chapter 5
The first weeks at the southern campus passed in a blur.
Orientation. Classroom maps. New professors. Learning which dining hall food was edible and which one tasted like punishment. Finding out the campus coffee was surprisingly decent.
I threw myself into everything.
When one professor mentioned that he needed a research assistant for a project on collaborative problem-solving in high-pressure academic environments, my hand was in the air before I fully thought it through.
He glanced at me. “And why are you interested?”
I almost smiled.
“I’ve seen a lot of those environments,” I said.
My voice didn’t shake.
He studied me for a moment, then nodded.
“Good. You might see more before we’re done.”
His name was Dr. Park, and within a week I learned he was sharp, demanding, and allergic to excuses.
Within two weeks, I liked him.
The southern campus also had its own team for the national academic competition.
The same competition Liam and I had once planned to conquer together.
“The administration has wanted us to beat the main campus for years,” Dr. Park said one afternoon, tapping his pen against a stack of old reports. “They’re a bit smug about being the flagship.”
I knew exactly what he meant.
I could almost hear Liam talking about rankings and trophies and the thrill of winning.
“Do you have a captain yet?” I asked.
“We did,” Dr. Park said. “He decided to go abroad this semester. So we’re adjusting.”
Then he looked at me.
Not casually.
Carefully.
“I read your file,” he said. “High school nationals. Regional championships. Faculty publications before you turned twenty. You’ve been operating at a high level for a long time.”
I swallowed. “I had help.”
“Everyone has help,” he said. “The real question is what you do when that help turns into a hindrance.”
Then he slid a folder across the desk.
“If you want it,” he said, “the team is yours.”
My fingers rested on the folder.
Schedules. Previous problem sets. Performance notes. Strategy drafts.
A future.
A different one.
One that didn’t automatically place Liam beside me.
“I want it,” I said.
The southern team was a mess in the best possible way.
Alex, an intense math major who drank espresso like it was water.
Tessa, a philosophy student who argued with practice questions like they had personally insulted her.
Mina, a quiet engineering genius who saw patterns in data before the rest of us even understood the problem.
And Noor, our wildcard, who somehow turned chaos into momentum.
They were brilliant, opinionated, suspicious of me on day one, and absolutely exhausting.
“Why’d you transfer here in the middle of everything?” Alex asked during our first meeting, shoving his glasses up his nose.
I considered lying.
Family reasons. Scholarship issues. Needed a change of pace.
Instead, I said, “Because I got tired of being the supporting character in my own story.”
The room went silent.
Then Noor grinned.
“Okay, main character. Show us what you’ve got.”
So I did.
We spent night after night in overheated study rooms, arguing over strategies, building timing, learning how to think like a unit instead of five individual people.
There were moments when I almost reached for my phone to text Liam out of habit.
We won that round.
This professor is impossible.
I found a place with decent dumplings.
Each time, I stopped myself.
Each time, the silence after felt a little less painful.
Then one evening, after an especially brutal practice session, I checked my email and froze.
Subject: Update on Regional Seeding
I opened it and read the message once.
Then again.
Due to bracket restructuring, our institution’s team would face teams from the Northern Region in preliminaries.
Including the main campus.
My stomach dropped.
The main campus.
Liam.
Noor leaned over my shoulder, reading the email.
“Isn’t that your old campus?”
“Yeah,” I said.
My voice was steady, even though my heartbeat wasn’t.
Later that evening, after the others left, Dr. Park looked at me across the now-empty room.
“Do you want to sit this one out?” he asked.
For a moment, the temptation hit hard.
No confrontation. No collision. No risk of falling back into old patterns.
I thought about the study room. The deadline. The way Liam had expected me to come around if he waited long enough.
I shook my head.
“No.”
Dr. Park waited.
I took a breath.
“I left because he never took me seriously,” I said. “Because he thought I would always bend first. I’m not proving him right by running away.”
Dr. Park gave one short nod.
“Good,” he said. “Then let’s beat them.”