After the first meeting with instructor Le Creuset, my friends are laughing at me for my poor performances in her class. It was enough to drive me mad at times. And I swear on my mother's sweet spaghetti that it's my instructor's fault.

August, 2009

It's been a month since Instructor Le Creuset, or as almost everyone dubbed as instructor Hottie, became our instructor and she's been a thorn on my side since day one. Each hands-on exercises and assignments, all which I excel at, have been graded on the spot. An assignment I need to recreate in front of that French instructor? Why would it still be called as assignment?

"Must be tough, par." Another one of my friends, Micah, said with a taunting grin. Micah's a running valedictorian in our batch and I found it unfair how she's breezing through the class without our instructor breathing down on her neck.

"Seriously, what did you do to instructor hottie, Elise?" Jeanne, last of my small list of friends, asked while tinkering with an old motherboard. She has a thing with steampunk and computer peripherals and has a tendency to modify her personal computer in a steampunk theme.

Marie closed her laptop and grinned at us. "Probably because of her lame-ass first introduction."

Taking away my focus from my recent assignment – adding an image carousel on a page – and let out a heavy sigh. We all received an assignment from our instructor via email and I have been working on it since last night. "I have no idea and I don't even think it was because of her first day in our class. I'm writing up the codes for this god damn carousel and I bet she'll have me remake it in front of the class. Again!"

Jeanne, Marie, and Micah all looked at me after what I said.

"What do you mean 'carousel'? Our assignment is about adding frames and coloring each frame background," Marie inquired and looked at my laptop. She has a confused look on her face when she saw my codes and the output beside it. "The heck?! What is that feature?"

"It's to show a preview of the articles in a webpage. What do you mean 'frames and coloring'? Aren't we doing this?" I pointed at the near complete programming I did for my assignment.

My three friends all shook their heads.

Jeanne turned her laptop on and maneuvered it to the program we were using for our webpage design class. Clicking a file, she loaded the said 'assignment' and showed it to me. My two other friends did the same and showed me the same thing.

Same assignments but different with mine.

"What the freaking Asgardian?!" I was really surprised at what they showed me. All of them have the same assignment while I on the other hand, have a different one. "No. Nope. You guys are trolling me. This can't..." Then I realized what was happening. That instructor was intentionally giving me a different assignment and making me show it to everyone.

Annoyed at my instructor, I continued with my programming and made sure I would produce the perfect output. "That sneaky... sly... ugh! Dammit!" My three friends merely looked at me, probably wondering why I was suddenly muttering curses.

And it went on for another week.

My friends and classmates are getting the same topic while I get another. I had enough of it and due to my annoyance, I performed anything to everything that are steps ahead of her lectures. Something to spite her.

Right now, I'm showing my instructor how I was able to add a navigation bar on her simple webpage assignment. In my defense, she said to add anything we want. It's not my fault I have access to the internet and was able to pull a few other codes here and there.

The moment I finished presenting my so-called 'assignment' to her, I looked around and found that the class already ended and I'm alone with my instructor.

"Très bien mademoiselle Zaragoza. I didn't 'zink you are far more advance 'zan your clazmatez," she said, looking over my work.

I found it strange. Before, she would tell me to show my work to the whole class, but now, she wanted me to present my assignment only to her. How she stands behind me while I tell her how I did my assignment, and she leans closer to me; something far too close for my taste.

Without giving the closeness any thought, I leaned back and looked up to my French instructor. "Does that mean you'll finally stop asking me to redo my work? It's becoming annoying." I know I sounded rude to an instructor but she was getting under my skin.

Instructor Le Creuset nodded. "Perhapz. But I would like you to attend a zpecial claz I'm making. It iz about advance webpage and I 'zink it will help you wi'z your zkillz."

Is she saying I need to stay in school longer than I usually do? Oh no, no, no. "Special class? Lookie here, I know I'm doing okay with your class, heck my grades are even higher than my friend and she's running valedictorian! But I value my 'study more and play even more' time." I frowned at her after seeing those saddened eyes. Eyes that looked compellingly bluer than normal and somehow, beautiful still. "No offense of course," I added with hope that it would make her stop looking at me like a kicked puppy.

"Tant pis. 'Zat iz too bad. Very well, if you like to ztay wi'z 'ze rezt of 'ze claz, I hope you will not get bored wi'z my lezonz," She told me which somehow I can't disagree.

Her class was really getting boring.

"I am not blind mademoiselle, I can zee how you are bored wi'z my lezonz. Lezonz 'zat you already know," Instructor Le Creuset said.

Blinking a few times, I was surprised that she noticed that I was indeed bored with her class.

"But..." I raised my brow when she said 'but'. She leaned closer to me, lips curved up to a smile, and stopped a few inches away from my face. Her hair fell to the sides, creating a curtain to obstruct anyone to see our faces. "If ever you reconzider, mademoiselle, come find me. Oui?"

After what she said, my olfactory senses was filled with the scent that of a cool mountain breeze and I felt something soft touched my forehead. My eyes widen upon realizing that my instructor kissed me.

My forehead I mean.

She slowly lifted her head up once again and I saw her smirk at me and her eyes twinkling in mischief. Without any second more, instructor Le Creuset stepped back and went to her desk, picking up her things and left me alone.

"French and their touchy-feely," I muttered, feeling hot all over my body; especially my face.