Chapter 59: Lecture.

"Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Introduction to Microeconomics. I’m Angela Murphy, and I’ll be teaching you this semester. If you’re here for a different course, this is a good time to quietly leave my class."

Angela placed her bag on the desk and looked around the lecture hall, waiting for the last few conversations to stop. Her fitted blouse and dark pencil skirt followed her voluptuous figure, and several students straightened in their seats before she even asked for their attention.

A few smiled, while someone near the back hurriedly checked their schedule. She picked up a piece of chalk and wrote ’SCARCITY’ on the board before turning back toward them.

The rumor that she was single had apparently reached more people than just Liam. Two boys behind him exchanged a look, one nudging the other before pretending to search for a pen.

Dylan sat unusually upright in the back row, looking pleased with himself. Liam glanced at him once and shook his head slightly; the guy had clearly been busy introducing his aunt before she could introduce herself.

"Economics starts with a simple problem: our resources are limited, but the things we want to do with them aren’t. You have limited money, limited time, and, judging by a few faces in here, limited sleep. That means you have to make choices."

She rested the chalk on the ledge and gestured toward the students seated in front of her. A boy near the aisle was still staring until Angela briefly met his eyes. He immediately lowered his head and opened his notebook, earning a quiet laugh from the girl beside him. Angela continued without pausing, looking perfectly accustomed to managing a room full of distracted freshmen.

"Microeconomics looks at how individuals and businesses make those choices, and what happens when their decisions interact. Why does a customer buy one product instead of another? How does a business decide what to charge or how many workers to hire? And how do prices help coordinate all of that?"

Angela paused, giving them a moment to start taking notes. Pens began moving across paper, and the tapping of keyboards gradually replaced the whispers. Liam opened his MacBook as well, a small smile lingering as he noticed that the boy behind him had finally stopped discussing her relationship status.

"Now, you chose to come to this lecture. What did you give up to be here? Maybe an extra hour of sleep, a shift at work, or time studying another subject. The value of your next-best alternative is what we call opportunity cost. Notice I said next-best alternative. We don’t add up everything you could possibly have done instead."

...

By the time the lecture ended, Liam had typed six pages of notes on his MacBook. He scrolled back to the top, then down again, slightly shocked by how much Angela had covered in just one class.

Definitions, examples, and explanations he had barely noticed adding now filled the document, and his fingers paused over the keyboard as he checked the page count once more. He hadn’t had this teacher in his last life, so he hadn’t expected to spend the whole lecture trying to keep up. Liam glanced toward Angela, who was calmly putting her things away, then back at his screen.

It’s been a while since I’ve typed this intensely. She’s quite good.

As someone who had already graduated in his previous life, Liam was practically cheating. Back then, he had done little besides study and eventually get a job, so most of the material was still familiar to him.

He flexed his fingers and glanced through his notes again, recognizing concepts he had spent hours learning the first time around. Even so, Angela had explained them well enough to keep him listening instead of simply waiting for the lecture to end.

Soon, Angela gathered her notes, slipped them into her bag, and headed toward the door. A boy near the back was still laughing at something his friend had whispered, but she paid him no attention, stopping only to answer a student’s question about the reading.

Her reply was brief and clear, and she waited for the student to nod before moving on. Just before leaving, she glanced at Dylan one last time. He straightened in his seat, his grin fading slightly, while she walked out without a word.

"What are you guys planning on doing?"

Diane stood up, gathering her pen and notebook from the desk. She didn’t have a laptop, so she had written everything by hand, and her fingers looked slightly red from gripping the pen throughout the lecture. She flexed them once before tucking the notebook against her side and looking between the two.

Meanwhile, Megan kept glancing between her own notes and Liam’s screen, her eyebrows slowly drawing together. She scrolled through her document, then leaned closer to look at his, clearly confused by how much more he had managed to write. Her lips parted slightly when he scrolled down to another page, and she looked at him as if she wanted to ask when he had found the time to type all that.

"Wait... When did she say this? ’Opportunity cost includes money you give up earning, even if you never spend any cash’?"

Megan pointed at the screen when Liam showed her the last page. The final part of the lecture was still clear in her mind, and she was sure Angela hadn’t said that. She leaned closer, reading the small example he had added beneath it before turning toward him in surprise.

"She didn’t. They’re my notes, so I added what I understood... Look, say you could work for an hour and earn fifteen dollars, but you come to class instead. If working was your next-best option, you gave up those fifteen dollars to be here, even though you didn’t actually pay anything. I put an example beside the definition. Makes it easier to remember."

"Let me see."

Diane was interested as well. She leaned over beside Megan, her notebook still tucked against her side, while Liam turned the MacBook slightly so both girls could read it.

Yeah, this is what I’d call seduction.

As Diane leaned forward, her full breasts pressed against the side of Megan’s face, the soft knit of her sweater brushing Megan’s cheek. Her white shirt was buttoned neatly beneath it, leaving no gap for cleavage, though Liam could easily imagine how much a lower neckline would have revealed. He caught himself glancing down and returned his eyes to the screen, shifting the laptop closer so Diane wouldn’t have to lean quite so far.

"Well, you’re quite the surprise. You’ve added examples for every topic we covered... You were a genius type back in high school, weren’t you?"

Diane scrolled up and down, surprised to find simple examples she could follow throughout his notes. Every time she stopped at a definition, there was something beneath it that made the idea easier to understand. She looked at Liam with an impressed smile, still leaning across Megan as if she had forgotten someone was sitting there.

"Oi... Get up... You almost suffocated me!"

Megan grabbed Diane by the shoulder and firmly pushed her upright, finally pulling her face free. She took a deep breath and brushed her hair away from her mouth, glaring up at the girl. Her face was red from struggling to breathe, not embarrassment, and she kept one hand on Diane’s shoulder to make sure she stayed back this time.