Nola burst through the first door and opened the second door silently into the lecture hall. It was one of the larger lecture halls and luckily enough for her, she could enter from the back. She swiftly grabbed a free seat near the middle. After an hour of drab teaching, they got a well deserved break. She went out and got a cappuccino in the little café at the corner of the building. When she took her seat again, she saw that sailor, ghost boy was seated behind her all along. He was chatting with the person on his left. She listened, interested in what kind of person he was.

Her own idea was that he was the trademark reclusive; a kind hearted lad or he was the complete opposite.

"-I did electronic engineering here three years ago." She identified the voice as sailor boy's judging from the direction of the sound waves behind her back. From the sound bite she was able to roughly identify what type of person he was. He may or may not be autistic since he attended a course known for dull, robotic people. He was around twenty-five or twenty-six since he graduated three years ago. His introvert nature was in doubt since he was talking to someone beside him. She learnt from the conversation that his name was Ben, perhaps short for Benjamin or Benny. She knew the other person as Shane since she had talked to him before. He was a HDip marketing student.

"Remember when Gavin moved into our class when he got caught by the puffy face woman teacher?” the other man spoke. Caught from doing what? They seemed acquainted with each other. Deducing from their talk, these two went to school together. Further deduction, these two people were acquainted from their teenage or childhood years. It contained too much of a coincidence that they met going to a college in a different county. Therefore it can be deduced that they were both natives of this city. Building upon that, it can be said that sailor boy lives with his parents as do most students who study in their hometown.

"Oh yeah, he got caught wanking in class."

Nola snorted coffee out of her nose, spraying it all over her notes. She gasped at the scene she just made.

The sailor boy tapped her shoulder and offered her a tissue. Nola's face was flushed with embarrassment.

"T-t-thanks," she stuttered. Her normally pale face was cherry red with brown liquid dripping out of her nose. Nola couldn't help but smile in embarrassment. A person beside her was having trouble stifling her laughter.

For the rest of the class she sat there staring blankly ahead. It wasn't until a line of people formed from her blocking the way out did she snap out of her embarrassment. I need to go home and change, she thought. I want to die, she thought.

...

Ben left the lecture hall and parted ways with Shane. It was nice that there was somebody he knew from a less gloomy time in his life. He thought back to the blonde girl that snorted coffee everywhere. He was playing it up to try to entice devious eavesdroppers to spill their beans. It worked.

He grabbed his bike and put on his sailor hat and cycled back home across Quintytennial bridge. It was a large bridge that made up most of the journey from his parent's apartment to the college. On it, he would pass by the gigantic, ugly slab of concrete that was the infamous engineering building. That demonic, lifeless building that jutted out as an absolute plight amongst the surrounding nature and river. Behind that communist structure were new high-rise student accommodations in construction that was hell-bent on aiding it to ruin the landscape.

He arrived home, hot from cycling, and drank a glass of cold tap water. He walked past his mother's room. Her door was shut as usual. Behind it was her mother sitting in bed, staring lifelessly at the empty wall. He entered his room and booted up his custom built desktop. The PC tower whirled to life and then hummed soothingly. The monitors lit alive, lighting his permanently dark, curtained room.

He was by himself and kept to himself until a former classmate approached him today. Pride was the reason to keep to himself. Pride he found was not how people simply saw as a vanity. Pride he discovered is a defence mechanism that develops from being stepped on too often. Either you join a cackle of vicious hyenas or you find your own food alone. Pride has developed in animals as a means to keep themselves away from such that nibbles away on conscience and good faith. Pride therefore in his eyes was not a sin.

He opened up the project list from the marketing class that contained all the names and ID numbers of the students. He ran through all the female names into a machine trained A.I. he coded. Within less than a few seconds, the program spitted out personas and listed the data into a neatly organised digital document. It was basic data scrapped from the net which he could have manually done himself. It couldn't have been done in a few seconds though. The only lag that occurred in the data gathering was server side in transferring data from the net to his computer. Otherwise it worked flawlessly as intended. It was his pride from his EE days as the final project he did. He built upon it for a further two more years and it now contained many more applications for what people saw as nefarious intentions. If you don't want it known, then don't put it up on the public netSphere.

