I kept my tone steady, the professional veneer smooth as glass, but beneath it, something inside me twisted tighter. I told myself to maintain the boundary, to preserve the distance that professionalism demanded. I knew exactly where the line was, and I knew with absolute certainty I was going to cross it.
The lecture carried itself forward. My words unfolded, even and measured, honed by years of repetition. I didn’t need notes anymore. The structure lived inside me, carved into the marrow, built through years of performance. Every concept, every reference, every rhetorical flourish, it was muscle memory now, a system that ran without conscious thought. And yet, somewhere in that mechanical rhythm, something shifted.
The students were listening, some with genuine curiosity, others only pretending, but I wasn’t talking to them. Not really.My attention had narrowed to a single point. The rest of the room was background noise.
I stood behind the lectern, posture rigid, expression calm, as I let my tone darken just enough to pull their focus. “For your term project,” I began, letting the words stretch until they settled, “you’ll each choose a literary work that divides opinion. A novel, a play, a manifesto, something that’s been adored, condemned, reinterpreted, weaponized, or simply misunderstood.”
Pens stirred. Fingers twitched.
“You’ll examine how language manipulates,” I continued, pacing the sentence with deliberate weight. “How perception corrupts or clarifies meaning. I want you to find the place where intention fractures, where what was written and what was received no longer align. Dissect it. Pull it apart. Tell me what the author tried to say, and then show me what the world decided it meant instead.”
The room fell quiet, the kind of quiet that stretched itself too thin, waiting for permission to breathe. I let it linger.
“Deconstruction,” I said at last, “isn’t an act of ruin. It’s a form of precision. A scalpel, not a hammer. It’s the art of restraint, the kind of discipline that requires you to understand the anatomy of a sentence before you dare to cut it open.”
My gaze swept across the rows, the same way a blade might trace a throat. And there she was. Edwina Carter. Her pen had stilled. Her shoulders were straight. Her attention anchored. She hadn’t looked at me yet, but I could feel her awareness. It was always there, quiet, exacting, heavy enough to be felt across the space between us.
“Choose carefully,” I said, my voice lowering, the edges turning sharp. “Find a text that unsettles you. That contradicts itself. That wears civility the way some people wear lies. I don’twant safe analysis. I want discomfort. I want questions that tear at the edges of what you think you know.”
And then she looked up.
Our eyes met for a breath, and in that breath the world fell away, sound, movement, thought, everything dissolved until there was nothing but the space between us, drawn thin and electric. Her gaze was steady, impossibly composed, yet beneath that still surface I sensed something trembling, something alive and aching to be known. It wasn’t emotion. It was recognition without memory, a silent acknowledgment that neither of us had invited yet both felt. The air between us stretched, taut and unbearable, charged with the quiet rhythm of what should never exist. She understood then, even if she’d never admit it, that I wasn’t speaking to the room anymore. Every word I said, every pause I held, every restrained breath was meant for her. I didn’t hold the connection long. That would’ve given her power. So I looked away first, snapping the folder shut and stepping out from behind the lectern. “You have three weeks,” I said, the words flat but edged in steel. “Choose something worth tearing apart.”
The sound of chairs shifting followed, pens scratching, whispers returning to the air. The moment dissolved into the mundane hum of academia. But I knew better. The real work had already begun.
Because this wasn’t about literature anymore. This was about what she’d do when confronted with something she couldn’t dissect, when the thing staring back refused to be controlled, refused to be named, refused to yield.
And God help her, that thing was me.
I allowed the silence to settle across the room, the kind of silence that had begun as air and turns into something heavier when too many people waited for the same sound. Pens scraped, keys clattered, eyes wandered in that restless way students didwhen they thought the work was over. I didn’t move for a while. Silence was a discipline most of them hadn’t learned, and I had no intention of rescuing them from it. When the weight of it grew uncomfortable enough to make a few of them shift in their seats, I finally spoke, my tone low, carrying just enough authority to cut through the quiet without effort.
“There’s one more matter before we finish.”
Several heads lifted, their attention half-earned, expecting the kind of administrative noise that usually closed a class. Their postures loosened slightly, the relief of familiarity softening their faces. I let them keep that illusion for a moment before dismantling it piece by piece.
“The department will be hosting a literary symposium next month,” I began, pacing the words with a measured calm that demanded attention. “It’s a cross-disciplinary event that examines reinterpretations of canonical texts, how time, culture, and ideology distort meaning until language stops belonging to its author.”
A few students exchanged glances, recognizing the kind of statement that sounded far more interesting than it would ever be for them. That was fine. They didn’t need to understand the point. They only needed to listen.
“I’ll be presenting a paper there,” I continued, “and overseeing part of the organizational process. For that, I’ll need a student to assist me, someone capable of handling academic and administrative work with discretion and consistency.”
I paused, not to gather thought but to construct tension. The room had already begun to lean forward unconsciously; that faint, collective anticipation was a familiar scent. I let it stretch, then cut it cleanly.
“I’ve already made my selection.”
Dozens of eyes shifted in unison, curiosity turning toward calculation. I waited long enough for the silence to sharpen, then let my gaze fall exactly where it needed to.
“Edwina Carter.”
There it was, the smallest fracture in composure, invisible to anyone who wasn’t watching for it. Her hand froze above her notebook, her breath shallow but steady enough that only someone paying attention would notice the restraint. I had been paying attention since the first day she walked into my classroom.
I watched her lift her eyes, slow and unwilling, meeting my stare with the control of someone who understood that revealing confusion was a kind of surrender. The room had gone completely still, a silence that held the faint hum of speculation, and I let them keep it for a few more seconds before continuing.
“She will serve as my assistant for the symposium,” I said, letting the words fall in a steady rhythm, “and she will also join the list of student presenters.”
That final declaration shifted the room again, quiet envy rippled through the rows, the faint stirring of whispered curiosity. I closed the folder in front of me and let my hand rest on it, anchoring the moment before I ended it.
“I’ll speak with you after class,” I said, my eyes still on her. “Briefly.”
