(campus flash story)

They say universities are temples of knowledge, but no one warns you that they are also the theaters of quiet chaos. On a foggy Wednesday morning in Kyiv, the kind that wraps your thoughts in wool, I found myself racing through the corridor of Building 2 at the University. My backpack thumped against my spine like a metronome counting down the seconds to Professor Moroz’s 8:30 philosophy lecture — the one he swore would “separate thinkers from sleepers.”

The corridor smelled of wet coats, floor wax, and coffee gone cold. Posters clung half-heartedly to bulletin boards, promising workshops and Erasmus dreams. Somewhere, a soprano voice leaked from a practice room. Somewhere else, a printer coughed up another paper that might never be read.

I wasn’t late because I overslept. I was late because I had spent twenty precious minutes staring at the Dnipro from the window of the cafeteria, trying to convince myself that being a writer in Ukraine still mattered — that somewhere between the war headlines and economic forecasts, stories could still be sacred.

Philosophy class began with Professor Moroz reading Plato as if he were conducting a requiem mass. He paused, mid-sentence, to eye me as I slipped into my seat.

“Young man,” he said, “what is the cost of an unexamined life?”

My classmates chuckled. I didn’t.

Because earlier that morning, just before I left my flat, I had received an email from a small publisher in Lviv. They wanted to publish a collection of my campus stories — the ones scribbled between classes, on café napkins, in the Notes app of a cracked iPhone. I hadn’t told anyone. Not yet.

That question — the cost of an unexamined life — hung in the air like chalk dust.

Later, after class, I wandered across campus, the letter burning in my pocket like a secret superpower. The rustle of chestnut trees overhead was louder than the noise of students and pigeons below. I felt, for the first time, like I stood in the center of a story that wasn’t quite written yet.

There, between lecture halls and lost dreams, I realized that maybe real education wasn’t just in books, but in the risk of believing your words might matter to someone else.