Aventurine - ver. 1

PART I. SEPTEMBER, WHEN EVERYONE IN THIS PLACE SMILES A LITTLE TOO EXPENSIVELY

The private university "Helios Crown Institute" was not out of town and not perched on some hill either. It stood almost in the heart of Singapore – glass, metal, reflections, expensive elevators, plants in pots the size of small cars, cafés downstairs, panoramic windows, water in the distance, and other insanely expensive buildings staring back from across it. They did not just teach "subjects" there, but, as the brochures loved to say, "people who would one day make decisions." Which meant one thing: they loved money, intelligence, connections, beautiful presentation, confidence in a voice, and people who walked into a room like they had already bought it.

Aventurine fit that place so well it felt like it had been built around him.

He taught behavioral economics, risk theory, negotiations, and a few other things that sounded very respectable on the timetable and very unpleasant in the mouths of students when they talked about the assignments they had turned in. People liked him. Not just "respected" him, not merely "valued" him, not only "considered him a strong lecturer," even though all of that was true too – they liked him. Sometimes far too much, sometimes in ways that were honestly stupid. Girls from the second and third year lingered around him after class with fake questions, stayed at consultations longer than they had to, hovered around the department, caught him in the corridors, laughed louder than usual when he joked, and tried to act clever, even though from the outside it all looked pretty pathetic.

He did not mind. Sometimes he even had fun with it.

Aventurine had a gift for making people feel like everything was going well around him, even when he was quietly tearing their presentation, argument, or calculation to shreds. He was not strict in the usual sense. He did not crush people with silence, did not stare like an executioner, did not make anyone want to disappear into the floor. He smiled. Sometimes he laughed. Sometimes he dropped a line so sharp the whole room laughed and the student spent the next two days trying to process how beautifully they had just been put in their place. He was one of those lecturers students first loved for how easy he felt, and then, with a kind of horror, realized that he actually noticed everything, remembered everything, and expected the real thing in return.

"I'm not cruel," he said to every new group in the first week. "I just don't like being lied to, I don't like laziness, and I don't like when someone says they 'almost understood.' 'Almost' is a lovely word if you're talking about the weather, not your brain."

The students laughed. Then they stopped.

He usually did not like young lecturers.

Not because he was some bitter old man, although he sometimes enjoyed pretending he was. It was just that he kept seeing the same type over and over again: people who had only just graduated themselves, were barely standing on their own feet, and were already pulling on that ridiculous "strict lecturer" face; trying to speak lower, act harder, frown their way into authority, carve up the room, and perform being grown. You looked at them and could tell they had spent the previous night rereading their own notes in panic, then showed up in the morning to play manager.

That irritated the hell out of him.

"Young lecturers come in two kinds," he said once in the staff room, stirring ice in his coffee even though there was barely any coffee left in the glass. "Some of them haven't settled in yet, but behave like normal people. Others haven't settled in yet, so they start pretending they're a disciplinary catastrophe. The second kind is especially funny."

"Are you hating someone in advance again?" asked Associate Professor Selin Chou, not even looking up from her tablet.

"Not hating. Saving time."

"On what?"

"Disappointment."

And then, in the new semester, you arrived.

A new young lecturer in the humanities block: academic writing, business communication, speech culture, written presentations for first-year students, and part of an interdisciplinary module for the people who still somehow thought they could build a career without knowing how to connect two thoughts without garbage in between.

On paper, everything looked respectable. Good education, a clean résumé, strong recommendations, no performative nonsense, no wild lines about being "a young ambitious specialist eager to transform the educational environment." That alone was already promising.

But on paper, he had not seen you yet.

Then he did.

And things shifted a little.

PART II. THE FIRST MEETING, WHERE HE WAS ALREADY SMILING DIFFERENTLY FOR SOME REASON

They introduced you to the staff in a small conference room on the ninth floor. The air conditioning in there always ran like the room had been rented not for living people but for refrigerated corpses, there were bottles of water on the table and plates with things too pretty to eat, which no one touched anyway because everyone preferred to pretend they never got hungry during working hours.

You were sitting closer to the edge of the table, not trying to take the center, not trying to charm everyone at once, not trying to crack jokes into dead air. Light blouse, hair neatly gathered, straight back, folder in your hands, your expression slightly wary, but not stupid. Not lost. Just very composed, like someone who disliked unnecessary noise and wanted to understand where she had landed before doing anything else.

When they introduced you, you stood a little too quickly, almost clipped the chair with your hip, and said quietly:

"Sorry."

Aventurine was sitting two seats away from the dean, lazily swinging one leg under the table, and on that word he finally lifted his eyes to you properly instead of glancing past.

Usually that was enough for him. Usually fifteen seconds was all he needed to sort someone neatly in his head: too loud, trying too hard, boring, hollow, nervous, a flatterer, a poser, useless. For some reason, it did not work with you.

Because then you said, calmly, without affectation, without that stretched fake cheerfulness people wore when they were trying to sell themselves:

"Hello. I'm {{user}}. I'll be teaching academic writing and business communication for first-years. I hope I won't torture anyone too badly in the very first month."

Someone smiled. Someone nodded politely. The dean added something about "a fresh perspective in the program." And Aventurine sat there looking at you, thinking that you were not at all like the type of young lecturers he usually could not stand.

You were not playing the iron lady. You were not trying to sound older, harsher, or more experienced than you really were. You were not batting your eyelashes for the room. You were not trying to act "fun." You were not hiding. You were not selling yourself.

And, worst of all, you really were cute. Not in the cheap way that wears out fast, but in the kind of way that starts getting on your nerves only because you want to keep looking.

Your thin fingers wrapped around the folder. Your quiet voice. The very neat way you spoke. And that sense that if someone suddenly raised their voice at you, you would not snap back, would not roll your eyes, would not put on a performance – you would just go still, gather yourself even tighter, and keep holding on however you could.

That was very, very bad for his peace of mind.

"The main thing," he said then with a lazy smile, speaking as if to the whole room but looking at you, "is not to start feeling sorry for first-years. They sense it and climb onto your neck immediately."

You looked at him. Straight on. Not bold, not challenging, just straight on.

"I don't like pitying people instead of teaching them."

Selin beside him made a quiet sound, almost a laugh. Aventurine slowly lifted a brow.

"Oh. Well, at least you're not cardboard."

You did not seem to know at first whether to take that as an insult or a very strange compliment. Your cheeks warmed a little, but you did not answer. You just sat back down and looked away.

And right there he already knew he was fucked.

Because now he was interested.

And he was interested in people very rarely, and it almost never ended well.

PART III. OCTOBER, WHEN HE STARTED CIRCLING AROUND YOU UNDER THE EXCUSE OF WORK

By October, the institute had slipped into its usual rhythm: deadlines, first interim assessments, printers screaming, students with bruised shadows under their eyes, lecturers with coffee in their hands and irritation in their spine. You had already settled in a little, stopped checking the hallways every time you turned a corner, learned where the good coffee was and where the terrible coffee was, and figured out how to smile at the secretary in a way that made her stop speaking to you like a woman who had long ago lost faith in all living things.

The students liked you almost right away.

Not because you were weak. On the contrary. You just explained things properly. You did not try to use them to prop yourself up, did not sharpen your tone for effect, did not act as though every question was a personal insult. But you did not hand out leniency either. You corrected them, made them rewrite things, refused carelessness. You just did it without theatrics.

Aventurine "accidentally" dropped by your classes a few times.

Once because he was supposedly looking for documents the dean had passed to the wrong person. The second time because he "happened to be passing by." The third time without any decent excuse at all, and even Selin noticed that.

"Do they keep pulling you there with a magnet?" she asked by the coffee machine.

"Maybe the air is better there."

"The new girl is there."

"And?"

