In Theory

Chapter 5: Lattes and Subarus

​The Rotman School of Management did not just house the business faculty; it felt like a temple built to the gods of the Gross Domestic Product. She didn't think she would ever get over how different it was from her lecture halls. As Elara pushed through the heavy glass doors that Thursday afternoon, she felt the immediate shift in atmosphere. The air here was filtered, chilled to a precise degree, and smelled faintly of expensive espresso and the ink, probably from freshly printed financial journals.

​In the University College cloisters where she had just come from, the past felt alive in the crumbling stone of the buildings. Here, the future seemed to be the only thing that mattered, it looked like polished limestone and brushed steel.

​Elara adjusted the strap of her satchel. She was wearing her favorite thrifted blazer, a deep blue tweed that smelled faintly of lavender and old libraries, from her detergent and the long hours spent in the library just last week preparing for her tests. She paired it with a short, light grey jean skirt.

After the encounter with Simon in the quad, she felt a strange, buoyant sense of clarity. Seeing him hadn't been the poetic tragedy she once feared; it had been a comedy of errors. He was a man playing a part, stuck in a loop of his own self-importance.

​“Trading in the classics for the corporate world?” he had sneered.

​Elara gripped her coffee tighter as she climbed the stairs. It wasn't about trading in; it was about expanding. She was tired of being a muse; she wanted to be a founder. She knew how shitty the job market was, learning this would increase her value, boost her resume. And she needed any advantage she could get.

​She spotted Julian at his usual table—the "Office"—as he called it, tucked into a corner of the second floor with a wide view of the slushy Toronto streets below. Julian was already deep in the zone. He had a pair of silver-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, darker than the one she had seen before, with a bluish tint on the lens. They made him look sharper, more sophisticated and—to her immense annoyance—distractingly handsome. He was illuminated by the light of two different screens: his laptop and a tablet showing live market data.

​"You're wearing glasses," she said, sliding into the chair across from him.

​Julian didn't look up immediately. His fingers danced across the keyboard, executing a series of commands that made a complex graph shift and recalibrate. "They’re for blue light strain," he said, his voice low and steady. "And you’re early. Three minutes to spare" he looked at her, taking in her troubled expression. "you okay?"

​"Yeah, just a had a run in with someone I didn't really want to see" Elara replied, dumping her books onto the table with a satisfying thud. Julian leaned back, pushing his glasses up with his thumb. The slate-grey eyes were focused, searching her face for any lingering traces of discomfort. She was currently chewing her lower lip, something he found slightly distracting. He noticed that she did that sometimes, when she was nervous or when she was distracted. His shoulders relaxed just a fraction. "You want to talk about it?"

"Not really, if I'm being honest. You got something to show me"

"Yes. Look at this. I spent two hours last night running the numbers on 'Lyrical Legacies.'" Julian said, as he passed her the latte "Sorry, it's not as warm"

"You're a life saver, thanks"

He hoped desperately that she couldn't see the light blush colouring his cheek.

​He turned the laptop toward her. Elara leaned in, her shoulder nearly touching his. The spreadsheet was a work of art. It wasn't just columns of numbers; it was a roadmap. He had mapped out the cost of high-resolution spectral imaging and projected a break-even point within eighteen months.

​"You actually did it," she whispered. "You made the preservation of 19th-century marginalia look like a viable investment."

​"It’s about scarcity, Vance," Julian explained, his voice taking on that professorial tone he only used when he was genuinely excited. "The market for digital assets is saturated, but the market for exclusive cultural heritage is wide open. If we can prove our process is non-invasive, we don't just have a project. We have a monopoly."

​"I love it when you talk about monopolies," Elara teased, her eyes fixed on the screen.

​They worked, at an unhurried pace for the next hour, in companionable silence. The friction that usually defined them had smoothed into a collaboration.

It was about five o'clock when the decided to shut down for the day. They packed up and walked downstairs together.

"I'll drop you off. Where do you stay?" Julian said just as they stepped out of the glass doors, one hand holding his bag and the other in his pocket.

"You have a car? You should have mentioned that earlier. Might have accepted to be your partner faster" She was teasing again, the small smirk she carried betrayed her. He couldn't help his returning smile. " That's sweet of you, but I don't want to inconvinience you. I can hail a cab, i don't mind, it's not too far out"

"I insist, you stay in the hostels right? It's not that far out of my way"

"Well, since you insist" She smiled at him.

She followed him to the dark blue Sabaru, and watched it light up when he hit the buttons on the key. Elara was a bit stunned, when he'd said he had a car, she thought he meant a normal one, this one was very fancy. He puled open the passenger seat fo her and passed round to enter the drivers' seat.

"Nice ride" Elara said, feeling a little nervous and all too intimidated.

"Thank you. I got it as a going away present, after i got my acceptance letter." Elara didn't know what to say to that and the silence made him nervous "I think my parents were even more happy about it than me. Getting into this university. My dad also got his degree commerce here. And so did his dad, it's kind a kind of family tradition at this point" Elara watched his finers as they continiously tapped against the steering, shee assumed it was a nervous tick of his. The thought was comforting, that she wasn't the only one feeling out of her element. He smoothly drove out from the parking space and into the main road leading to the hostels.

"I figured this was something you liked, with how brilliant you are and whatnot. Would you choose something different if you could?"

"Maybe?" He tapped his fingers against the wheel again "I don't know. I've never thought of being anything else. It has always been this, since I could remember. I suppose it helps that im good with numbers" He said with a rueful smile.

S he didn't want to tell him what she really thought. That his life seemed so caged, that his parents probbly propagated their dreams on him and niw he didn't have one of his own. But instead she gave an understanding smile and said nothing.

The rest of the dive was in a comfortable silince, only interupted by direction frompts from timt to time.

He parked in front fo her hostel, where she thaned him and walked to the building. He didn't drive off until she entered the building.