He rooted through the files and finally found the document with the face of the blonde. His eyes lit up and a smile formed on the tip of his mouth. Nola Kozlova. He scanned through the document. It was strange, he thought, Nola wasn't exactly a Belarusian name and she wasn't Irish according to the details gleamed from the website Linkedup. In but an instant, he had a flash of intuition accompanied by his thick furrowed brows. He derived that her real name was Nonna in Cyrillic. There was a high probability that when she moved to Ireland as a child, the parent must have spelt her name as Nola by accident. It made sense and he verified the existence of the name Nonna. He sat there lost in thought, feeling proud that he solved this little case. He edited it into her persona file.

Ben took out his black Sony Alpha9000 II mirrorless camera. He switched out the compact f1.4 Sony pancake lens for a Sigma 135mm lens which cost him quite a fortune to get his slender hands on. It was seven inches long with a girth that sent photographers slavering at its almighty mass. The mega pixel specs were a measly 100MP and combined with this lens it could capture rocks on the lunar surface. In other words, it was a beast in the photographer's world. That's all my work on that Sern project blown on a barrel of glass, he thought. He knew he deserved a bigger payout for this attributions and he learnt that high level contractor work was a scam for the amount of effort and brains he had to put in.

He took out an air blower and pondered about the meaning of visual art as he blew away the dust from the lens and LCD. Some would argue that the very soul were missing from modern photographs. They would retain to the use of taking blurry Polaroids that contained the artistic soul that they could abstractly identify. For Ben it was different, he wanted as much information as possible and that, in his eyes, required high numbers on apparatuses.

The information had only turned up as much as what people put onto their social media. He wanted more. He knew he would have to hunt it out himself. He would not take the direct means.

...

Nola joined the swimming club. She was embarrassed to admit it but she didn't know how to swim. It was a perfect opportunity and the lessons were free which was an added bonus.

She tapped her card and passed through the gym gates. There was a sparkling cleanliness in these big gyms where everything shone and gleamed off the metallic surfaces and tiles. To Nola, it lacked the grittiness of getting down and dirty when working out.

She stripped off into her dark blue one piece that she already wore underneath and stuffed her gym bag into the locker. She put on her swimming hat over her bunned up hair. Nobody locked their lockers so she didn't.

There were two swim club members who were organising the free swimming lessons. A jacked up man with an extremely hairy chest, back, arms and legs. He had a handlebar moustache and looked like a Sasquatch. The man needed to wear a wet suit or the swimmers would find themselves with his fur in the pool. The other member was a woman wearing a white tank top and red shorts. She had long curly hair that reached her shoulders. Other than that, she was the definition of plain Jane.

"Hi, I'm twenty-three and I can't swim," Nola blurted out to the hairy man.

"That's great,” the hairy man replied. "Jump into the water and we'll get started soon. Just waiting to see if we'll get a couple more."

She tiptoed into the water. She introduced herself to the three others who were holding tightly to the ledge of the pool. Two were black men and the other was a girl who looked her age. The black men were like the polar opposites of each other. The younger one was massive and bulked up and Nola commented to him that he would make a good boxer. The other was an old thin man with short curly hoary hair. He looked like a Somali pirate. Nola told him he needed a swimming cap. The other girl had the look of a scared fawn who had never stepped afoot into so much water.

The training started and Nola was surprised how tiring it was to swim. The black men, especially the old skinny one, was struggling to make it two meters without eventually standing. The muscular one splashed his arms down with great mind-blowing force but it still failed to push him afloat.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"What did the water do to you?" the instructor's voice to Nola's surprise was soft and husky and sounded like Donald Duck. "Not everything requires brute force. If you tense your muscles, you might as well strap rocks on your body. Try relaxing your muscles."

"Don't give up!” Nola cheered at the hopeless black men who couldn't swim to save their lives. She couldn't help but laugh when she saw the black men drown time and time again. It was all good humour.

"You! Stop laughing. There's ten times the chance that a black person will drown. It's not a laughing matter." It was true but the wild flailing from both of them was a ludicrous sight to behold. "Hey muscle man," he called out in his soft hoarse voice to the dejected young black man who stopped halfway. "Stop beating up the water. Think of it as your friend. Someone to push off to balance yourself when you find yourself sinking."

She learnt that the muscular man was studying a master's in biomedical engineering. She admired the awesome gains he had and recommended him to join the boxing gym. He staunchly refused citing that working out the specific routine to gain this muscle mass was tiring enough. The scrawny, old black man was hitting on her but Nola didn't notice. She was too busy bursting out laughing at his flailing failing attempts at swimming whenever he tried to talk to her.

