Silent Flames, Forbidden Paths

Mondays feel like a personal attack.

The alarm wails like a banshee before the sun has even fully dragged itself over the horizon. My uniform suffocates me, clinging to my skin like a sentence I can't appeal. The air is thick with the weight of another school week, pressing down on my chest, but none of it-none of it-compares to the worst part.

Professor Cristiano Wright exists.

I hate him. I hate him in the way people hate long-winded essays and public humiliation. The way one dreads an unexpected pop quiz or a thunderstorm on laundry day. The way you detest something not because it's unbearable, but because it matters-because it gets under your skin in ways you can't explain.

He is the human embodiment of interruption. Of control. A force so impossibly composed, so relentlessly unmoved, that even the universe seems to bend to his will.

And yet-

Here I am.

Dragging myself to his class like a moth to the very flame that's going to incinerate it.

By the time I shove open the heavy lecture hall doors, I'm already late. Again.

The room falls silent. Too silent.

A hundred pairs of eyes flicker to me, my presence a ripple in the still water. But it isn't them that sends a sharp, breath-stealing spike of adrenaline through my veins.

It's him.

Cristiano Wright, standing at the front of the room. Watching me.

I swear the temperature drops.

He doesn't speak. Doesn't move.

But that stare-piercing, cold, cutting-it reaches across the room, wraps invisible fingers around my throat, and holds me perfectly, terrifyingly still.

Seconds stretch. My pulse pounds so loud I think everyone can hear it.

And then-

He moves.

Just a flick of his wrist, a slow, calculated adjustment of his sleeve, and suddenly, he's speaking. His voice slides through the air, smooth and measured, every syllable sharp as glass.

"Since Miss Hart has finally decided to join us, perhaps she can enlighten us on today's reading."

The floor beneath me vanishes.

A rustling of paper. The shifting of bodies. A roomful of people waiting-waiting for me to crash and burn.

I force my gaze to the board. The words, written in neat, elegant script, stare back at me like they know I'm about to ruin myself.

"The plum blossoms wait for spring, enduring the frost in silence."

God, I want to die.

I clear my throat, stalling. "Uh, yeah. So... the poet is, like, really into waiting for spring."

Silence.

I push forward. "You know... waiting for life to get better. Or whatever."

More silence.

The weight of it crushes me.

Wright tilts his head just slightly, his fingers tapping a slow, rhythmic beat against the spine of his book. A predator assessing its prey.

"That's it?"

It's not a question.

It's a verdict.

My stomach clenches. My palms are clammy. I swallow hard. "I mean... I'm sure there's more to it, but..."

I trail off. There's no point in finishing the sentence.

Because he's already dismissed me. Already turned away, shifting effortlessly into an interpretation so profound, so agonizingly beautiful, that I feel the burn of humiliation crawl up my spine.

My classmates listen in rapture, drinking in his words like he's feeding them the secrets of the universe.

And me?

I sit there.

Still burning from the aftershock of his attention.

------

The final bell wails through the air, a sharp, jarring sound that ricochets off the walls. But I don't move.

I can't.

My breath is shallow, my pulse a wild, erratic rhythm against my ribs. The weight of his words coils around me, tightening, suffocating.

"Miss Hart, I need you to report to my office after class."

His voice still lingers in the space between us, thick with something unspoken, something that sinks its claws into my chest and won't let go.

I don't even know why it affects me so much-why the syllables of my own name, shaped by his lips, feel like a tether dragging me into something I don't understand. Or maybe something I don't want to admit.

The room empties around me. Laughter spills into the hallway. Chairs scrape against the linoleum. Everyone else gets to walk away, unburdened, free.

But I stay, trapped in a moment I never asked for, staring at the man who is both my torment and the source of the heat that licks up my spine.

Mr. Wright stands near his desk, effortlessly composed, every movement precise, measured. But his eyes-God, his eyes-are anything but calm. There's a storm in them, dark and unreadable, and it's aimed right at me.

Why?

Why does he want to see me? Is it to pick apart my answer from earlier, to remind me-again-how easily I falter under his scrutiny? To strip me down to nothing but insecurities, leaving me raw and exposed?

Or is it something else entirely?

The air between us is thick, electric, charged with something neither of us dares to name.

"Alina." His voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts like a blade, smooth but edged with something tight, something strained.

I jolt, my heart lurching. "Y-yeah?"

He doesn't blink. "Are you coming?"