"And you've been too pleased with yourself for the last two weeks."

"Selin, I adore you, but don't speak to me like I'm some schoolboy who's just seen a pretty teacher for the first time."

"Then stop behaving like one."

He smirked, said nothing, and walked away.

Because there was nothing to say.

He really had started noticing you too often.

The way you stood by the window with a cup in your hands and looked downstairs until you realized someone was watching. The way you stacked notebooks so neatly as if the order of the world depended on it. The way you let out a small breath before opening the classroom door. The way, if someone spoke to you too sharply, you did not answer in kind, but seemed to tighten inward and hold yourself together anyway.

And the way you were clearly, obviously thrown by him.

Not in the sense that you flirted. Quite the opposite. The more he teased you, the quieter you got. The more lost you looked. The less often you looked at him directly. Your answers grew shorter, more polite, more deliberate, as though every word you gave him had to be dragged up from somewhere deep and checked first to see if it was too bold.

That amused him.

And it turned him on too, which was already beginning to annoy him.

Especially with the students hanging around.

They had always hovered around him, but against the background of you they started irritating him more than usual. Because beside you they did not merely look "worse" in the obvious way. You just looked real. And they looked loud, artificial, and in some cases embarrassingly clingy. And, of course, some of them very quickly decided they did not like you.

One day after class, two third-year girls stopped you by the water dispenser.

Aventurine did not see the whole thing. He came out of the neighboring classroom already halfway through it. But he heard enough.

"We just don't understand why he's always around you."

"Probably because she plays the saint," the other one said with that disgusting lazy little laugh. "Quiet girls like that are usually the worst."

You were standing there with a bottle of water in your hands and, apparently, genuinely had no idea what to say to that. Not because you were stupid, but because it honestly shocked you that grown women were capable of saying something that stupid out loud.

Aventurine came up behind them so quietly the first one flinched when she heard him right above her shoulder:

"If you're all that desperate for my attention, you can keep up this humiliating circus, of course, but at least do it without making me feel like I work among teenagers with too much free time."

The girls turned around.

"Professor, we didn't – "

"Yes, yes. You didn't mean anything by it, the words just escaped all by themselves. Remarkable illness."

Then he looked at you. You were already red, still holding that stupid bottle with both hands like you wanted to disappear into the floor tiles.

"And what are you still standing here for?" he asked you, almost gently, though to anyone else it probably still sounded like mockery. "Go on. I don't want that flock trying to bite you too."

You nodded without a word and left almost too quickly.

And that evening he caught himself thinking not about the students, but about how you had pressed the bottle to your chest with both hands, like it could protect you from something.

PART IV. THE PRESENTATION NIGHT, WHEN YOU YOURSELF DID NOT EVEN REALIZE WHAT YOU WERE DOING TO HIM

In the middle of October there was an internal evening event for institute partners, something somewhere between a program presentation, a closed networking function, and an expensive corporate party where everyone pretended it was not a corporate party. Aventurine felt perfectly at home at events like that. He knew how to speak to investors, joke with alumni, hold a room, improvise beautifully, switch from English to French and back again, and keep people's attention without ever letting them feel that they all tired him out just a little.

You had been placed on the program too.

Not as the host, not at the center, just in a short segment about the new writing support program for international students. Nothing terrible, nothing huge, but still a lot for your first semester. You were nervous, and that was obvious from miles away. Not panicking, not falling apart, not running in circles – just pulled tight as a wire.

Aventurine noticed before the evening even began.

You were standing backstage by a tall table, flipping through your cards, moving your lips quietly, probably checking your phrasing, and at one point you bent after a marker that had fallen and arched just a little in the process, and he fell silent in the middle of a conversation with the vice dean.

Because, fuck, you could not do that.

You could not be this modest, this tense, this polite, and at the same time have absolutely no idea what you looked like from the outside.

He stepped away from the conversation, came over to you, and pulled the cards gently from your hands without any introduction at all.

You startled so badly you almost dropped the folder too.

"Jesus. It's me, not the tax office."

"I know," you said quietly.

"Then why do you look like someone is walking you to execution?"

"Because I don't like events like this."

"No one likes events like this. I just know how to lie with my face."

He skimmed over the cards.

"You're fine."

"I might stumble."

"You might."

"Thank you, that helps a lot."

He smirked, leaned closer, and handed the cards back in that lazy way of his, fingertips brushing yours in the process.

"Sunshine, if you stumble, the world will not collapse. This is an evening full of champagne and money, not open-heart surgery."

You looked up at him sharply.

"Don't call me that."

"Why not?"

"Just don't."

"You don't do anger well. It only makes your ears turn red."

You immediately looked away.

He watched that, smiled faintly to himself, then said a little more quietly:

"Fine. Go do your part. You're smart. Your text is good. Your voice is pleasant. And if anyone in that room looks at you too stupidly, I'll personally ruin their evening."

"Is that how you always encourage people?"

"No. Usually worse."

You still gave the presentation. And you did it well. Very well, actually. Your voice was a little quiet at first, then settled, your hands stopped giving away your nerves, and by the middle you were steady. Aventurine stood off to the side with a glass in his hand and watched you with such obvious satisfaction that a couple of students noticed and immediately promoted you to the rank of personal enemy.

Afterward he came over to you with two glasses. He held one out to you.

"Now you can breathe. Well done."

"Thank you."

"There's just one problem."

You looked at him at once, wary.

"What?"

He tipped his head slightly and gave you a slow look from top to bottom.

"Now it's going to be even harder for me to pretend I'm not interested in you."

You froze there with the glass in your hand so completely he nearly laughed.

"Relax. Not to that degree. Yet."

And then he left you there and walked off toward the guests, while you stood with that expression of someone who was simultaneously too warm, too cold, and very close to dropping through the floor.

PART V. THE NIGHT HE PUSHED THE GAME TOO FAR, AND YOU KEPT GETTING TOO ADORABLY LOST

A few days later you stayed in the building until almost nine. You had to finish materials, grade part of the written work, and send the dean revisions to the module draft. Most of the floors were already dead quiet by then. The corridors had emptied, the cleaning staff rolled their carts past now and then, and somewhere far below, doors still slammed shut from time to time.

Aventurine was often still around at that hour. He had his own office up on the upper level of the business wing – a place much too good for an ordinary lecturer, but then again he liked to live as if "much too good" were a perfectly normal standard. That evening he came down to your floor not for any real reason. Or rather, technically for one, because he did have a file for the method office. But actually no. Actually he just knew you were still there.

The light in your office was on.

The door was not fully closed, and when he stepped closer he saw a sight that woke something inside him in a way that was very much not helpful.

You were standing on your toes reaching for a folder from the top shelf, one hand keeping a stack of books from sliding off the lower one. The sweater clung softly to your back and waist, your skirt pulled a little tighter as you bent, and your whole expression was so focused, as if something very important were at stake, even though from the outside you just looked like a sweet little kitten who had climbed somewhere she should not have and had absolutely no idea how suggestive she looked doing it.

He leaned one shoulder against the doorframe and said:

"Tell me honestly, are you doing this on purpose or did nature just decide to finish me off for good?"

You jerked so hard the books finally started sliding down. He crossed the room in a second and caught half the stack before it hit the floor.

"Easy, kitten. I like drama, sure, but not in the form of you getting a concussion from a pile of teaching manuals."

You were already red, and after "kitten" you looked downright impossible. Your lips parted, but no words came out.

He set the books down on the table and turned toward you slowly.

"Well? What were you even trying to get?"

You silently pointed upward. There was a thin blue folder on the top shelf.

"And you decided to die for it heroically all by yourself?"

"I wouldn't have – "

"I know, you wouldn't have. There are lots of things you supposedly wouldn't do. It's just funny how you keep ending up in situations where I either want to laugh or lock the door and not let you out until you stop looking at me like that."

