10 The Beguilling Mystery of Mr. Professor

She twisted her short hair into place, making sure no strand was left out. Then she changed into a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt that wouldn't rub off or shed. With her shoes and socks donned on and a pair of gloves tucked into her pocket, she swiftly moved out of the room.

Maria was in the living room, watching a sitcom.

"Are you heading out?" she asked.

Anna hummed in response.

"You're not going to party, are you?" Maria asked as she slowly turned her head to look at her friend. When she saw what Anna was wearing she snorted. "Going out for your long walk. No wonder you are so thin despite how you abuse your body," Maria commented.

"I don't abuse my body any more than you do," Anna chimed in with a small smile.

"Please. You keep yourself shut inside for most of the year. You either go to university or your long walks. Or you get jobs and then get fired from them." She shook her head in disbelief.

"I quit those jobs!" Anna protested.

"Please… How does a top student like you get fired?" she wondered out loud.

"I didn't get fired!" Anna said louder this time. There was a hint of laughter in her voice.

Maria rolled her eyes. "Okay… Okay… Understood. Did you call your parents yet?" she asked.

Anna shrugged. "I'll call while I am walking."

And with that, Anna headed out.

As she closed the door to the apartment behind her, her smile dropped.

She put her earphones back on. She dialed the familiar number marked 'Mom' and it rang precisely three times before the person on the other side picked up.

Anna put the call on mute and reverted to listening to the voice of the detective as he went about his evening.

The call ran approximately twenty minutes, with neither of the sides speaking. Anna, then, hung up the call.

The walk was silent but people passed by without giving her a second glance. She blended in like a ghost, not to talk or interact with these people.

When she reached the high university, she avoided the front gate. There would still be students going in and out and she didn't want to be seen by anyone else.

She remembered the open-air stage towards the back of the university premises. The flower garden and lack of buildings made it so that the authority didn't put security cameras there. The walls were especially high in that region, so no one jumped over, either.

Anna stared at the eighteen feet wall in front of her. She had once looked at this wall in wonder. Because the university premise was over two hundred years old, the walls were about the same age. The cementing technique was different, making it easy for people to scale the walls.

Anna twisted her wrist and checked her nails once before tracing the path she would take to scale the wall.

She sucked in a deep breath and started. It took about seven seconds for her to reach the top. The sharp wire fencing at the top was carefully navigated. She pressed down on the top of the wall and pulled her body up.

Once she was on top, she carefully crossed the wire fence and then jumped down to the garden below.

She looked at the daisies she had squashed in the process and felt no shame in doing so. This was the easiest place to land.

She looked around, and sure enough, no one was there.

She walked briskly to the window of the Dean's office and just like this morning, eased herself into the room.

The scene was cleaned up as best as it could have been, but Anna could still sense something wrong with the atmosphere in the room.

A shudder ran up her spine as she inched closer to the lock behind the desk. She squatted down in front of it and pulled out her gloves.

In her head, she went over the numbers with the prints on them and came up with combinations. Once the gloves were on, she took in a deep breath.

Her motto was: work smart, not hard.

So, she pulled out her phone and looked at the Dean's son's social media. A little fiddling around and she recognized the date that it could be. It was his wife's birthday.

For a scumbag, the Dean sure was a romantic.

Anna pushed in the numbers and lo-and-behold, the safe opened with a small chime.

There was no cash in it. Instead, there were papers. Stacks and stacks of papers.

She slowly thumbed through them and her eyes lit up. This was exactly what she needed.

She opened the scanner and took pictures of every page. Her fingers were swift as she moved, practiced from years of sneaking in and taking pictures of documents.

Once done, she put everything inside just as it had been and locked the safe.

She cracked her neck and then slowly eased out of the room.

The journey back was uneventful. But what piqued Anna's interest was the picture of Ladislas Forester at a family dinner.

As she walked, she looked at the picture once again. It was definitely the birthday meal for the Dean's wife, but at the top corner of the picture, Anna could see the blurred physique of Professor Forester.

She needed to go home. She had a lot of information to analyze, but the beguiling mystery of Forester couldn't be kept out of her mind. She had been this way since infancy. Once she was interested in something, she couldn't let go of it. She needed to unravel the puzzle to concentrate on her work.

So, she bit her head and pursued it.

'Maria would love some fancy food,' Anna justified to herself.