[Adelie]

aka i use this akail for nothing color-related or akail-related because i have no muse

There was a cup of tea on his desk, she observed - steaming gently, as if it had just been brewed.

There was always a cup of tea on his desk. Sometimes it was a delicate white tea, tender and fragrant; other times it was a rich, smoky oolong with hints of charcoal and sweetness - but no matter what it was, it was always steaming hot. The question of how - for year after year of students had investigated and found no teapot, no hot water thermos - had been decreed one of the university's seven great mysteries.

[Adelie]

It was such a perfectly mundane mystery, to be honest.

The high school she had attended had its own mythos - a much more thematically appropriate one, at that. There was the ghost who haunted the third floor girl's bathroom, for example, whose incessant tears were the real cause of the constant flooding and plumbing problems that bathroom experienced; there was the statue of a naked maiden in the garden, which supposedly would curse you to fail your exams if you made eye contact with it.

For the university's great mystery to be about a professor and his eternal supply of hot tea - well, it said a little about how far its students would go to entertain themselves.

[Adelie]

But it was strange. Many things you could explain once you got to know a little more - the strange noise coming from the basement of the computer science department, for example, was actually because it housed Professor Pascal's collection of vintage computing technologies, including a punch card machine she was exceptionally fond of and which she was quite proud to have kept in working condition.

The tea, on the other hand, you just couldn't.

There was a club dedicated to unraveling the stories behind the university's mysteries. It had been founded, years ago, by a few students with a passing interest in the occult, but as the years passed and more and more mundane explanations had come to light for every mystery but this one, it had turned more into an investigation committee solely dedicated to finding out exactly how he kept his tea warm all this time.

[Adelie]

There were files on this. With the dedication to scientific accuracy only possible of students trying their very best not to do actual work, they had gathered careful written reports detailing possible hypotheses - ranging from having a heating pad built into his desk to hiring a ninja as a full-time TA to brew tea for him - and logged the distinct evidence invalidating their theories.

One intrepid scientist had allegedly booked a two-hour office hour with him - apparently if you got him talking about the anthropology of different tribal creation myths, you could pretty much count on distracting him for a few hours - and observed that throughout the entirety of those two hours, he had taken multiple sips from the aforementioned cup of tea but that the cup had under no circumstances left his desk.

[Adelie]

Yet somehow, somehow, the cup was fresh and warm - and if the reports could be believed, still full - despite how much time had passed. Considering the theory that the desk contained a hidden heating pad had been debunked by one enterprising engineering student, there seemed no possible explanation for this.

The common consensus among the members of the investigative club was that since the experiment could not be replicated - no one had managed to get the professor into another long conversation like that since - it was considered hearsay for now, and thus they didn't have to worry about what that implied for their plans.

But it was constantly there, a little specter in their imagination - how?

[Adelie]

She had decided, a while ago, that she would be the one to find the answer.

Of course, she knew this was not something she could simply decide for herself. That wasn't how these things worked - you couldn't just say 'yes, it's me' and then have an explanation magically appear in front of you, like some gift from some supernatural force. If that were the case, the university would well be on the way to solving the entropic death of the universe by now.

But it was a goal to set - like how some people resolved to join a new club in college, or to find themselves a girlfriend, or to learn a new language. She'd probably never make it, but it gave her something to do.

[Adelie]

But just because it was likely her investigation would be fruitless didn't mean she'd give up on it, of course. That was the point of setting a goal, after all.

The first year, she'd signed up for one of his History of the World seminars - ostensibly to fulfill her freshman general education requirement, but really because she'd heard rumor of this as one of the few true mysteries of the campus and simply couldn't resist a chance to take a look at this legendary tea cup in question.

It had proved to be an illuminating seminar, of course - certainly of the history of the world itself and the varied intricacies thereof, from the ancient tribes that first settled the land to the modern-day conflicts that now shaped the geography of the world.

[Adelie]

She found herself attending discussion sections and office hours not to simply take a look at the tea cup she'd heard so much about, but to learn more about the subject. In fact, she'd occasionally show up to his office angling to get a better look at the infamous tea cup - and leave, well-educated about bird symbolism in historic Barakka but having completely forgotten about what she'd actually come there for.

Apparently she wasn't the only one this had happened to, although the reasons weren't always the same. When she lamented her inability to get answers to one of her fellow investigators, she had responded, "Oh, same! He's just so dreamy, every time I go I just end up looking at his face instead of at his desk."

[Adelie]

''Um, okay," she had responded, and left it at that.

In truth, she couldn't exactly deny that what her fellow club member had said was entirely false. The professor had that kind of cultured, whimsical scruffiness to him that many would consider dreamy, and the way he looked at you with that doe-eyed innocence and that thing he did with the corner of his mouth - well, she could certainly see it.

But he wasn't really for her tastes; she preferred someone who looked a little more mature, a little less absent-minded professor and more elegant gentleman. Someone a little more like the other history professor at the university, who had all the gravitas befitting a retired politician, as he was.

[Adelie]

Neither of those two things had informed her choice of major, of course. She certainly hadn't decided to give up her previous field of cognitive science to study history just because of one professor's particularly dashing looks, or because she'd been seduced by another one's particularly soothing voice explaining the political and economic causes of the great war that had led to the establishment of Terrace Park.

It had just been one thing that led to another, really - first she took one class on the subject, then realized she enjoyed it, then took another one and realized she enjoyed it more. And then suddenly, she found herself deciding she wanted to study history for the rest of her life - all because of one cup of tea.

[Pet Found]