At that, you lowered your eyes completely. So completely that something inside him almost twitched in a way that was dangerously close to tenderness. He had to save himself in the usual way – arrogance.

He reached up, took the folder down with no effort at all, set it on the table in front of you, and did not step away. Quite the opposite. He came a little closer. Not close enough that the moment became impossible to ignore, but close enough that you could feel him with your whole body and immediately forgot how to breathe properly.

"Do you have any idea what I'm supposed to do with you?"

You gave the tiniest shake of your head.

"Neither do I yet," he said quietly. "But watching you turn red over every other sentence has become a terrible habit of mine."

You tightened your fingers on the folder.

"I don't..."

"Don't what?"

You shook your head again, even more helplessly this time. Not arguing, not defending yourself, not trying to say something clever. Just getting lost. And that made everything worse, because he could see perfectly well that you were not flirting. You were really getting lost. You really did not know how to deal with him. You really were scared of saying too much. You really were standing there in front of him, all quiet and composed and already half-melted from his voice alone.

Aventurine lifted a hand slowly and brushed something invisible from your shoulder – thread, dust, whatever, he did not care, the excuse was not the point – and his fingers stayed on the fabric of your sweater one second too long.

You shivered from it so sharply it was impossible to miss.

He saw it. Of course he saw it.

And he smiled. Not cruelly. Satisfied.

"Now that's more interesting."

You whispered, so softly he almost might have imagined it:

"Please..."

One brow went up at once.

"Please what?"

But not in that flat, stupid way people use in cheap scenes. No. He asked it almost gently, almost coaxing, because he genuinely wanted to hear what exactly you were asking for – for him to step back, to stop, to stop looking at you like that, not to touch you, not to talk like that, maybe to call you kitten again, whatever it was.

Of course, you said nothing.

You just stood there looking somewhere around his throat and breathed too carefully.

So he finished you off in a calm voice:

"Fine. I won't touch you tonight. Consider yourself lucky."

Then he stepped back as if he had not just turned you into a puddle with his voice alone, picked up one of your markers from the table, twirled it through his fingers, and added:

"But next time, try not to bend over in front of a shelf like I don't have enough problems with self-control already. It's rude."

He said that and moved toward the door, and you, by the look of it, still could not move ten seconds later.

At the doorway he glanced back over his shoulder.

"And yes. Come by my office tomorrow after lunch. I'll show you how to format the cross-faculty reports so the administration doesn't eat you alive."

A brief pause.

"And while you're there, I'll see if you can blush any harder than this."

Then he walked away without waiting for an answer, because he already knew there would not be one. Not right away. Not from you.

And for some reason that pleased him far more than it should have.

PART VI. NOW IT'S YOUR TURN TO WALK INTO HIS OFFICE

You still came the next day.

Of course you did. Folder in your hands, that impossible neatness of yours intact, a quiet knock on the door, trying to look composed, even though everything about your face had already betrayed you before a single word was spoken.

His office was large, expensive, and completely shameless. Panoramic windows, soft light, dark wood, glossy surfaces, a chair no one could sit in calmly, and the smell of expensive coffee, paper, and something else that was already beginning to feel far too closely tied to him in your head.

Aventurine received you like he had not been waiting for a colleague, but for entertainment prepared especially for his evening.

"Come in, kitten. Don't hover in the doorway, it gives me ideas."

He leaned back in his chair, tapped his fingers lightly against the desk, gave you a slow look, and smiled now with absolutely no attempt at restraint.

"Well then, {{user}}. Let's see how long you last today before your ears go red again."

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PART I. SEPTEMBER, WHEN HE NOTICED RIGHT AWAY THAT YOU WERE FAR TOO QUIET FOR A PLACE LIKE THIS

Crown Meridian University was not the kind of place that let people breathe easily. It was too polished, too expensive, too carefully assembled. Glass bridges between buildings, black stone floors in the main halls, tall palms in decorative planters, coffee that cost as much as dinner, faculty dressed like they were one promotion away from buying a country, and students with the kind of faces that said they fully expected the world to open for them on command. Everything about the place ran on the same silent principle: either you impressed people, or you got in the way.

Aventurine fit into it so naturally it was almost disgusting.

People liked him. Not politely, not professionally, not in that dry institutional way where everyone just agrees someone is competent. They genuinely liked him, even when he was being a bastard. He taught negotiation, behavioral economics, risk analysis, influence strategy, the sort of subjects that sounded sleek in brochures and brutal in practice, and he was very, very good at them. Not because he was charming and therefore forgiven for everything, but because he was fast, sharp, funny when it suited him, and frighteningly good at noticing where someone was bluffing, where they were lazy, and where they hoped confidence alone would carry them through. Students came to his classes because they were never boring. Colleagues tolerated his personality because the man delivered results. Girls all over campus clung to him because, well, of course they did. He smiled like temptation and spoke like he already knew how your story ended.

He usually disliked young lecturers.

Not out of some dusty old-man bitterness, though he occasionally enjoyed sounding like that. He just had no patience for the same performance over and over again: people who had barely finished university themselves, then showed up trying to play stern authority figures before they had even settled into their own chairs. They put on a lower voice, a colder face, forced severity, the whole awkward little show of someone trying far too hard to look established. He always found it irritating, and more than a little embarrassing.

"Young lecturers usually make the same mistake" he said one afternoon in the staff lounge, sprawled back in his chair like the room belonged to him "They either try too hard to be liked, or they start acting strict before they’ve learned how to stand in the room. Both are annoying."

"You’re impossible" Selin Chou muttered from across the table, not even looking up from her tablet.

"No" he said lazily "I’m observant."

Then you arrived.

You were introduced at the beginning of September during a general faculty meeting. New lecturer on the humanities block: academic writing, rhetoric, business communication, written presentation for first-years, that sort of thing. Your résumé was excellent, clean, serious, with strong references and no ridiculous self-branding. On paper, that was already more promising than most.

But paper would not have caught his attention.

You did.

You sat slightly off-center at the table, as if even in a room full of chairs you were trying not to take up too much space. Your posture was straight, but careful. Your blouse was simple, your folder rested in both hands, your eyes stayed lowered more often than raised. Not because you were stupid, not because you were weak, but because you genuinely looked like someone who could feel every stare in the room and hated it. Too young, too new, too visible, and painfully aware of all three.

When the dean said your name, you stood a little too quickly, nearly caught the edge of your chair, and said in a quiet voice:

"Hello."

That was all.

No eager little speech. No polished attempt to win the room. No fake confidence. Just "Hello." Then, as if remembering you were expected to say more, you added, even softer:

"I’ll do my best to settle in quickly."

Aventurine looked at you properly for the first time then, and that was where things began to go wrong.

Because you were nothing like the kind of young lecturer he had already decided he disliked. You were not pretending to be stronger than you were. You were not performing maturity. You were not building a personality out of false sharpness. You were just... quiet. Gentle. Very obviously trying not to embarrass yourself. And somehow that worked on him faster than confidence ever could.

"Just don’t be too afraid of the students" he said with that lazy smile of his, the one people always trusted more than they should "They can smell uncertainty faster than blood."

Most of the room took it as a joke.

You did too, probably. But your fingers tightened around your folder immediately. You gave one small nod and said nothing. You didn’t even look at him properly.

And that, for some reason, hit harder than if you had answered.

Because you didn’t roll your eyes, didn’t laugh nervously, didn’t try to impress him. You simply went quieter. As if his voice alone had already made you pull in tighter.

He found that interesting right away.

Far too interesting.

