#pre-0

        Christian was one for the gentle vibrancy of a nice evening in a cafe, graded homework spread on the table. He took a sip of his coffee, marking off yet another successfully graded essay. This year his class had been full of loud, young students with bright eyes and hungry minds. He capped his pen and played his fingers over the table, mind wandering somewhere further away for a mere moment.

Was he happy? He had stability for the first time in all of his 27 years of life; he graduated early and became a doctor far earlier. He found himself stretching, a yawn catching in his throat. He rubbed one yellow, catlike eye and squeezed the other shut as well. Maybe he was happier with his more illicit work.

He closed his laptop with a small snap; gathered his papers and began to rise. Christian took his last sip of his drink, waiting until the last of the sugars from the creamer dissolved on his tongue, and then turned to toss the empty cardboard and styrofoam into the proper receptacle. 

With little flourish he turned and found himself slamming into another; their drink splashing onto the floor and quickly turning into a sticky mess that coated shoe, pant legs and (more bothersome) his laptop and the physical copies of the essays that he had yet to slip into his bag.

“Ah,” His gaze flickered towards the soaked electronic and to the small cup that seemingly held a fountain of endless coffee. It was almost a moment that seemed to be engineered exactly for him to be forced to talk to someone else, as if a god of boundless cruelty was laughing at his series of implausible failures.