were exactly the type of people I was hoping I'd be studying with.

We passed through the library (even more beautiful from the inside), the art building with its glass atrium, the faculty offices, the student lounge that no one seemed to use. I kept glancing sideways, wondering which of them were mine. The other five.

Eventually, Professor T. gathered us, the eight literature students, and led us to a long, oak-paneled room at the back of the library. The kind of room that made you whisper.

We sat in a circle. I counted: Hannah beside me, Maria beside her. On the opposite side sat a boy with too-perfect posture, a girl with a high ponytail and perfect eyeliner, a tall boy with dark skin and a book in his lap, and finally...

Her.

The girl from the corridor. The one with the blond hair. She wore a light blue sweater and kept her hands folded in her lap, not looking at anyone.

“Let’s begin,” said Professor T.

He passed out our course schedule. Five classes:

• World Literature – Prof. Emiliano T.

• English Literature – Prof. Emiliano T.

• Poetry and Poetics – Prof. Emiliano T.

• Philosophy – Prof. Helen M.

• History of Aesthetics – Prof. Claude F.

“I’ll be your primary instructor,” he said, “but you’ll encounter a few others. Helen M. has been here for decades. You’ll see her this afternoon. Professor F. teaches aesthetics and speaks exclusively in metaphors. Good luck with that.”

There was a brief, nervous laugh.

Then he asked us to introduce ourselves.

Maria went first. She was from Valencia but had lived in England for years. She’d won a national essay competition on The Tempest. Hannah followed - charming, animated, self-deprecating in a way that made everyone like her immediately.

The boy with the book was Abraham. He came to England from a Middle Eastern country he for some reason refused to name. He spoke slowly and precisely, and said he was here “for literature, and also for silence.”

The girl with the ponytail was Violet. Her voice was sharp, practiced. She said she didn’t live on campus. Her family is one of the main college donors. "I believe the most important things in life are traditions and respect, that's why I'm here."

The boy next to her - Arthur - grinned when it was his turn. He was from somewhere near Oxford. “I was accepted here by mistake,” he said. “But I’m too polite to correct them.”

The last boy was August. He looked tired and a little amused. His eyes were darker than his hair. He simply said, “August. From Blackpool. Books are good.”

A few people laughed.

And then -

“I’m Nicole,” said the blond girl. Her voice was soft, clear, almost American. “I’m from Kent. My favorite author is Charlotte Bronte.”

I didn’t know what I expected. But her voice surprised me.

I went last. “Sylvia. From Cambridge. I like long walks and Russian novels and things that end badly.”

That got a real laugh. Even from Nicole, though she didn’t look at me.

Professor T. stood. “I’ll see you all tomorrow. Until then, survive Helen.”

⸻

The philosophy building smelled like chalk and radiator heat.

Professor M. was already at the front of the classroom when we arrived, standing in front of a green blackboard with no writing on it. She was small, older, with a thin braid and a brooch in the shape of a clock. Her voice, when she began, was barely louder than the hum of the heater.

“We begin,” she said, “with… questions…”

She paused for an unnaturally long time. I thought perhaps she’d fallen asleep with her eyes open.

“…What is time?”

It went on like that for forty-five minutes.

I couldn’t tell you what the lecture was about. Something about Plato. Or Heidegger. Or maybe just the clock brooch. Every time I started taking notes, she would pause, and the silence would stretch until I forgot what she had said in the first place.

Violet looked bored. Abraham was scribbling things in a notebook that didn’t look like notes. Arthur was balancing his pen on his finger. Nicole was staring down at her hands. I stared at the window and thought about foxes.

When it finally ended, we stumbled out into the cold like survivors of something mildly tragic.

Lunch was served in the small refectory behind the dining hall. There were round tables, this time, and trays of bread, soup, and something that might have been meatloaf.

I sat down at a half-empty table with Hannah and Maria. Arthur, August, and Abraham joined us. A moment later, Nicole sat down directly across from me.

I tried not to look at her. But she was so composed. Like her clothes had been chosen by someone with taste and time. Her sweater was the exact color of the sky that morning. She didn’t speak unless spoken to, but when she did, it was always quiet and polite. She smiled once, and I instantly disliked her.

She probably always smiled like that. Small. Mysterious. Perfect.

Hannah asked her what she liked to read, and Nicole said she’d read Middlemarch over the summer “for fun.” Of course she did. Of course she liked the thickest book in the English language and thought it was “lovely.”

Every word out of her mouth made me want to bite walls.

I didn’t say much. Just picked at my food and watched the others. Violet, notably, wasn’t there. Someone said she’d left early—something about an appointment off campus.

The rest of us lingered. There was something comforting about being in a room with people who all carried the same set of nerves, the same fog clinging to their shoes. Even the boys, loud as they were, made the day feel less abstract.

After lunch, I returned to the dorm with Hannah.

We changed into softer clothes and lay on our beds like sisters in some medieval novel.

“So?” she asked. “What do you think?”

I shrugged. "Almost all seem nice enough...”

“Except?”

“Nicole.”

Hannah raised an eyebrow. “Nicole? Really? She seemed so sweet.”

“She’s...” I hesitated. “I don’t know. She’s too perfect. Or pretending to be.”

Hannah laughed. “Maybe she’s just shy.”

“Maybe.”

“Violet, on the other hand,” she added, “I think she thinks we’re all stupid.”

“She didn’t even finish lunch with us.”

“She didn’t even start lunch with us.”

We lay in silence for a while after that. I watched the fog rise again outside the window. The mountains were gone entirely now, swallowed in white.

I felt tired in a way I hadn’t known was possible, like every part of me had met something new and didn’t know what to do with it.

When Hannah turned off her lamp and fell asleep, I wrote a second letter. I didn’t send it. Just folded it and slipped it into the back of my journal.

I brushed my teeth. Washed my face. I stared at the ceiling for a while, waiting for sleep to come.

It didn’t.

Instead, I closed my eyes and saw her face again. The sky-colored sweater. The curve of her fingers on the rim of her teacup. That unreadable little smile.

I didn’t like her. I didn’t.

I just wanted to understand why I couldn’t stop looking.