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He simply takes off his glasses and replies, “Come on, Miss Vitelli, I thought you were competitive?”

Competitive…

I have spent too much of my life being measured. Always one more thing to prove, one more reason I wasn’t enough yet. So maybe I learned the wrong lesson from it. Maybe somewhere along the way, I stopped knowing how to do anything without turning it into a competition. Losing has never been an option, not when winning was the only thing that ever earned me approval.

I meet his gaze and smile, “Let’s start then.”

First round.

He studies me for a moment, then says, “You have a hard time being told what to do.”

I blink. “That’s your guess?”

“Yes.”

A quiet sigh leaves me, almost a laugh. “Everyone has a hard time being ordered around.”

“Not like you,” he replies immediately after. “You dislike the assumption that someone else knows better than you, not that you’ve given an instruction.”

I’m trying my hardest to find an answer, but I have none. It annoys me somehow and he can probably see the irritation in my expression because he smiles slightly. “Point for me.”

Second round.

It's my turn now, so I study him, the way he studied me. The way he looks so detached and never gives more than he intends to, the way he chooses every word.

“Do you often pester your students to work with you on cases... or are you just incompetent?”

He bursts into a short and controlled laugh. “That’s not an observation.”

I hold his gaze and continue, “I know, it’s a question.”

His expression turns darker, more serious than before as he leans toward me, “Miss Vitelli, you haven’t understood the rules here.”

I lean forward too and speak again, “My observation is that you’re used to people agreeing with you.”

His expression remains unreadable. “To answer your question. Just you.”

I frown. “Mmh?”

“Just you,” he repeats. “Point for you.”

A warmth creeps into my face, and no matter how strange I feel at this moment, I’m still sitting here, waiting for the next observation.

Round three.

A smile appears on his lips as he’s getting ready to talk.

“You seem to like it when I make a distinction between you and the other students, Miss Vitelli,” he says.

My breath catches before I can stop it. I find myself staring at him, caught somewhere between irritation and curiosity. And yet, something inside me takes over. An instinctive, unthinking insolence.

“So you’re admitting there is one.”

His smile returns as he asks, “A distinction?”

“A different treatment.”

"Yes,” he says calmly.