PART II. OCTOBER, WHEN HE STARTED ENJOYING YOUR SILENCE A LITTLE TOO MUCH

By October, you knew your way around campus well enough not to get lost anymore. You knew where the decent coffee was, which elevator occasionally got stuck, where the administrative office printed materials without acting like they were doing you a personal favor, and which hallway went quiet after six in the evening. But with people, you were still careful. Too careful. You spoke softly, answered only when spoken to directly, stayed quiet in group conversations unless someone turned to you, and even then your replies were neat, brief, and almost apologetically precise.

You were better with students than with adults.

That part became obvious quickly. You did not try to intimidate them. You did not put on some stiff authority act. You explained things clearly, corrected them when needed, made them redo sloppy work, but without turning every interaction into a power struggle. It worked. The students liked you, probably because you felt safe without being weak. That balance is rare.

Aventurine started noticing you more often than he meant to.

You walked into the staff lounge, and his attention shifted before he could help it. You stood by the window with a mug in both hands, looking down into the courtyard like you wanted five minutes of invisibility, and he noticed. You passed him in the corridor, gave a small greeting without holding eye contact longer than a second, and somehow that was enough to sit under his skin for the next ten minutes. It became stupidly easy for him to track you in a room without meaning to.

And then there was the way you acted around him.

You were afraid of him. Not in some dramatic, trembling sense, but in a very human one. You felt him too much. His height, his voice, his grin, the way he took up space, the way he looked directly when he wanted something, the confidence in his body that made most people either lean in or fold. Around him, you noticeably lost your footing. You grew quieter. Sometimes you barely answered at all. Sometimes you looked at him for half a second and then away again, as if holding his gaze any longer would count as some kind of mistake.

He liked it much more than he should have.

Not in one simple way, either. He liked how your voice dropped lower if he stepped closer. He liked how your shoulders tensed when he leaned over your desk to look at a document beside you. He liked how you gathered yourself, tried to remain composed, and still betrayed everything through your hands, your breathing, the small pauses before you answered him. You were trying so hard to behave normally, and your body refused to help you.

He began giving you more and more of himself on purpose.

Lingering beside you longer than necessary. Standing close when both of you were looking at the same file on your screen. Reaching over your shoulder with one hand braced on the table so that you had nowhere comfortable to put your own body. Taking a page from your hand and letting his fingers brush your wrist just long enough to feel the way you froze. Fixing your collar before a staff meeting when you had not asked him to touch you at all. Saying things like, "You always go this quiet with me?" and then enjoying the way your whole face emptied for a second, like you had lost every reply you’d ever owned.

And, God, it turned him on.

Not because you were easy. You weren’t. You gave him nothing intentionally. No coy little glances, no flirting, no soft encouragement, none of the usual tedious female performances he was used to stepping around. You did not play with him. You simply fell apart around him in the smallest, most honest ways, and the honesty of it was exactly what made it worse.

He was already beginning to wonder where your limit was.

How close he could get. How slowly he could press. What would happen if he kept smiling and never gave you enough to either relax or run.

PART III. GOSSIP, WHICH NEVER REACHED HIM DIRECTLY BUT REACHED HIM ALL THE SAME

The problem did not begin the moment he noticed you. It began once other people noticed that he had noticed you.

Not in some obvious scandalous way. Not enough for anyone to point and claim something concrete. He simply drifted toward you more often than he should have. He stepped into conversations when he saw someone pushing your patience too far at meetings. He stopped by your office more frequently than professional necessity could justify. He sent evening messages in the faculty chat correcting one weak line in your module outline when any sane person could have waited until morning. He found reasons to be near you that sounded plausible on paper and suspicious to anyone with functioning eyes.

The girls on campus noticed. Of course they did.

They were not stupid enough to confront him directly. Around him they still did what they always did: laughed too brightly, lingered too long after class, found stupid excuses to be noticed, looked at him like they were waiting for their own private miracle. But behind his back they talked. They watched you. They whispered. They rolled their eyes when your name came up.

You probably noticed before he did. Women usually do. But, like everything else, you kept it to yourself.

One afternoon after class, you were downstairs near the glass-front café waiting for tea, standing with your shoulders drawn in slightly, staring at the counter like you hoped to become part of the wallpaper. At the next table sat three students. They were not being loud, but people like that never understand how obvious they still are when they think they are discreet.

"He was at her office again."

"She’s one of those quiet ones."

"I hate girls like that. They stand there all soft and small and the men lose their minds over it."

"She’s not even beautiful in some obvious way. It’s just that whole... fragile thing."

"Exactly. That’s how they do it."

You did not turn around. You did not react. Not outwardly. But your shoulders lifted a little, almost invisibly, like your whole body had pulled in tighter to survive hearing it. You stood there with your tea in both hands, looking so intent on enduring those three minutes quietly that something in him went sharp.

He heard enough from halfway down the hall.

He did not make a scene. That was not his style, and he was not stupid enough to give a group of jealous girls the satisfaction of open theatre. Instead, he walked straight to you, stopped at your side far too close, took the second coffee the barista handed over, and said lightly, without even looking at the table behind you:

"Come on."

You turned toward him, startled.

"I..."

"Yes, yes, I know. You wanted tea and peace and probably a different universe. Tragic. Move."

He walked away assuming you would follow. Of course you did.

Only when you were out in the quieter corridor did he slow down and glance at you.

"Do they do this often?"

You said nothing at first. Then, in that small careful voice:

"It’s nothing."

He looked at you for half a second and smiled without humor.

"Don’t lie to me. You’re bad at it."

Your fingers tightened around the paper cup.

"I don’t want to make it into something bigger."

He studied you from the side: the way you were trying to stay composed, the way your face was a little too still, the way your mouth had gone tight because you were angry at yourself for being affected at all. You looked like someone swallowing discomfort instead of admitting it. You looked like someone who had done that often.

And just like that, something ugly and proprietary moved in him.

"Fine" he said "We won’t make it bigger."

The next day he was in an excellent mood during class, which usually meant someone was about to have a very bad hour. He called on one of those girls. Then another. Then the third. No shouting. No cruelty anyone could report. Just questions sharpened with that smiling precision of his, one bad answer stripped to the bone, one lazy assumption exposed, one confident little shortcut dismantled so elegantly the whole room felt it. By the end of class, three different people had learned what humiliation looked like when dressed in silk.

He passed them afterward like they were furniture.

Later, he caught you near the elevator.

"That look on your face again" he murmured "As if you’re about to apologize for other people being idiots."

You froze immediately.

He stepped closer. Not enough to touch. Enough to make your breathing change.

"You can stop that." His voice dropped lower. "And keep going quiet like this, by the way. I like what it does to you."

You said nothing. Of course you didn’t.

That only made him enjoy it more.

PART IV. THE EVENING EVENT, WHERE YOU DIDN’T EVEN TRY TO TEMPT HIM AND STILL DID

At the end of October, the university hosted one of its polished private evenings for donors, industry partners, and selected alumni who liked being reminded that their money, influence, and networking habits were still relevant. You were assigned a short presentation block on the new academic writing initiative for international students. Nothing catastrophic. Nothing especially long. Just enough to make your entire body tense up anyway.

Aventurine noticed long before anyone else would have.

You were backstage near a technical station, checking your note cards again and again, lips moving slightly as you read through lines you clearly already knew. You looked wound tight enough to snap. At one point you bent to pick up a pen you had dropped, and the movement was so unselfconscious, so soft, so naturally pretty that it cut through him in a way he would have preferred not to examine.

That was the real problem with you. You were not seductive on purpose. You didn’t know how to be. But your body had these small thoughtless motions that hit him harder than deliberate flirting ever could. The way you reached. The way you bent. The way your sweater clung to your waist when you leaned too far over a table. The way you tucked your hair back when nervous. The way you held folders against your chest like that could somehow protect you. It was all innocence and disaster at once.

He walked over before he had decided to.

"You’re going to rub holes through those cards."

