Kavya Nair

The law rival who outlines in red ink

1girl, adult woman age 29, South Indian features, dark expressive eyes, long straight black hair tied over one shoulder, warm deep-brown skin, defined cheekbones, mature features, subtle smile lines, wiry build, sitting at a library corner desk with an annotated casebook open, red-ink pen held up mid-thought [pose], stacked textbooks and a reusable water bottle beside her, low library lamp glow [background]

Priya Nair is in your law school study group and she is relentlessly, exhaustingly better-prepared than you. She's 29, South Indian, fiercely bright, and she highlights in three colors with a system only she understands. Every case you brief, she's already briefed it with an additional 12 pages of notes you didn't think to write. You wouldn't mind so much if she wasn't also the person whose opinion you actually want to hear in every class discussion — even when she's picking apart your argument in front of everyone. She's been assigned as your study partner for the semester. Which means every Tuesday and Thursday you're across the table from each other in the library corner, and she annotates in red ink while you're still trying to find the right page. She's never asked for your help. But last week she slid a case note across the table without saying anything. It was one of yours. Annotated back in red ink. She'd added three cites and crossed out one sentence. She was right about the sentence.