Page 24 of Lethal in Pink

The professor’s clicker advances another slide. The image changes. Something with a graph. Lines crossing. Arrows pointing.

My pen stills.

I look down at the blank half of the page below my abandoned notes. The dragon-pig stares up at me with its judgmental eyes. I press the tip of my pen to the paper and write, in letters smaller than my usual handwriting:

uncomplicated

I underline it once. Then I draw a box around the word.

Uncomplicated.

That’s what I came here for. That’s the entire point of Jae Kim. Uncomplicated means anonymity. Uncomplicated means sitting in a library without twenty people with phone cameras. Uncomplicated means walking down a street where no one knows your face or your name or the fact that you’ve spent the last decade of your life learning how to exist for an audience of thousands.

Uncomplicated does not mean thinking about the specific way a girl’s jaw tightens when she’s trying not to react to something. It does not mean replaying a ninety-second argument about desk space for hours.

The professor raises his voice slightly on a point about market elasticity. A few students shift in their seats.

I turn the page.

The dragon-pig stays behind, imprisoned in the margin of a lecture I barely heard, next to a word I’ve boxed in like it’s something I can contain.

Tap. Tap.

My pen finds its rhythm again.

The girl two seats over has been basically eyeball fucking me since I sat down. She’s pretty, I guess. Brown hair, brown eyes, full lips, sharp jawline, big tits spilling out of the tiny crop top she’s wearing—Instagram pretty in a nutshell.

My cock twitches in my pants.

I shift in my seat, adjusting my posture in a way that hopefully looks casual and not like I’m trying to redirect blood flow away from my groin. That’s the problem with being a man—your body has opinions your brain didn’t authorize.

She smiles, licking her lips as she twirls a piece of her hair between her fingers. She has that pick me, choose me, love me energy going for her for sure.

She won’t find love with me, but I’d definitely fuck her.

Later on in the lecture, she leans in, close enough that I catch a whiff of the synthetic sweetness of vanilla and something else—cotton candy, maybe. It’s enough to choke a horse.

She smiles. “You’re new.”

It’s not a question.

“Uhhh, yep. Just transferred here.”

“Are you in Business?”

“Yes and no.”

She laughs, and it’s almost like listening to the sound of bells.

“Elaborate.” she demands.

“Vet Med, technically. But I’m also doing business so I can run my own practice someday.”

“Wow, productive, aren’t you?”

“I like to think so.”

She’s close enough now that I can feel the heat from her breath.