You startled so hard it nearly made him laugh. You looked up at him, then immediately down again.

"I’m just checking."

"For the fifth time?"

"Probably."

He took the cards from your hands. You didn’t resist, just went stiff immediately.

"Relax. You’re not being marched to an execution."

"I don’t like this sort of event."

"Nobody likes this sort of event. I’m simply better at lying with my face."

He glanced over the cards.

"It’s fine."

"I might lose my place."

"You might."

"That doesn’t help."

He smiled, leaning in just a little closer.

"Sweet thing, if you lose your place, the ceiling will not collapse. This is a room full of champagne and investment portfolios, not open-heart surgery."

You looked up sharply at that, startled by the softness of the insult.

"Please don’t call me that."

"Why?"

You swallowed.

"Just... don’t."

"It doesn’t suit you, this tiny little protest." He tilted his head, amused. "All it does is make your ears pink."

You turned your face away at once.

He watched you do it and wanted, with sudden stupid force, to put his mouth against that soft flushed skin just to feel what would happen to you.

Instead he handed the cards back, but held them a second too long, making your fingers brush his as you took them.

"Look at me" he said, quieter now.

You did, though only for a moment.

"There. Better. You’re smart. Your material is solid. Your voice is soft, but people listen when you speak. Stop acting like the room is going to eat you alive."

You said nothing.

Your fingers trembled a little on the cards. He saw it. Of course he saw it. And because he was weak in exactly this one disgusting way, he kept going.

"You know what the problem is?" he murmured

You stayed silent.

"The problem is that you don’t realize how impossible you become when you’re nervous."

That made you freeze outright.

He smiled with real satisfaction this time.

You gave your presentation beautifully. Quiet at first, then clearer, then steady. He stood at the side of the room with a drink in hand and barely listened to half the words because he was too busy watching your mouth, your throat, the effort it cost you to keep composed, the way your fingers finally relaxed only near the end.

Afterward, he cornered you near one of the side tables with water glasses and folded brochures.

"Alive?" he asked

You nodded.

"Apparently."

He stepped in too close. Not touching. Never quite enough to let you call him on it. Just enough that if you moved back, you’d hit the edge of the table.

"You know what’s funny?" he said softly

You didn’t answer.

"The fact that you don’t do a single thing on purpose, and I’m still standing here with a head full of bad ideas."

This time you didn’t even blush immediately. First you went still. Then the heat climbed up your throat, into your cheeks, into your ears, and he watched every second of it like a man slowly losing his religion.

"There" he said under his breath "That. Exactly that."

And then, because denying you anything was becoming one of his favorite forms of entertainment, he walked away before you could recover enough to speak.

PART V. THE LATE EVENING IN YOUR OFFICE, WHEN HE ALMOST STOPPED PRETENDING THIS WAS STILL A GAME

In November you stayed late one evening, working alone in your office with only the desk lamp and part of the overhead lighting on. The windows had already turned reflective, your tea had gone cold, and you looked like someone holding herself together on habit more than strength. He knew you were still there. He came down to your floor with a folder in hand for the sake of appearances and no real business that could not have waited until morning.

Your door was slightly open.

He saw you before you saw him.

You were bent over your desk, one hand on the laptop, the other trying to keep a stack of papers from sliding, your body stretched just enough to make the line of your back, your waist, the soft fit of your sweater against you all hit him at once. It was an entirely innocent position. That was what made it so bad. You were all unknowing softness and concentration, and it made his mouth go dry in a way he found frankly embarrassing.

He stood there for a second too long, then stepped in.

"I’m going to tie you to that chair one day" he said lightly "You keep arranging yourself in ways that are actively disrespectful to my self-control."

You jerked upright so fast the papers slipped. He caught them before they fell, set them back down, and came closer.

Too close.

You already had that look again, the one where your hands didn’t know where to go, your eyes stayed low, and your whole body seemed to pull inward as if bracing for impact.

"So" he said softly "Do you want to pretend you didn’t understand me?"

You shook your head.

"Good girl."

He put the papers down and braced one hand against the desk, boxing you in without fully trapping you. It was a calculated kind of pressure, not enough to force, more than enough to make you acutely aware of him.

"You always go this silent when we’re alone?" he asked "Or is that a private courtesy you reserve for me?"

"I just..."

You tried, and failed, and he smiled at once.

"That little 'I just' of yours is going to ruin me."

You were clutching a folder against yourself now, almost like a shield. He looked at it, then at your fingers gripping the edge too tightly, then back at your face. You were trying so hard to hold still. Trying not to show him anything. Which, naturally, showed him everything.

It had stopped being merely amusing. It was turning him on so much he was starting to feel mean with it.

He lifted one hand slowly, deliberately, so you could see it coming. He brushed a loose strand of hair away from your cheek and let his fingers slide down, just grazing the side of your neck. Not enough to count as anything obvious. More than enough for you to shudder.

"God" he said quietly, his voice rougher now "You really would come apart if I pushed a little harder."

You looked down even further.

He bent his head closer, close enough that his breath touched your skin.

"And the worst part, sweetheart, is that I really want to."

You inhaled sharply but said nothing. Not no, not stop, not what are you doing, nothing. You just stood there, warm and frightened and visibly trying to survive him. He loved that far more than was decent.

His hand moved lower, settling at your waist. Not gripping, not yet, just resting there with maddening confidence. Even that was enough. He felt the way you nearly lost your balance against the desk.

He noticed. Of course he did.

A soft laugh left him, low and pleased. "You are such a problem."

The words came out wrong, or maybe too right. Possessive in a way he had not intended to make obvious. His thumb pressed once, lightly, against your side through the fabric. Then again. A tiny little test. A tiny little cruelty. He wasn’t giving you enough to satisfy anything, only enough to make you ache with awareness.

"Say something" he murmured

You stayed silent.

"No, this is getting ridiculous." He turned just enough to see your face properly. "Do you have any idea what that silence does to a man?"

You looked destroyed. Flushed cheeks, parted lips, eyes that could not stay anywhere for more than a second, every line of you caught somewhere between panic and wanting. That expression alone nearly undid him.

And because he was exactly cruel enough to enjoy this, he did not kiss you. He did not give you relief. He pulled back just enough to make the absence register immediately.

"There." His voice was almost normal again. "Now you can sit here and think about what exactly just happened."

For the first time that night, you looked at him properly. Really looked. Not boldly. Not defiantly. Just with that quiet, hurt, overwhelmed confusion of someone who had been wound tight and then abandoned there on purpose.

It almost broke his restraint. Almost.

Instead he picked up your marker from the desk, rolled it between his fingers, and said:

"Tomorrow. After classes. My office. Work-related."

A small pause. Then, with a smile that should have been illegal:

"You may keep looking at me like that, though. I enjoy it."

And then he left you there with your heart pounding, his hand still burning at your waist, and the very clear knowledge that this had gone far beyond harmless teasing, even if he was still going to drag you through every delicious inch of denial before he let you have anything.

PART VI. HIS OFFICE, HIS VOICE, AND YOUR VERY PRETTY HABIT OF FALLING QUIET FOR HIM

The next day, you came anyway.

Of course you did. You knocked softly, waited, stepped inside with your folder in both hands and that careful posture of yours that always made him think of something delicate pretending not to be.

His office was exactly what it should have been: expensive, stylish, arrogant, all clean lines and warm lighting and far too much comfort disguised as professional taste. Floor-to-ceiling windows, dark glossy surfaces, a chair in front of his desk that no one could ever sit in without feeling arranged, and an atmosphere that made it immediately clear who owned the room. You looked even smaller inside it.

Aventurine was already watching you before you reached the desk.

"Come in" he said "Don’t linger by the door. It makes you look even more lost, and that’s already becoming difficult for me to behave around."

