1 To hold me in your arms

The incoherent chattering of students was heard within the lecture room. As the bell signalling the start of class rang, the door of the room opened and a girl appeared, the class fell silent. It was clear she had run to be here in hopes of being on time, she wiped the sweat on her forehead. The lecturer smiled at her kindly and shook his head in an exaggeratedly playful manner.

"I know you chose this as an elective class, but that doesn't mean you should be late." He smiled at her, some snickers could be heard from the classmates. She blushed in embarrassment.

"I'm sorry!" She exclaimed nervously. He smiled and he gave her a kind look. "Yes well, get to your seat so we can begin." She hurried to a seat near the back of the class. She put her things down quickly on the seat to the right of her.

A sigh came from next to her, "What happened to you? You look like you got caught in a storm whilst running a marathon." She rolled her eyes but couldn't stop the small smile from appearing on her lips. "Haha.. so funny. Yeah, but this was serious," she whined, "I slipped down 2 sets of stairs on the way here, and I accidentally tripped someone over too. They spilt their coffee over themself so not only did I have to wait in line for what seemed like years, I had to buy them a new one and pay for dry cleaning for their coat." Despite acting upset, these small occurrences made her feel like she was cursed. In some weird way, this seemed funny to her.

"Well, that's not unreasonable, but Em, I swear that's a new record, 2 sets of stairs in what, less than an hour?" She quickly turned her head away and covered the growing smirk on her face with her hand, "Gosh, that's so funny, how clumsy can one person be?" She muttered under her breath.

"Renée you can't say that to me~! It was so embarrassing. I felt so bad, he didn't even ask me to pay for anything." She used her signature puppy eyes, "Ren~ since I'm having such a terrible day won't you buy me something at the cafeteria later?"

Renée looked at her and used the most deadpan voice, "Oh how pitiful you are, all the woes in this world do so happen to befall you. Of course, I would buy something for her majesty, miss Emmaline to ensure her happiness henceforth."

They both began giggling before being cut off by the lecturer who was looking at them with a smirk, "Ladies, are you paying attention back there? Would you mind coming up and answering this question?"

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After the class was over Emma was left looking drained, "Did he really have to call us up for every problem??" Ren turned to her, clutching her books tighter, "I swear he gave us extra work too. Why did we even take this class…"

It was a question that they knew the answer to. In fact, they both hated extra work, but they signed up for this class nonetheless. Actually, the reason most, if not all the people in the class signed up for it, if not for it being compulsory to them, was because the lecturer was one of the kindest and warmhearted people most people would've ever met. To top it off he was handsome, really handsome. He mostly wore light coloured slacks and shirts. It matched well with his sandy hair which was styled in a mid-length comb-over. Today he was wearing brown loafers, his usual beige slacks and a surprisingly different but well-matched dark blue shirt.

You could tell how popular he was just by seeing his entourage of female students that were flocking around him. They were asking if he wanted to have lunch with them. Ren looked at them and scoffed, "Don't they have any self-respect?" "Well, didn't you join for the same reason?" Em replied with a smirk and looked at her best friend. "No no, I distinctly remember you begging me to join this class because you didn't want to be alone, you were going on and on about how the lecturer was, quote-unquote, "the hottest man I've seen in my life, he looks almost like a god"-" Em quickly covered her mouth, "AGHSHAGAFA, I said no such things!"

"Whatever, let's go eat already, I'm starving," Ren replied. "Yeah yeah, remember you're treating~," Em stated.

They had gotten their food and placed their lunch on one of the benches set out by the school on the campus grounds, when Em realised she'd left her stuff in class, "Ah, wait here I have to get my bag."

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Em leaned in to push the door open when someone else opened it quickly. This caused her to fall forward, she closed her eyes and braced for impact. She was surprised when she realised someone had caught her in their arms.

She opened her eyes and had to look up at the person's face. When she saw the face her cheeks reddened slightly, Em hoped they didn't notice. "Well, hello Emma. What a surprise to see you here like this." The warm voice said, "Are you alright?"

"Yes! I'm okay, thank you for catching me." She smiled but didn't let go. "That's good, are you having a pleasant lunch? Ah, also, may I ask what you're doing here?" He smiled gently at her.

"Yes, and I was just going to have lunch with Renée but realised I left my bag here. Silly me." She looked away slightly embarrassed, she'd always found being such an airhead embarrassing, she thought it made her look dumb.

He laughed, but not in a way to make fun of her, "Please be more careful, you wouldn't want to lose your things… or fall because of an open door." He ruffled her hair gently and let go of her, "Anyhow, I have to go to a meeting, see you in our next class, Emma."

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Emma was almost jumping for joy as she returned to Renée. Bag in hand she ran over and used her other to shake Ren's arm whilst sitting down. "Guess what, guess what." She excitedly said.

"Wha-" she started but she was quickly cut off by Emma, "He held me in his arms." She was close to squealing as she put down her bag and dragged her tray from across the table.

"Huh, what?" Renée was confused. She only wanted to eat her bagel and honestly didn't care much for her friends squealing. "Mr Thomas totally held me in his arms for a solid 3 minutes. I wasn't really paying attention but he smells really nice, and he's so warm-" Ren interrupted, "Huh, what?" She wasn't listening and honestly didn't want to know, but looking at Emma's face and seeing that starstruck look she knew she couldn't get out of hearing her talk about it.

"Listen he-" Ren tuned her out, she'd known Emma for a long time and knew this fangirling moment may take a while. Instead, she focused on her bagel and pretended to listen by saying random things, like 'yeah' or 'mhm' every so often in response to her friend's incoherent fangirling.