The First Sexassin

Korra was late for her very first class of sophomore year. It wasn’t a good look; then again, she hoped her professor didn’t care about attendance. She rushed down the third-floor corridor of Swift Hall, with the morning sun beaming in through the windows and illuminating her path.

She turned a corner, her blue hair flowing behind her. It was shorter, something she always liked to do at the start of any school year. Her white tank top made it easy to sprint down the hallway at full speed, though her tight jeans were somewhat restrictive. A blue backpack, matching her hair color, was flung over a single shoulder and was half-zipped. Luckily, her sandals stayed on her feet, even though she had fully expected them to fly off multiple times during her sprint.

Room C32 was up ahead, finally coming into sight, and making Korra perk up and widen her eyes.

“There it is…” She checked the time on her phone and then burst through the open door. “I’m here!”

The entire room was already quiet, and the rest of the class turned their heads. She was standing off to the side, staring out at the movie-theatre-style seats in an auditorium. On her left, the seats rose many more rows, and on her right, the seats descended toward the front of the room. Six different blackboards in a rectangular shape were affixed to the wall behind the platform, and a set of emergency doors sat on the opposite wall to where Korra stood.

Despite being the first day of classes at Northwood College, the room wasn’t full, and Korra remembered being lucky to have gotten into this Chemistry lecture at all given the number of students already enrolled. As was typical of her freshman year, every other student sat apart from one another, and no one sat next to another unless they already knew each other or there were no other seats left. Students sat in the most random locations across the entire row of seats.

A man cleared his throat from the bottom level. An older professor with a full head of gray hair and a full mustache and beard beamed at her with wide eyes from behind the black podium. He pulled his glasses off his face, and they were affixed to a rubber wire that hung from his neck like a necklace, getting tangled in his beard.

“Ah,” the professor said. He stepped to the side, away from the podium, and ran his hand down his long, gray beard. “I take it you would like to be the catalyst for this chemistry lecture, Miss…?” His hand extended in the air in Korra’s direction, expecting an answer.

Korra couldn’t remember his name. She glanced at the blackboard behind the man and saw Professor Yang written in barely legible script. “My name is Korra, Professor Yang,” she said, swallowing too much spit in her mouth on top of her dry lips.

The class snickered, and Korra looked out at all the many heads. Some students were still looking at her; some were buried in their phones, mindlessly scrolling; and the others were staring down at the platform where Professor Yang stood.

Korra extended her arms, her eyes meeting those of a few students. “What?”

Professor Yang sighed and walked over to the blackboard. He picked up a piece of chalk and an eraser, erased the name on the board, and rewrote it.

Korra tilted her head, now that the handwriting wasn’t that of a doctor or a first grader. “Oh, my bad. Professor Young.”

Professor Young clapped his hands to puff the chalk dust into the air and made his way to the podium. He picked up a pencil and made a little mark on the paper.

Probably marking my name, Korra thought. What a great start to the first class of the fall semester.

“Take a seat, Korra,” Professor Young said without looking up.

Of course this temple elder took attendance. What luck!

Korra rubbed the back of her head. “Yeah, sure. As I said, I’m here.” She put her head down and walked up the stairs to the very last row, and plopped her butt a couple of seats from another boy. The light was poor back here, and more light came from the horizontal row of windows near the ceiling, from the morning sunlight, than from the lecture hall’s overhead lights. It was nearly impossible to sit in the small chairs with her backpack on, so she swung it off and set it on the crumb- and gum-covered ground beside her.

“Hell of a first impression,” the boy sitting a few seats down on the same row said.

Korra whipped her head in his direction after the snide remark. He was twirling a mechanical pencil between his fingers as if it were a poker chip. His stare followed the pencil as he skillfully moved it between his fingers, flipped it around, and then did it all over again.

“Likewise, why would that be the first thing you say to me?” Korra asked, now unzipping her backpack and pulling out a notebook.

The boy shrugged. His full head of brown hair was disheveled in random directions in that sexy kind of way. “Just making conversation. That was the first thing I thought of.”

“Have little experience talking with women, do you?” Korra asked, mimicking the original harsh tone he had used with her.

He smirked and stopped twirling his mechanical pencil. Then he cocked his head and shrugged. A harsh paleness covered his skin, and aside from his ghostly appearance and lack of sunlight, he looked similar to any other bored soul in this lecture hall. “Maybe.”

“Victor?” Professor Young practically yelled from the bottom floor; otherwise, his voice wouldn’t reach all the way up here in the back row.