The other girl left early feeling discouraged at the progress even though nobody could swim their first time. Nola's non-stop laughter freaked her out even though it wasn't directed at her. Nola spoke encouragingly to her but the girl saw a bit of the crazy in her eyes behind her goggles.

Up above on the second floor, a hooded man sat alone on a recliner with a camera in hand snapping pictures of the people in their swimsuits stealthy. Even though he didn't join the gym, he told them he was here for the college squash club and they let him pass through the gates for free. He knew all the tricks in the book. Sometimes he would wear his Deliveriloo jacket and carry a hot bag to get into paid events. A true passion was to risk it all.

When Nola was beside the muscular black man, she pursued on about the boxing gym. He certainly had the physique of a heavyweight. Nola, in the young black man's eyes, salivated over him like a honey roasted ham. 'She crazy,' he thought, I'm not meat for you to feast upon.

At the end Nola had felt she had done all she could. He would have made a fine addition to the kickboxing club. His physique slotted right in but his personality didn't match his looks. What a shame. She sighed.

...

"I'm late again!" Nola was indeed late again. What's a few more minutes late anyhow, she thought. She grabbed herself a coffee from the café at the concourse before heading down the corridors to class.

She closed the doors silently and tiptoed in and grabbed a seat at the back of the lecture hall. She peaked around the corner and saw the sailor boy at the back. He was using his camera on his phone and immediately closed it when he sensed Nola's footsteps.

Nola shuffled two seats beside his left. She was wearing contacts today and could see clearly from the far back of the lecture hall.

She was faced to face with the sailor boy she met on the first day. He wore a baggy hoodie and shorts even though the morning weather was cold. Since she cycled, she knew why he wore shorts. It was so that the fabric wouldn't catch the bike chain. She had always wanted to talk to him since. It was unprecedented that her virtuous self got ignored whenever she tried to catch him. Either he had avoided her as best he could or he simply had the worst social timing ever.

The break came halfway through their two hour lecture. "Hi, I'm Nola." What now? Can't ignore me now can you? Nola's eyes were wide and manic. Their first encounter had been in the back of her mind for months. He turned his head slowly as if he couldn't believe somebody was speaking to him. This was the first time Nola saw him this close. She moved her faced right up to him, examining every microscopic facial detail.

He had thick eyebrows like two furry black caterpillars that slept above his eyes. They had a mesmerising quality to them that she struggled to take her eyes off. Other than that, he had a nice tanned complexion, hazel eyes, his hair was flaxen bronze, probably a blond in his youth, and his facial features had a youthful look with an innocence to them, like Allie she thought. His skin was smooth and poreless. He looked younger than her.

“Hi, I'm Ben.” Nola knew everybody's names from the drinking parties. She had overheard it before. She had also rooted through the directory of the entire messaging group until she found a name who she didn't meet at the party to reconfirm it. She knew his name.

"Where're you from?" His skin tone looked like he was Mediterranean. Nola guessed he was Portuguese.

"I’m from Morocco. I moved here when I was five years old."

"Ah, me too!" She pointed to herself excitedly, "I'm from Belarus. I moved here when I was eight." Nola felt the tension has finally been loosened, to talk to him so easily after all this time. For over two months, Ben had eluded her casual attempts to speak to him. She had got Nicole, who was taciturn, quiet and somewhat on the autism spectrum, to join in on all the class parties every week. Everybody did, everybody but him.

"Really?"

"I saw you filming earlier?” Nola prodded him. Could it be about the swimming club? His hand shook. He looked at her. She had big eyes so full of intensity like it was staring deep into his soul. He saw that she had the crazy eyes. "Your hands are shaking."

"It's caffeine withdrawal." False, Ben hasn't drank coffee for years.

"You must drink a lot of coffee."

He decided to just say it outright, that his hobby was photography and video logging. The hobby held an extreme nature to him that took crazy lengths to satisfy. He would find himself exploring dilapidated buildings, crawling through nooks and crannies and climbing mountains and buildings. He told her all this.

"That's why you wanted to record the class."

"Have you ever created a video log or photo diary?"

"It never occurred to me. I used to have a diary. I'm sure most girls did."

