The day was a Tuesday. Rakesh’s linear algebra lecture was on the third floor of his university’s B block. His lecturer was speaking plainly about the subject, and all his students were attending him clearly; the sun was shining brightly through the window, cleaned earlier that day by the janitorial staff.

‘So, the trace of a matrix…’

When all of a sudden, a loud shattering noise startled everyone in the lecture room. It interrupted the lecturer, who alongside his class was searching for the source of the disruption.

Rakesh had seen what it was, but hadn’t needed to explain before everyone saw for themselves.

On the floor of the classroom, right below a shattered window, there lay a red brick, surrounded on all sides by scattered glass.

The room fell completely silent. The lecturer, perplexed, approached the window.

But before he reached it, another brick flew through the same window, soaring through the room and hitting a student square in the face, breaking her nose on impact.

Outraged, the lecturer ran to check on the student. Her friend assured him that she could handle it for the time being, and he rushed out of the lecture room to find someone with medical expertise.

The students remained uncomfortably still for some seconds. Some pooled around the girl that was hurt, comforting her through her pain. An angry friend of hers leaped from their seat and began running towards the broken window. They managed to reach it, leaning out of it to search for the culprit.

‘I can’t see anyone,’ they said, turning back into the room. Only a second after, in the space left behind, another brick promptly flew into the classroom. Luckily, this time it travelled between all the students, hurting no one, but it did leave the girl’s friend with a look of terror on their face.

With the arrival of the third brick, the class was too perturbed to stay where they were, and they all got up from their seats to create a file out of the lecture room. Right outside of the room met them the lecturer, alongside the campus nurse. The nurse tended to the girl’s nose immediately, while the lecturer appeared confused to see his entire class evacuating the room.

‘Another brick,’ explained one of the students.

This further baffled the lecturer, but he curbed his puzzled expression.

‘I’ve notified campus security,’ he said, ‘hopefully they will catch whoever is doing it soon. In the meantime, B313 is free. We can continue the lesson there.’

The students agreed to make their way to the new class while their lecturer went back into the room to grab his laptop. The nurse assessed that the girl couldn’t go, and her friend assured her that they would share the class notes with her later. Another one of the girl’s friends agreed to accompany her to the clinic, and the two of them followed the nurse down the hallway.

***

B313 was almost identical in appearance to the room the class had come from, but was located on the opposite side of the B block. Shortly after the students found new seats in B313, the door swung open behind them. The lecturer marched down the aisle to the front of the class, clutching in one hand his laptop, and in the other his upper arm.

‘Maniac hit me with another one,’ he said, passing the projector screen. He continued to massage his arm while he set his laptop back up, and resumed the slides to where they had left them.

But he did not get the chance to say a single word about them, before a loud shattering sound disturbed the silence in the room. This time the brick did not come in the direction of the students, but rather the teacher’s laptop, which it broke immediately on impact.

‘Oh, that’s it!’ exclaimed the lecturer in rage, ‘I’ll find them myself!’ and he bolted spontaneously from his place at the top of the class and rushed out of the room.

The students, now suspended in awkward silence, looked at one another. None knew how to react, and none dared approach the window to attempt to look out. Instead, they remained motionless, until suddenly another soaring red brick entered the room through the window and stirred them from their seats.

Panicked, confused and saturated with shenanigans, the class fled the room as a crowd, chattering and muttering about the ridiculousness of it all. Their days had been ruined by bricks thrown through windows.

28.VIII.2023