I should say no. I should shake my head, turn on my heel, disappear into the crowd of students who don't have his gaze anchored to them like a weight pressing down on their soul.

But my feet refuse to move. My body betrays me, keeping me rooted to this spot like it already knows-I can't run from this. I don't even know what this is, but the thought of stepping away feels more terrifying than staying.

"I'll be there," I whisper, barely trusting my own voice.

Something shifts in his expression, but it's gone too fast for me to catch.

He nods once, slow, deliberate. But his eyes stay on me for a beat too long, simmering with something unreadable-frustration, maybe. Or something else entirely. Something that makes my stomach twist and my breath hitch in a way I don't dare acknowledge

I should go home.

I should do anything but this.

And yet-

Here I am.

Standing outside his office.

My pulse pounds so hard I feel it in my teeth. My palms are damp, my stomach a mess of knots I can't untangle.

I don't even know why I knocked.

I don't even know why I walked here. Why I let my feet drag me straight to the last person I should be anywhere near.

But now, it's too late.

"Come in."

I step inside.

The air shifts. The walls feel too close.

Wright looks up from his papers, his gaze settling on me with quiet intensity.

"Miss Hart."

His voice slides over my skin, smooth as velvet, sharp as a blade.

I folded my arms, defiance sparking in my chest, even as my pulse quickened beneath his gaze. "You wanted to see me?"

A flicker of amusement crossed his lips, that slight, infuriating smile that made my heart twist in ways I couldn't decipher. "Indeed. I wanted to discuss your performance today."

My stomach dropped. "You mean my complete failure?"

"No." He leaned forward, elbows resting on the desk, intensity radiating from him like heat. "You didn't fail. You merely... underestimated the depth of the material."

His words clawed at me, scraping away the walls I had built. "Or maybe I'm just not cut out for this," I retorted, a thin veneer of bravado masking the vulnerability beneath.

Silence! He didn't say a word...

"I've thought about the essay."

"Have you?" His lips curve slightly. "And what conclusions have you drawn?"

"That I don't want to write it."

A pause. A single blink.

And then-

He laughs.

Soft. Deep. Amused.

It's the first time I've ever heard him do it.

And something inside me fractures.

Because it's beautiful.

And because it's aimed at me.

I scowl. "I'm serious."

"Oh, I believe you."

He leans back in his chair, watching me with something close to curiosity.

"But unfortunately for you, my belief doesn't change the fact that it's still due tomorrow."

I grit my teeth. "You enjoy torturing me, don't you?"

"On the contrary," he says smoothly, "I simply enjoy making sure you're capable of more than half-baked answers."

My breath catches.

Because that?

That wasn't just an insult.

That was a challenge.

And the worst part?

I want to meet it.

I want to prove him wrong.

I don't even know why.

But there's something about the way he's looking at me-not dismissively, not cruelly, but like I am worth dissecting, worth unraveling-

And suddenly, I am terrified.

Terrified of what he sees when he looks at me.

Terrified of what I feel when he does.

I swallow hard, breaking the tension with forced bravado. "Fine. But you should know, you're making me hate poetry."

Wright tilts his head, lips curling just slightly.

"You need to hate something before you can truly understand it."

Something about that sentence unravels me.

I bolted out of his office with a trumping heart!

Mia catches up to me in the hallway, her grin downright obnoxious. "You were amazing today."

I whirl on her. "I looked like a moron."

"Oh, come on." She loops her arm through mine, still grinning. "He didn't totally tear you apart."

I scoff. "No, he just surgically removed my dignity and dissected it in front of the entire class."

Mia snickers. "Yeah, but he does that to everyone."

No.

Not like this.

Not with that look.

Not with that disappointment. Like I had somehow let him down.

Mia hums, tilting her head. "You know... I think he likes you."

I freeze.

"What?"

"You heard me." She smirks, eyes glinting with mischief. "He always looks at you a little longer than everyone else. Haven't you noticed?"

"No." Lie.

"He does," she insists, nudging me. "There's tension."

Tension.

The word sits in my chest, heavy, unsettling.

Mia is delusional. She sees romance where there is none, twists reality into something straight out of a K-drama.

But this?

This is insanity.

Cristiano Wright does not like me.

He hates me.

Which is fine. Because I hate him too.

Right?

But deep down, I realize-

Despite all the irritation, all the sarcasm, all the resentment I throw his way-

He is the only person who makes me feel truly seen and vulnerable!

And that?

That is the most dangerous thing of all.