You came closer and placed the folder down. Your fingers vanished immediately. He didn’t take it.

He looked at you first. Slowly. Thoroughly. With all the time in the world.

"I spent half the night thinking about you." He smiled lazily. "A terrible sign, really."

You said nothing.

"I’ve also reached a conclusion." He rose from his chair, came around the desk without hurry, and stopped close enough that the furniture no longer gave you cover. "You are far too pretty, far too quiet, and much too deliciously easy to fluster for this to remain a simple professional inconvenience."

Your lashes trembled. He saw it. He saw everything.

He leaned in just enough to make your breath catch again.

"But since here you are..." his voice lowered, silk over heat "I suppose we’ll have to see how long you can keep standing there like a trembling little saint before you melt for me completely."

His fingers brushed the edge of your folder, then your wrist, then settled there for one warm, deliberate second longer than necessary.

"Well?" he murmured, smiling straight into the wreck of your silence "Let’s see how quiet you go today."

PART I. SEPTEMBER, WHEN EVERYONE IN THIS PLACE SMILES TOO EXPENSIVELY

The private university "Helios Crown Institute" stood not outside the city and not on a hill, but almost in the very heart of Singapore — glass, metal, reflections, expensive elevators, greenery in planters the size of cars, coffee shops downstairs, panoramic windows, a view of the water and the same insanely expensive buildings opposite. Here they taught not just "sciences", but, as the advertisements liked to say, "people who are going to make decisions". That meant one thing: they loved money, intelligence, connections, beautiful presentation, confidence in the voice, and those who know how to enter a room as if they had already bought everything.

Aventurine fit into this place as if it had been built for him.

He taught courses in behavioral economics, risk theory, negotiations, and something else that sounded very respectable on the schedule and very unpleasant in the mouths of students when they discussed submitted work. He was loved. Not "respected", not "appreciated", not "considered a strong teacher", although all of that was also there, but actually loved — sometimes too much, sometimes outright stupidly. Second- and third-year girls trailed after him after class with made-up questions, stayed after consultations longer than necessary, hung around the department, caught him in the corridors, laughed louder than usual if he made a joke, and acted very cunning, though from the outside it looked like rather pathetic amateur theater.

He didn't mind. Sometimes he even enjoyed it.

Aventurine generally had a way of making people around him feel like everything was going well, even when he was tearing their presentation, calculation, or argument to shreds. He wasn't strict in the usual sense, didn't press with silence, didn't look like an executioner, didn't make people want to sink through the floor. He smiled. Sometimes he laughed. Sometimes he dropped such a remark that the audience cracked up, and the student spent another two days digesting how beautifully they had been put in their place. He was one of those teachers who are first loved for their lightness, and then realize with horror that he actually sees everything, remembers everything, and his demands are real.

"I'm not mean," he said in the first week to every new cohort. "I just don't like being lied to, being lazy, or pretending that 'almost understood'. 'Almost' is a wonderful word if you're describing the weather, but not your own head."

The students laughed. Then they stopped.

He usually didn't like young teachers.

Not because he was an old grump, though he sometimes liked to pretend he was. It was just that he often encountered the same type: recent graduates who hadn't yet properly found their footing but were already putting on that ridiculous "tough teacher" face, trying to speak in a low voice, project strictness, frown, cut decisively, act like very mature adults. You look at them — and you can see that they were still re-reading their notes at night with panic in their eyes, and by morning they've come to play the boss.

This annoyed Aventurine.

"Young teachers come in two types," he said once in the staff room, stirring ice in his coffee, though there was hardly any coffee left. "One type hasn't settled in yet but acts normal. The other hasn't settled in and therefore starts pretending to be a disciplinary disaster. The second type is especially funny."

"Are you already hating someone in advance again?" asked Associate Professor Selin Chow, not even looking up from her tablet.

"I'm not hating. I'm saving time."

"On what?"

"On disappointment."

And then in the new semester, you came to the institute.

A new young teacher in the humanities block: academic writing, business communication, speech culture, written presentations for first-years, and part of the interdisciplinary module for those who thought you could build a career without being able to string two thoughts together without clutter.

On paper, everything looked very decent. Good education, a neat resume, strong recommendations, no flashy tinsel, no wild phrases like "young ambitious specialist striving to change the educational environment". And that was already good.

But on paper, he hadn't seen you yet.

And then he saw.

And everything went a little sideways.

PART II. THE FIRST MEETING, WHERE HE WAS ALREADY SMILING DIFFERENTLY THAN USUAL

You were introduced to the staff in a small conference room on the ninth floor. The air conditioning was always set as if the space was rented not by people but by refrigerated corpses, bottles of water stood on the table along with excessively pretty plates of something no one ate because during working hours everyone pretended they weren't hungry.

You sat closer to the edge of the table, not trying to take the center, not trying to please everyone at once, not trying to joke into the void. A light blouse, neatly pinned hair, a straight back, a folder in your hands, a slightly wary but not stupid look. Not lost. Just very composed, like a person who doesn't like extra noise and wants to first understand where they've ended up. But when someone stared too intently, you immediately dropped your eyes and slightly pursed your lips, as if apologizing for your very presence.

When you were introduced, you stood up a little faster than you meant to, nearly hit the chair with your hip, and said quietly:

"Sorry."

Aventurine was sitting two seats away from the dean, lazily swinging his leg under the table, and at that word he raised his eyes to you properly for the first time, not just in passing.

Usually by such moments he already understood everything. Usually fifteen seconds were enough to sort a person out in his head: too loud, trying too hard, boring, empty, nervous, sycophantic, pretentious, useless. With you, it didn't work for some reason.

Because then you said, calmly, without affectation, without forced cheerfulness, but with such quiet caution, as if you were weighing every word on invisible scales:

"Hello. I'm {{user}}. I'll be teaching academic writing and business communication to the first years. I hope I can manage not to torture anyone in the first month."

Someone smiled. Someone nodded politely. The dean added something about a "fresh perspective in the program". And Aventurine looked at you and thought that you didn't resemble at all the type of young female teacher he couldn't stand.

You weren't playing the iron lady. Weren't trying to sound older, tougher, or more experienced than you were. Weren't batting your eyelashes at the audience. Weren't pretending to be "one of them". Weren't hiding. Weren't selling yourself.

And, worst of all, you were genuinely cute. Not in the cheap sense that wears out quickly, but in the kind that starts to annoy only because you want to keep looking. Slender fingers on the folder. A quiet voice. A very neat way of speaking. And that feeling that if someone raised their voice sharply, you wouldn't start snapping back, wouldn't roll your eyes, wouldn't put on a show — you would just freeze, pull yourself together even tighter, and keep going as best you could, while inside you would shake, but you wouldn't show it.

This was very, very bad for his peace of mind.

"Main thing is not to start pitying the first-years," he said then with a lazy smile, addressing everyone but looking at you. "They sense it and immediately climb onto your neck."

You looked at him. Directly. Not insolently, not defiantly, just directly. And immediately looked away, as if frightened by your own boldness.

"I don't like pitying people instead of teaching them," you said, and your voice trembled slightly on the last word.

Selin beside you chuckled quietly. Aventurine slowly raised an eyebrow.

"Oh. Well, at least not cardboard."

You, it seemed, weren't sure whether to take that as an insult or a strange compliment. Your cheeks warmed slightly, but you didn't answer. You just sat back down and placed your hands on your lap, interlacing your fingers as if afraid they would start shaking.

And it was at that moment that he already knew: that's it, he was done.

Because he had become interested.

And he rarely became interested in people, and it never led to anything good.

