From where he sat in the large lecture hall, Michael could hear faint noises filtering in through the slightly cracked window. Laughter. Footsteps. The distant rumble of a delivery van. The chaos of freshers’ week, no doubt. It was only the first day of lectures, so it wasn’t surprising. Still, the noise grated against the quiet weight in his chest.

His desk was already set up — writing pad to the left, calculator to the right, laptop opened in front of him, though he hadn’t typed anything yet. A flicker of the cursor blinked on a blank document, waiting for purpose. Waiting, just like him. He adjusted slightly in his seat. The room smelled faintly of dust and old electronics. His gaze shifted to the front of the hall where the lecturer, a tall man in a wool coat with thinning hair and wire-rimmed glasses, stood before the wide digital board.

“Energy,” the lecturer began, tapping the whiteboard slowly with a black marker, “cannot be created. It cannot be destroyed. It can only be converted... transferred... transformed.”

His voice was deep, even-paced, but not dull. More like someone who had repeated this same lecture for decades, and still believed every word of it.

“Meaning whatever you put into a system....” he tapped the board again for emphasis, “...remains. Maybe not in the same form. But it’s still there. Somewhere.”

Michael’s pen hovered above his notebook. He scribbled:

Energy doesn’t vanish. It just... becomes something else.

He looked up again. A strange sense of displacement settled into his stomach.

The boy beside him, an Indian student with a neat parting and thick glasses, was scribbling rapidly, completely immersed in the lecture. Every so often, he’d mutter equations under his breath.

Michael glanced around the hall. Mostly boys. A few girls scattered across the room. Some had that eager look of over-preparation. Others, like him, seemed present but far off.

He shifted his eyes toward the far corner. A student caught his attention — a girl dressed in a loose hoodie, short twists tucked behind one ear. Head down. Writing fast. Her intensity made him feel oddly lazy. She looked... familiar, but not quite. He blinked and looked away.

The lecturer kept talking, now pacing slowly in front of the board.

“When we talk about systems ,closed systems ...we’re also talking about accountability. Nothing exits a system without consequence. It stays. Changes shape, but stays. That's a law, not a theory.”

A hand shot up from the third row. A girl with a buzz cut, dressed in baggy jeans and combat boots.

“Sir,” she said, “but in reality, doesn’t energy get... lost? Like in friction, damping, resistance?”

The lecturer smiled, clearly pleased. “Ah, yes. The illusion of loss. Excellent question. What you're describing are examples of dissipation. Not disappearance. Heat, sound, light... even when we can’t account for every bit, it's still somewhere. We don’t always see it but physics says it remains.”

Michael’s mind wandered. Again. His fingers absently flipped a pen between them.

"Does any of this matter?" he wrote in the corner of his pad.

He wasn't sure what he meant. Did the laws of physics matter? Or the fact that he was here, in this room, in a country thousands of miles from home?

Was this where he was supposed to be?

The thought of asking his father for a tutor crossed his mind again. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for engineering after all. Maybe this was just another system he’d been pushed into.

Another form of conversion.

His hand absentmindedly scribbled something across the margin.

"What happens to energy when the system breaks?"

He didn’t even know where the question came from.

The lecturer went on about momentum, mass, input, output. The words blurred together. At some point, he mentioned statics and the conservation of forces ; how even stationary systems hold balance.

Michael wanted to believe it. That stillness didn’t mean nothing was happening.

When the class finally ended, chairs scraped against the floor as students stood, gathered their bags, whispered about upcoming modules. The Indian boy beside him turned slightly.

“You got the stuff he said about damping? I zoned out for a bit,” he said, smiling sheepishly.

Michael nodded. “Sort of. I jotted some things.”

“Nice. I’m Harish,” the boy said, holding out a hand.

“Michael.”

They shook. It felt good to talk.

Sarah sat in the minimalist conference room. A few abstract paintings hung on the wall , moody splashes of indigo, maroon, and burnt orange , reminders of the world they were paid to curate.

The meeting had barely started, but her mind was already fraying at the edges.

“December's always a busy month for us here,” Isiah the manager said. His voice was deep, composed, with the kind of calm authority that made people sit straighter. “People want meaning at the end of the year. Art sells better when emotions are high.”

Sarah nodded, forcing focus. She was seated across from a woman with silver-rimmed glasses typing rapidly on a tablet. Beside her was a younger guy , maybe late twenties with a buzz cut and ink creeping up his wrist, who hadn’t said a word since he walked in.

Her notebook lay open in front of her, blank except for the date. She twirled her pen between her fingers, pretending to jot something. She didn’t know what she was doing here , not exactly. The job offer had come in suddenly, and she’d taken it just as quickly. A curator's assistant. It sounded elegant, important even, but so far it just felt like a balancing act. Her coursework was intense already . Theory-heavy lectures, endless journal readings and now this?

"But we may also assume current financial conditions might affect us,” Isiah continued, flipping through a small booklet, “especially come mid-January. We’ll need to be strategic.”

There were murmurs around the table. Numbers were mentioned. Attendance projections. Artist lineups. Her head buzzed.

Sarah’s thoughts drifted to her upcoming deadlines, her unread emails, the cold quiet of her apartment when she returned home.

She blinked and looked up, catching Isiah glancing her way. He smiled briefly, then returned to the chart on the projector.

"Any questions?"

Silence.

Back in his dorm, Michael stood by the window, arms crossed as the soft hum of student life buzzed faintly from below. It was early evening, the sky already bruising into a deep navy. After everything that had happened today ; the lectures, the unfamiliar faces, the sheer weight of it all , he felt the need for clarity. Focus.

He was going to be serious with his studies.

No more drifting thoughts or lazy mornings. If he was going to do this , survive engineering, make his father proud, prove he wasn’t just another rich kid wasting potential then he had to get ahead. That meant spending time in the library, cutting back on distractions, and maybe even attending extra tutorials if it came to that.

After a quick dinner, microwave pasta and orange juice , he sat at the edge of his bed, pulling his planner closer. Tomorrow’s classes were listed neatly in a column, but he added a new bullet point beneath them.

Go to library. Read ahead on Thermodynamics.

Register for gym.

He smiled at the second item. I mean, he thought, you’ve got to have that hot body on lock. Discipline wasn’t only for books.

After ironing a shirt for tomorrow , pale blue, clean lines ,he took out the leather-bound journal he always kept near. He wrote just a few words. Stay Steady. Keep Moving . Don't lose sight

He closed the journal, his chest rising slowly with a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. Then he flopped onto the bed, hands behind his head, eyes fixed on the ceiling. Her face floated back into view. The way the wind had caught her curls. The scent. The way her eyes lingered, just for a second.

He turned to the side, pulling the blanket over him.