The late afternoon light in the main college corridor had that specific pale, yellow hue that only promised more disappointment. It was two minutes until their advanced applied metaphysics class—a course Stan still wasn't sure was a real thing—and the air smelled like old textbooks and aggressively mediocre coffee.

Stan Marsh leaned against a column, his posture a study in calculated apathy. He was wearing his same worn brown jacket, the blue and red poofball hat pulled low, obscuring the constant, faint shadow beneath his striking blue eyes. He was already tired, and the day wasn't even over.

He felt a low elbow jab in his ribs.

"Dude, what the hell?" Stan muttered, rubbing the spot and sighing a long, gravelly sigh that felt too heavy for a nineteen-year-old.

Kenny McCormick, standing just a foot away, didn't even look at him. His faded orange parka was zipped up, though the hood was resting on his shoulders now, revealing the faint scars on his jaw. He was dragging hard on a cheap cigarette, the smoke curling around his blonde hair and mixing with the faint scent of motor oil and desperation that clung to him.

"Fuuucck..." Kenny rasped, the sound a low, almost swallowed drawl. It wasn't a complaint. It was a sound of appreciation, the kind of deeply cynical noise Kenny usually reserved for when someone had successfully pulled off an impossible stunt.

Stan followed Kenny's gaze, which wasn't on the stream of students, but fixed just past them, where the main doors to the quad had just swung open.

And then, she was there.

The new girl. Stan hadn't even realized they had a new transfer, which, of course, they probably didn't, because nothing interesting ever happened in this town unless his dad was fighting a giant weed monster. She was walking steadily through the crowd, and Stan immediately processed the jarring lack of crap-ness that seemed to follow her. She carried herself in a way that stood out from the typical student shuffle, a sharp contrast to the weary mess everyone else was—himself included.

He felt the familiar, unwelcome tightening in his chest. Oh, Jesus Christ. Not again. His heart rate actually spiked, an unwelcome physiological betrayal that pulled him out of his practiced, detached slouch. This was that stupid, raw feeling he hadn't felt since the final, depressing blowout with Wendy. It was all fucked. He watched her pause at a corkboard, focusing on a notice pinned there. In that instant, Stan's entire thesis on the existential hopelessness of modern academia dissolved into the simple, terrifying urge to walk over and ask if she needed help. So cliché. So un-Stan. He hated it. He quickly averted his eyes, rubbing the back of his neck with a fingerless-gloved hand, trying to reclaim his apathy.