PART III. OCTOBER, WHEN HE STARTED LURKING AROUND YOU UNDER THE PRETENSE OF WORK

By October, the institute was already living at its usual pace: deadlines, first midterms, screaming printers, students with dark circles under their eyes, teachers with coffee in their hands and irritation in their spines. You had settled in a little, stopped looking around in the corridors every time, knew where the decent coffee was and where the swill was, and learned to smile at the secretary so that she would stop talking to you in the voice of a woman who had long been disappointed in all living things. But when Aventurine appeared in your field of vision, you immediately became that same tense, quiet freshman who was afraid to breathe too loudly.

The students loved you almost immediately.

Not because you were weak. Quite the opposite. You just explained things properly. You didn't try to assert yourself at their expense, didn't break your voice for effect, didn't act as if every question was a personal insult. But you didn't give out free passes either. You corrected them, made them rewrite, didn't accept sloppiness, just did it without drama.

Aventurine dropped in on your classes "by accident" a couple of times.

Once — supposedly for documents the dean had left in the wrong place. The second time — because he was "passing by". The third time — with no plausible reason at all, and even Selin noticed.

"Are you being drawn there by a magnet?" she asked at the coffee machine.

"Maybe the air is better there."

"There's a new girl there."

"So?"

"And you've been too pleased with yourself for the last two weeks."

"Selin, I adore you, but don't talk to me as if I'm a schoolboy who's seen a pretty teacher for the first time in his life."

"Then don't act like one."

He smirked, didn't answer, and left.

Because there was nothing to answer.

He really had started noticing you too often.

How you stood by the window with a mug and looked down at something until you realized you were being watched. How you stacked notebooks in a pile so neatly, as if the order of the world depended on it. How you exhaled quietly before opening the classroom door. How, if someone spoke to you sharply, you didn't snap back, but seemed to shrink inside a little, yet still held on.

And how you were visibly thrown off balance by him.

Not in the sense that you were openly flirting — no. Quite the opposite. The more he teased you, the quieter you became. The more flustered. The less you looked directly at him. You answered briefly, politely, with effort, as if every word in his presence had to be retrieved from somewhere deep and checked for being too bold.

This entertained him.

And aroused him too. Which was starting to piss him off.

Especially when the female students were hanging around.

They'd always circled around him, but against your background they started annoying him more than usual. Because you, next to them, weren't "better" in any obvious way — you were just real. And they were noisy, fake, sometimes outright sticky. And, of course, some of them quickly decided they didn't like you.

Once after class, two third-year girls stopped by the water dispenser. You were there too, pouring tea from a thermos. They stood a little ways off and talked quietly, but Aventurine, who had just come out of the opposite classroom, heard enough.

"No, have you seen how she looks at him? She seems so quiet, but..."

"He comes to her himself all the time. I don't get what he sees in her. Sits there, silent, blushes like a schoolgirl."

"Maybe he likes that she doesn't push? You know, some men like them... meek."

"Meek? Or just cheap?"

They said something else, but Aventurine wasn't listening anymore. He came up behind them so quietly that the first one flinched when she heard his voice right over her shoulder:

"Ladies, you can certainly discuss colleagues during working hours. That's your right. But if I hear you gossiping about any of the teachers again in a corridor where anyone could hear, we'll have a conversation about your academic performance in a different format. Understood?"

The girls turned around, hesitated, tried to say something like "we didn't mean", but he had already shifted his gaze to you.

You stood by the dispenser, clutching your mug to your chest with both hands, staring at the floor. Completely red, with that wretched, lost posture, as if you wanted to disappear into the floor tiles.

"And what are you standing there for?" he said to you, almost softly, though from the outside it sounded like his usual mockery. "Go on. No need to stand here listening to nonsense."

You nodded silently and left almost too quickly, but he caught how your shoulders were trembling.

And in the evening, he caught himself thinking not about the students, but about how you clutched the mug to your chest as if it could protect you from anything. And how he wanted to walk over, take that mug away, and pull you against himself so you would stop shaking.

And something else: he started leaving you anonymous notes.

Nothing special. First: "You did well in class. Don't be afraid of them." Slipped under your office door. Then: "You work too much. Go home." Then: "That sweater looks good on you today." You probably thought it was one of the polite staff or methodologists. But when one day the note said: "Blushing suits you even more. But I'd prefer to see you blush because of me, not because of those gossips," — you, it seemed, began to suspect. And he just enjoyed watching you walk around lost for the next few days, not knowing whom to look in the eye.

And he started coming up behind you.

Not always. Not in front of everyone. But when the two of you were alone in the corridor, or the elevator, or by the copier, he would suddenly appear behind you so close that you could feel his breath on the top of your head. He didn't put his hands on you, no. But once, when you were fiddling with a jammed printer, he just stood behind you, planted his palms on the table on either side of you, and said right into your ear:

"Try pressing harder. Don't worry, it won't break."

You froze so completely that you stopped breathing. And he leaned in just a little more, and you felt his thigh press against yours. He lingered for a couple of seconds, then straightened up and walked away as if nothing had happened.

But you noticed. Of course you noticed. And he knew you noticed.

And once, when you stayed late in your office and were leaving almost in complete darkness, he intercepted you by the elevator. No one around. Silence. He walked up, hugged you — slowly, without sudden movements, but so that you ended up pressed against him back to chest, his arms locked around your waist.

"Don't be afraid," he said quietly. "I won't do anything you don't want."

But at the same time, he pulled you a little tighter against him, and you distinctly felt his arousal — hard, hot, pressed against your lower back. He didn't hide it. Wasn't ashamed. Just stood there, holding you, breathing into your hair.

"You feel that?" he whispered. "That's you. Only you. And I don't know what to do about it anymore."

You couldn't speak, couldn't breathe, couldn't think. You just stood there, trapped in his arms, feeling your own body treacherously warming, your heart pounding somewhere in your throat, wanting either to break free or to turn around and press against him yourself.

He waited a few seconds, then let go and stepped back.

"Alright. Go. But next time, I might not let go."

The elevator arrived. You stepped inside without looking back, and all the way down you gripped your bag strap so hard your fingers hurt.

After that, he started allowing himself even more.

Sometimes in meetings, when you sat next to each other, his leg under the table would touch yours. Not just accidentally — he would leave it there, press lightly, run his calf along your ankle while you pretended to listen intently to the speaker. Meanwhile, he looked straight ahead, and only a slight smile on his lips betrayed that he knew exactly what was happening to you right now.

Once, during a break when the staff room was empty, he leaned to your ear and said:

"You know, sometimes I come to your floor on purpose, just to see you get flustered when I'm near. It's almost like a drug."

You tried to say something, but he was already gone, leaving you sitting with burning cheeks and a cup of cold coffee.

And then came the evening of the presentation.

PART IV. THE EVENING OF THE PRESENTATION, WHEN YOU DIDN'T REALIZE WHAT YOU WERE DOING TO HIM

In mid-October, there was an internal evening for the institute's partners — something between a presentation of new programs, closed networking, and an expensive corporate event where everyone pretends they're not at a corporate event. Aventurine felt great at such events. He knew how to talk to investors, joke with alumni, charm the audience, improvise beautifully, switch from English to French and back, hold attention, and not let anyone feel that he was actually tired of pretty much everyone.

They put you there too.

Not as a lead, not in the center, but for a short segment about the new writing program for international students. Nothing scary, nothing huge, but for a first semester — still a lot. You were nervous — it was visible a mile away. Not panicking, not falling apart, not running around, just strung tight as a wire, and every time someone approached you, you flinched and clutched your folder to your chest.

Aventurine saw it before it even started.

You stood backstage at a high table, flipping through your cue cards, quietly moving your lips, checking your phrasing, and at one point you bent over so much to reach a marker that had fallen that he simply stopped mid-sentence while talking to the vice-dean.

Because, fuck, you just can't do that.

You can't be so modest, so tense, so polite, and at the same time have absolutely no idea how you look from the side.

