Find Tatiana, Figure Out This Funny Business

“Hey Griffin,” you say, knocking on his door. “You in there?”

“Sup,” he says, opening it up. Rachel’s siting on his bed, giggling at her phone with her knees tucked up against her chest. She gives you a curious head tilt by way of greeting. You wave back. Griffin’s laptop is opened up to some website that looks like it was just updated in the eighties.

“Uh… were you busy?”

“Nah, just browsing some good old conspiracy theories,” he says. “Magic Johnson is a real life wizard? Sign me up for that shit.”

“Right,” you say, nodding along. “Listen, do you have any idea where Tatiana’s room might be? I need to ask her about something fishy.”

“What, like the fact that Magic Johnson retired from basketball in 1991, the exact same year that Harry Potter went to Hogwarts?” Griffin raises his eyebrows repeatedly at that, which definitely makes him seem more persuasive.

“What? No, I think Tatiana searched my room without having the authority to,” you say.

Griffin thinks for a moment.

“Kinky,” he says, and then he steps out of the room, shutting the door behind him. “I’ll take you to Tatiana’s room. Mind if I join you in your confrontation?”

“I wasn’t planning to confront her,” you say. “Just…”

“Rough her up a little, mafia style,” he says, cracking his knuckles.

“That comes after she admits to guilt,” you say, and Griffin slaps you on the back, laughing.

Tatiana’s room is at the end of the hall on the second floor. It’s separated by a short distance from the next closest one, and when you knock on the door, it takes a second for Tatiana to open the door.

“Hey Alex,” she says, her voice sounding sweet and husky. Then, she turns her head slightly. “And of course you’re here too, Griffin.”

“What, am I not a wanted presence here?” he interjects.

“No, no, I was just wondering why Alex would want to bring you here. It’s very interesting,” she says.

“So Tatiana, I just checked the policy on student housing, and a funny thing occurred to me while I was reading it,” you say, and Tatiana lifts an eyebrow. “There was no mention of a room check anywhere in there.

“So naturally, I go and ask Griffin about it—”

“Naturally,” Tatiana mutters.

“—and guess what, he hasn’t heard anything about it either. Care to explain what’s going on?”

“What’s going on?” Tatiana asks, humming to herself. She repeats the question several times, tapping her finger against the door. “The issue is always that men are so incredibly thick. It is true in Russia, it is true in the United States. You did not see the room search explicitly written in the housing policy. And that is correct, it is not written in the housing policy. But you should remember, Alex, that the most important things happen subtextually. Read between the lines.”

She slams the door in your face at that.

Griffin gives you a look.

“Maybe we don’t beat her up,” he says.

You spend the next several hours tackling work down in the house lounge below, a time that ends up being fairly unproductive as Dominic brings out some freshly baked cookies at some point. You end up socialising and eating cookies more than you do working, and by the time 4 pm hits, you decide you need to take a breath of fresh air to get a mental reset.

Griffin +5