“Here!” the boy shouted. He wore a white T-shirt with no logos or branding on it, and a pair of forest green shorts that had a logo, though one Korra didn’t recognize. It almost looked like a row of trees with a line through it, and a bird soaring above the tree line.

Korra scoffed and leaned back in the poorly designed and uncomfortable theater seats. “This is the first professor I’ve ever had who took attendance.”

Victor nodded, once again spinning the pencil around in his other hand this time. “It is pretty rare. Though I had one other.”

Korra pulled the little desk attached to the chair into position and plopped her notebook on it. Moving no other part of her body, and with her back as comfortable as she could make it against the hard rear of the seat, she turned her head and stared at Victor. Her eyes darted to the pencil, then up to the side of his head. “Can you stop it with the pencil?”

Victor glanced down at it. “Oh, sometimes I don’t realize I’m doing it.” Not a single mark covered his face. There were no pimples, blemishes, dimples, scratches, crustiness from dry skin—nothing. Maybe he moisturized his face to keep his skin looking mysteriously pristine and smooth, given his pale tone.

“That’s not how you show off to women,” Korra said.

Victor elongated his voice. “No way.” He sighed, and after a brief pause, said, “It’s a gambling thing. Just a way to keep my hands busy.” His green sneakers squeaked when he hiked his leg up, resting his ankle on his knee. A backpack fell over, so he bent down to set it upright, allowing his thick hair to cover his face and shield his eyes until he sat normally in the seat again.

Professor Young purposely boomed his voice once taking attendance was over. “Everyone should have already read the first chapter. And today we will cover that material.”

Korra glanced around at the students below her, most of whom were eager to take notes. The ones scrolling on their phones had yet to stop, with another girl much lower in the row taking a selfie and perhaps recording a video. Korra didn’t know.

Professor Young grabbed a stapled stack of papers and flipped the first page over. In his other hand was the chalk he used to write his name legibly on the board. He left that there and started writing the lecture notes on a different, lower-level blackboard. To no surprise, Professor Young’s voice was muffled as he talked, facing the blackboard and away from the students, and the higher up the students sat in the rows, the harder he became to hear. Naturally, Korra sat in the back row, and that was where she thought she belonged.

Victor’s pencil-twirling explanation was more interesting than the bonds and reactions Professor Young kept scrawling across the board.

“Gambling? How old are you?”

“I’m a sophomore, but I’m twenty-three,” Victor said without looking at her, already copying the next line.

Korra opened her notebook. She didn’t take the lecture down. She wrote 23 in the corner, underlined it twice, then sketched a mechanical pencil mid-spin, with dice tumbling off the tip. Under that she added the question: Does he bet on sports? Dice? Cards? She left the rest of the page empty on purpose, snapped the cover shut, and propped her feet on the chair in front of her. Even if someone had been sitting there, she would have done it anyway. Comfort beat courtesy. “Huh,” Korra muttered.

Victor shot her a side-eye. “What?”

“I’m nineteen,” Korra said without moving. In a total act of disrespect, her sandals slipped off her feet, sending her feet into the air, crossed at the ankles, atop the seat in front of her. Whether her sandals just slipped off from the angle, or she kicked them off, didn’t matter. Luckily, no one sat in front of her.

“I worked for a few years before I got accepted to Northwood,” Victor answered, flipping a page in his notebook to continue taking notes. He shifted his head and brought his hand up to his chin to crack his neck. The light from the upper row of windows illuminated part of his neck, previously concealed by shadow.

“Oh my God,” Korra said, lowering her feet and now turning in her seat to face him.

“What?” Victor asked, now cracking his neck in the opposite direction by turning his head. He failed, and she didn’t hear any cracks.

Korra pointed at his neck. “One, two, three, four… five?! Why do you have so many hickeys? On one side?” Her eyes fluttered down the rest of his body, where she saw more bite marks and bruises that she hadn’t noticed before.

Victor’s face turned red, and the red was noticeable against his already pale skin. “Oh, uh, yeah. About that,” he started, fumbling to find the words, and now rubbing his neck, more so to hide the very obvious marks.

She covered her mouth and laughed. “What’d you do? Have sex with a vampire?”

Victor shook his head. His eyes moved to the left and scanned the auditorium until they landed on a girl four rows down. It must have been instinct, because not even seconds after Victor stared at the back of her head, she slowly turned around. The girl flung her arm over the rear of her seat and cocked her head. Her other hand pulled up, and she popped a pair of fake vampire teeth into her mouth. “Well… not a real vampire, anyway,” Victor finished.

“Hey, Vick,” the girl said, grinning wide enough to show her sharp, plastic incisors. “Who’s your new friend?”