"It's like that." Ben breathed out a sigh of relief. "It's fun. Ehm... Also, like you wouldn't remember what you were doing exactly in all its detail of what you were doing a few days ago at this time. You can snapshot it and it'll be a key back. Photographs are basically memories for people without photographic memories. Technologies' great."

"Would you just have a camera strapped on your head recording everything then?"

"You heard in our gender studies class-"

"Gender studies? I didn't choose the gender class. Was that one of the choices?"

"Sorry," he chuckled. "I was joking. I meant the film culture one." Nola laughed, she got caught off unexpectedly. The conversation felt so pensive that her ever normally goofy self didn't catch it.

Before they could talk more, the lecturer hammered down the books to quiet down the class.

After class ended, she was going to invite to join her for lunch and introduce him to her friends. He had disappeared again. She was still curious about him, she didn't even get a chance to ask what his undergraduate degree was even though she knew.

He must hate me for some reason. The thought hovered over her like a dark cloud. She was never able to catch him since then.

...

Nola decided to skip today. She lay heavily on the king sized bed as last night's Moscow mules danced in a circle above her head. The constant drinking and partying had drained her soul. If I'm not careful, I might succumb into an alcoholic life of a typical college student.

She reached down on the floor and found her phone wondering what class she'd be late for if she attended school today.

"Ah, it's Saturday today." She laughed at herself and then her head ached.

In her old home, she would normally awake on the couch while Allie softly played on the piano. She was alone on the bed. She needed to get around choosing a new digital piano for Allie. These days, he played a lot of videogames with Lauren which was starting to worry her. wl of cereal in hand and watching morning cartoons.

She dragged herself out of bed like a swamp monster and grabbed a prepared icepack from the freezer. She found Allie with a bowl of cereal in hand and watching morning cartoons. She looked out the kitchen window. The weather was sunny and the skies were clear luckily enough. Nola took Allie out on his little wheelchair for a long walk.

"What's that building over there?" Allie asked.

"That's the hospital. Sometimes you can see the helicopter take off if you're lucky."

"Wow. I want to see one." The pavements rocked the wheelchair a bit. The constant rain that occurred every month except late spring and early summer could literally be felt on the uneven surface.

They went through a housing estate to get to the library.

"How do you find it here so far?"

"I like how every thing's close to our new home," Allie said. Nola had chosen this area because of the many local amenities clustered in one area.

Here, there was an art club for children that Allie took part in the library. He also had after school activities in his new school. Eleanor was going to come next week to help them choose a digital piano in the music shops in town and restart his piano lessons. Her summer music programme was finally over and she was free from playing dead men's music as she sometimes puts it. She told Nola that she had big plans for Allie. She was planning for him to be a special guest in one of her concerts. Allie's life had as much vitality as before if not more.

Nola pushed the button for people with disabilities to open the heavy library doors. She left Allie to pick a book from the children shelves and went away to find for a book for herself. She went to the classic aisle. She took out a Charles Dickens’ book. It piqued her interest since she's never read a Dickens' before. When she was exactly only semi-interested in a book, she had a nasty habit to look at the last page. It was her way to see if the book was going to be interesting or not.

She came back to Allie who had several books chosen. "These ones. Everybody's reading these books at school."

They checked out the books. Nola stuffed the stack of books into the pouch at the back of the wheelchair.

They headed down the path through the parking lot of the church to the supermarket next to it to do some grocery shopping together.

They had a miniature trolley there that was a bit bigger than basket size. She let Allie grab and push it so Nola was pushing a wheelchair pushing a trolley which drew a few looks. Allie found it fun, it was a rare occurrence to visit the supermarket at his old home. His eye widened and urged Nola to roll through the sweets aisle every time they passed it. Nola enjoyed his enjoyment at the ordinary. A food sampling stand gave out some new yoghurt and he greedily asked for all three flavours. Nola, following his example, asked as much as him. They were having fun in a grocery store.

Unbeknownst to them when they headed back to their housing estate was somebody who carried a camera with a seven inch lens jutting out from his chest. In her social media persona he gathered, there were no photos of her that showed a boy on a wheelchair. She had never photographed him with his disability in view. It was interesting to find the truth to contain a surprise. He did not expect it. All the other student he followed were as he imagined, relatively normal people.

He stood four-hundred metres away from them behind a lamppost and zoomed in with his camera. Photography can be an extreme hobby, he had told her. He thought back to their little exchange, then he laughed.