The second student into the room also checks all six desks, and the walls, and the floor, and the ceiling, with brief glances that nevertheless have excellent coverage. He doesn't look especially worried about class size. He doesn't look especially worried about anything.

"...good morning," says Sean, so he can tell Poppy he tried.

"Good morning," he says. "Basil Stark, New York. And yourself?"

"Sean Vail, Manchester. - you don't sound like you're from New York."

"I have a twin brother; I picked up the accent to distinguish us."

"Huh. It's very good, you could've inducted from the middle of London."

"I've a talent for accents."

"If that were an affinity it'd be worse than mine."

"The affinity's books. What's yours?"

"Water. Fine outside, but..."

"Oh, my condolences."

"Thanks." Sean flicks his book open. If he's super lucky this course will mostly involve reading novels.

Apparently it's going to involve reading short stories, which is also fine, and writing essays, which is annoying but he can probably do essays about short stories.

"Would you like to collaborate on the homework?" he offers after glancing at his own reading material.

"- sure? Maybe? What do you mean?"

"Just that it's a small class and probably more efficient to both work on writing the same decent essay and turn in two copies than struggle along separately. Although coordination also has some costs that need to be balanced, scheduling and so on."

"Splitting the essays sounds good to me. We could take turns if scheduling is too hard but I don't have... appointments, or anything."

"Oh good! It's a deal."

Oh good. Sean did not horribly bungle this interaction. Time to... read a detective story?

Time to read a detective story! Will it be one Basil has already memorized due to who he is as a person? Well, probably not this early it won't.

They're starting with Murders in the Rue Morgue. Which is a slightly alarming title except Sean already has French so hopefully he'll be fine.