Mooches Off His Superiors

Anna took leave quickly, telling Lewis that she didn't feel well.

"Let me drop you home," Lewis offered. It was admittedly sweet of a boy like him to offer, but she had other plans.

"No. I will just take a cab back home. I don't want to bother you." She hadn't finished the meal, but she didn't want this to be a date in Lewis' mind. She pulled out what she knew was more than half of the bill and handed it to him.

"Hey, you don't need to do that!" Lewis protested. Anna shook her head.

"I feel terrible for not finishing, but I feel wretched. I don't want to spoil your meal," she said apologetically. She pulled her sling over her shoulder and gripped it tightly. With a final greeting, she bowed and walked out of the restaurant.

The meeting with Professor Ladislas was thrumming at the back of her mind. She couldn't imagine why he had asked her to close her windows. It bothered her to say the least.

She really did take a cab back to the apartment. It was unlike her, but she didn't trust her knees to lead her in the right way. She almost wanted to follow Ladislas without reserve and reveal his secrets. But she stopped herself. She had to get a grip of herself. And he had asked her to close the doors and windows. She wanted to see how he could break into her impenetrable room.

She reached the apartment slower than she had anticipated. No sooner had she opened the door than Marie barrelled forward. She looked behind Anna, looking for any sign of Lewis, and then her face fell.

"Weren't you on a date? Why did you return so early?" she asked with a pout.

"Weren't you supposed to be sleeping? You knew I don't like him and still made an opportunity for him to see me outside," Anna scolded softly as she pulled off the strappy heels on her feet.

Marie leaned against the hallway wall and rolled her eyes. "You went. Knowing you, you would find enough opportunity to wriggle out and hide in your room. But you didn't."

Anna shrugged. "I really wanted to eat there."

Marie chuckled. "You really have no interest in romance, do you?" she asked.

Anna shook her head. "When you study chauvinistic men and their philosophies in life all day long, your general conception of men falls. You should know."

Marie chortled. "I would need to read closely for that to happen," she said lightly.

It was Anna's turn to roll her eyes. "I am tired from socializing. I am going to turn off the lights and sleep," she said conveniently.

Marie nodded. "I expected as much. At least take a shower before you crash," she said.

Everyone around Anna was led to believe that she got headaches every time she went out for a long amount of time. It gave her ample opportunity to justify locking herself in and keeping her window closed at all times of the year.

It was a win-win situation.

Anna was prompt in sprinting to the bathroom and freshening up before locking herself up in the room. First on the list of tasks, was going through every bit of the CCTV footage and finding out the species of the animal which had been near the Dean's dead body. It would give her some clues.

She stationed herself at her desk. She even found pictures of Ladislas and the Dean on the university website and ran them through her program. As the scans continued, she set up the impromptu microscope and went through the strands of fur to find one which still had its roots. Last night, she could only gauge that it was animal fur and not get the proper procedure down to distinguish what animal it was.

She even unearthed her nail polish stash to get a medium and inspect further.

It was an hour or so before she was done with the process and matching the species.

Anna blinked at the results. This animal… this specific breed of the tiger had gone extinct around a decade ago. Upon further searching, she couldn't find anyone who had a pet tiger of this type. So, thoroughly confused, she chalked it up to a weird coincidence of someone sneaked a whole ass tiger under the government's eyes.

But it grew more confusing. No one went in or out. Then what happened? Had it been dropped before the murder of the Dean?

Again, she was led back to Ladislas, that mysterious man.

Thinking about that, she turned to the videos and looked through each and every frame in which Ladislas and the Dean were together. There were videos from private rooms. But all in all, they had only met a couple of times. It was once every few months. On the same date.

Every time, they spoke about inessential matters and then Ladislas gave him something that looked like candy, didn't pay the bill, and then left.

"This guy mooches off his superiors like nobody's business," she muttered to herself.

She was segmenting the videos and transferring each one to her hard drive when she heard a small 'clink' in her room.

Being trained specifically for situations such as that one, her initial instinct was to open her drawer and quickly pull out a pair of scissors from it. Dressed in only her tattered long t-shirt and short shorts, she turned and looked around the room. The urgency of the situation didn't leave her time to cover herself up.

She pointed the scissor to the corner near the corner of the room. She felt all her senses heightened. Each cell of her body was looking at where the sound came from. Ladislas' threat rang in her mind.

None of the alarms on her windows or door had gone off, and she had heard no movement in the room until that very point. The room was eerily quiet then.

Until it wasn't.