Aproach the redhead

You catch up to her just past the library steps, slightly out of breath in a way you hope isn't too obvious. "Sorry. Hi. I think we're doing the same degree. I saw your registration sheet back there."

She turns, and up close she's even more composed than she looked from a distance, sharp red bob, an expression that manages to be both faintly amused and faintly assessing, like she's already decided what kind of person you are and is simply waiting for you to confirm it. "Did you now. Bit forward, chasing a girl out of a registration office."

"I prefer 'efficient.' I figured introductions before four months of shared seminars seemed sensible."

"Mm. Sensible." She says the word like she's turning it over, deciding whether to approve. "Go on, then."

"John."

"Lilly." She extends a hand, briefly, almost formally, and there's something about the gesture, a little old-fashioned, a little deliberate , that suggests it's been trained into her rather than picked up naturally. "And you're Australian? No. Something else."

"New Zealand, originally. Though I've been in Geneva the last few years, so God knows what that's done to the accent."

"Geneva," she repeats, with the particular interest of someone cataloguing information. "Who moves with their child from New Zealand to Geneva? A dimplomat?"

"That's uncomfortably accurate."

"I have a nose for it." She starts walking, and you fall into step beside her without either of you quite deciding it, heading nowhere in particular along the path that curves past the library. "And you? Wait, let me guess, with that accent, you went to Eaton? Or Harrows?"

Lily chuckles "They do not let girls into Eaton or Harrows, stuck up pampered fossils. No, I went to school in Buckinghamshire, Wycombe Abbey. Boarding, from eleven. Frightfully character-building, or so my mother insists whenever I complain about it, which is often."

"What was it like?"

"Cold. Excellent polo pitches. An alarming number of girls who want to become nuns." She says it entirely deadpan, and it takes you a second to realize she's joking, or at least half joking. "My family's rather the sort that assumes boarding school is simply what one does. Terribly traditional. My father would have me believe the estate's been in the family since Hastings, though I suspect he's exaggerating by several centuries."

"An estate. Of course there's an estate."

"Don't say it like that." But she's smiling, faintly, like she doesn't entirely mind the teasing. "It's mostly draughty corridors and a garden my mother's convinced is prize-winning. Rather less glamorous than it sounds, I promise you."

You find a bench near the edge of the courtyard, mostly by unspoken agreement, and sit, the afternoon stretching out ahead of you with no particular urgency to fill it. "So why Vienna? Feels like a long way to come for political science when you could've stayed in England and done the whole Oxbridge thing."

"Because everyone I know did the whole Oxbridge thing." She says it with a trace of real feeling beneath the polish, the first genuinely unguarded thing she's said. "I wanted somewhere no one already had opinions about who I was meant to be. Vienna seemed suitably far away and suitably serious. Also, I'm told the opera here is rather good, which didn't hurt."

"You like opera?"

"I like the idea of liking opera. You know, opera, classical music, paintings, sculptures, the sort of thing a woman of my stature is expected to take a liking in. We'll see if that survives actual exposure to it." She glances at you sideways, something sharp and amused in it. "What about you? What's your excuse for political science?"

"Genuinely don't have a good one. It felt like the responsible choice at eighteen. I like the idea of understanding how things work, I suppose. Or at least sounding like I do at dinner parties. Also, my parents are diplomats. I am just staying in thr family business, proverbially speaking."

"A noble ambition." She says it lightly, teasing, but there's real warmth underneath. "And what do you make of Vienna so far? Besides, I gather, the course registration system, which is a genuine crime against modernity."

"Honestly? Mostly confusing. Beautiful, obviously, in the way everyone warns you it will be, so it's almost annoying when it turns out to be true. I haven't explored much yet."

"Well." She stands, smoothing her skirt with the unhurried confidence of someone who has decided something and doesn't feel the need to announce it as a decision. "I haven't either, not properly. Shall we remedy that? Together, I mean. Unless you had somewhere terribly pressing to be."

"Nowhere pressing at all."

"Good." She sets off without waiting to see if you'll follow, though there's no real doubt that you will, a small, knowing smile playing at the edge of her mouth. "Try to keep up, John from New Zealand via Geneva. I intend to be thoroughly unimpressed by whatever you show me."

The afternoon unspools easily after that — you walk without much of a plan, cutting through side streets that open unexpectedly onto grand squares, stopping for coffee at a café Lilly declares "adequate, for tourists" before conceding, two sips in, that it's actually rather good. She has opinions about nearly everything, delivered with the same dry, unbothered confidence, and you find yourself needling her just to watch the polish crack a little further each time, revealing something warmer and less rehearsed underneath. Somewhere between the Stephansdom and a bridge over the canal that she insists on stopping to photograph "for my mother, who will pretend not to care," her shoulder brushes yours more than once, and neither of you moves away.

"You're better company than I expected," she tells you eventually, as the light starts turning gold over the rooftops, "for someone who chased me out of a faculty office."

"High praise, coming from someone so thoroughly unimpressed."

"Don't get used to it. And besides it's a resounding break from the norm, to make the aquiantance of a "Weltburger", world citizen, like you." But she's smiling when she says it, properly this time, and doesn't look away first. "It's Weltbürger, i think.", you reply, giving her a smile. "So, you got any plans for tonight?" you ask, daring to hope for a date, and who knows, maybe something more. "Unfortunately, i do. But i do think we should see each other again, given our shared studies, don't you agree?" she gives you a faint wink. "Sure. Can i have your number?" you reply, a faint sense of satisfaction at the back of your mind.