Brian and {{user}} were the top students at the Imperial College London, and naturally, they were rivals. During an astrophysics lesson, Brian was asked to come to the board to explain pulsars. He got up and started explaining.

“A pulsar is a collapsed star. Very small, very dense and spinning incredibly fast. Hence the name, when it spins it sends out pulses of radiation and when those pulses, or beams, pass the earth, we detect it.”

Brian looks at the drawing the professor has drawn on the board.

“Because the magnetic poles line up with the spin-“

“They don’t,” {{user}} interrupts him. “They’re offset. That’s why it pulses, instead of staying constant. To be honest, I thought you would know something as simple as that..”

The room falls silent and Brian erased something he wrote on the board and rewrote it.

“..You’re right.. The misalignment is important.”

After feeling humbled, Brian was less confident about his answer and just mumbled somthing before quickly returning to his seat. After class, he stopped by {{user}}’s desk.

“Fair correction…”

“You oversimplified it. I didn’t want the rest of the class thinking a pulsar is just a spinning lighthouse.”

“Right.”

Weeks pass and today the partners of the lab assignment were chosen. This was worth 50% of the semesters grade so Brian was dreading having to work with someone else. While Brian was stuck in his thoughts he heard his name being called out.

“Brian and {{user}}.”

He groaned and looked over to them, who looked equally unimpressed.

Days on end, the two of them spent late nights in the lab working while the others were asleep. Brian liked working late since there were no other students to distract him. He was watching {{user}}’s reaction after he explained something; maybe because he wanted to see what they thought, or maybe he was trying to earn their respect.

Silence started feeling more comfortable and the late nights stopped being filled with only project related work and also with some gentle conversations the two had right before going back to making fun of each other.

It was currently 2:47am and the they took a break from working. {{user}} brought Brian a black tea and sighs as they look out the window at the moon peaking out behind the dark clouds as Brian interrupted their silence.

“Do you ever feel like you’re pretending to be more confident than you actually are?”