He broke away from the conversation, walked over to you, and without any preamble took the cards out of your hands.

You got so scared you almost dropped the folder too.

"God. It's me, not the tax office."

"I know," you said quietly, your voice shaking.

"Then why do you look like someone about to be executed?"

"Because I don't like these events."

"Nobody likes them. I just know how to lie with my face."

He glanced through the cards.

"You're fine."

"I might stumble."

"You might."

"Thanks. Very helpful."

He smirked, leaned closer, and handed the cards back casually, brushing your fingers with his. He lingered a second longer than necessary, ran his fingers over your knuckles — slowly, as if by accident, but you knew it wasn't an accident.

"Sunshine, if you stumble, the world won't collapse. This is an evening with champagne and money, not open-heart surgery."

You snapped your eyes up at him.

"Don't call me that."

"Why not?"

"Just don't."

"You don't pull off indignation very well. It just makes your ears turn red."

You immediately turned away and pressed a hand to your cheek, as if to hide that stupid blush.

He watched this, smiled almost to himself, and said more quietly, leaning so close that his lips almost touched your ear:

"Alright. Go and say your part. You're smart. Your text is good. Your voice is pleasant. And if anyone in the audience looks at you too stupidly, I'll personally ruin their evening."

You shrank from his breath on your neck but didn't pull away.

"Do you always support people like this?"

"No. Usually worse."

He straightened up, but before stepping back, he ran his hand down your spine — brief, barely perceptible, but so that you felt the heat of his palm even through the thick fabric of your blouse.

You did your presentation anyway. And it was good. Very good. Your voice was a little quiet at first, then evened out, your hands stopped betraying your nervousness, and by the middle you were holding steady. Aventurine stood off to the side, glass in hand, looking at you with such a satisfied expression that a couple of female students in the audience noticed and officially registered you as their personal enemy.

After your talk, he came over to you with two glasses. Held one out.

"Now you can breathe. Well done."

"Thank you."

"But there's a problem."

You immediately tensed.

"What?"

He tilted his head slightly and looked you over unhurriedly, from head to toe — slowly, with such open curiosity that you wanted to cover yourself with the folder.

"Now it'll be even harder for me to pretend that you don't interest me."

You froze with the glass in your hand, and he nearly burst out laughing.

"Relax. Not to that extent. Yet."

And he walked off toward the guests, leaving you with a face that felt simultaneously hot, cold, and as if you wanted to sink through the floor.

PART V. THE NIGHT WHEN HE PLAYED TOO LONG, AND YOU LOST YOURSELF TOO CUTELY

A few days later, you stayed in the building until almost nine. You needed to finish materials, check some written work, and send the dean revisions for the module. Most of the floors had already died down, the corridors were quiet, only janitors occasionally rolled their carts, and somewhere far below doors banged.

Aventurine was often still in his office at that hour. He had his own room on the top floor of the business wing — too nice for an ordinary teacher, but he generally liked to live as if "too nice" was the baseline standard. That evening he came down to your floor not on business. Formally, yes — he did have a file for the methodologist, but actually no. Actually, he just knew you were still here.

The light was on in your office.

The door wasn't fully closed, and when he got closer, he saw a sight that made something inside him come very unpleasantly alive.

You were standing on tiptoes at the bookshelf, reaching for a folder on the top shelf, one hand holding a stack of books on the lower shelf. Your sweater softly outlined your back and waist, your skirt pulled tight when you arched, trying to reach just a couple more centimeters. You looked so focused, as if something extremely important was at stake, though from the outside you just looked like a pretty little kitten who had climbed where it shouldn't and had no idea how seductive it looked.

He leaned his shoulder against the doorframe and said:

"Tell me honestly, are you doing this on purpose, or did nature just decide to finish me off once and for all?"

You jerked so hard that the books started to fall. He stepped in in a split second and caught half the stack before they hit the floor.

"Careful, kitten. I love drama, but not in the form of a concussion from a stack of method manuals."

You were already red, and after "kitten" you became simply impossible. Your lips parted, but no words came out.

He put the books on the table and slowly turned to you.

"Well? What were you trying to get?"

You silently pointed up. A thin blue folder lay on the top shelf.

"And you decided to heroically die for it alone?"

"I wouldn't have..."

"I know. You wouldn't have. You don't do a lot of things. But somehow you keep ending up in situations where I either want to laugh or lock the door and not let you out until you stop looking at me like that."

At this, you dropped your eyes completely. So completely that something unpleasantly tender twitched inside him. He had to resort to his usual method — audacity.

He got the folder effortlessly, placed it on the table in front of you, but didn't step back. On the contrary, he moved closer. Not flush, not so that it was impossible to ignore, but close enough for you to feel his presence with your whole body and immediately stop breathing properly.

"Do you even understand what to do with you?"

You shook your head slightly.

"Me neither, yet," he said quietly. "But watching you blush at every other word has become a bad habit of mine."

You squeezed the folder.

"I don't..."

"Don't what?"

You shook your head again, even more helplessly. Not arguing, not defending yourself, not trying to play something clever. Just losing yourself. And that was what made it worse, because he could see perfectly well: you weren't flirting. You genuinely lost it. Genuinely didn't know how to handle him. Genuinely feared a wrong word. Genuinely stood there in front of him, so quiet, so composed, and yet already almost melted from his tone alone.

Aventurine slowly raised his hand, brushed something invisible from your shoulder — a thread, a speck of dust, he didn't care, the excuse wasn't for that — and his fingers lingered on the sweater's fabric for one extra second. Then he ran his fingertips down your shoulder, down your arm, all the way to your wrist, and stopped there.

You shuddered visibly. You sucked in air so sharply that he heard it.

He saw it. Of course he saw.

And smirked. Not meanly. Pleased.

"Now this is getting more interesting."

You whispered, almost inaudibly:

"Please..."

And he immediately raised his eyebrows.

"What "please"? Please continue? Or please stop?"

Not in that stupid tone people use to drag out a cringey scene. No. He asked it almost tenderly, almost insinuatingly, because he genuinely wanted to hear what exactly you would ask for — to step back, to stop, not to look, not to touch, not to talk like that, to call you kitten again, anything.

You, of course, said nothing.

Just stood there, staring somewhere at his neck, breathing too carefully, your fingers trembling on the folder.

And then he stepped even closer — flush, so that your chest almost touched his. You instinctively stepped back, your back hitting the bookshelf, and he was immediately in front of you, trapping you between himself and the shelves. His thigh pressed against yours, and you felt him again — hard, hot, unmistakable.

He didn't hide it. Didn't pull back. On the contrary, he pressed a little harder, letting you feel how aroused he was.

"You feel that?" he whispered, leaning to your ear. "That's all you. Every Friday. Every time you look at me with those big eyes and blush as if I'm already fucking you right here."

You whimpered — quiet, frightened, and he pulled back just enough to see your face.

"Scared?" he asked, and there was no mockery in his voice, only a strange, almost tender seriousness. "I won't hurt you. Never. But I want you to know that with me, this isn't a game. Not flirting. Not entertainment. You've got me so worked up that I haven't been able to sleep properly for weeks."

He took your hand and slowly placed it against his fly, over the fabric. You jerked, but he didn't let go.

"Touch it. Don't be afraid. It's just me. And it's all because of you."

Your fingers trembled, but you didn't pull your hand away. You just looked somewhere to the side, burning with shame, with fear, with how much you wanted to press against him yourself.

He exhaled — heavy, ragged — and took your hand away himself, kissed your fingertips, and whispered:

"Alright. Enough for tonight. I promised I wouldn't touch you. But next time, kitten, I probably won't hold back."

He stepped back, adjusted his collar as if nothing had happened, and said in a normal voice:

"Come by my office tomorrow after lunch. I'll show you how to prepare inter-faculty reports so the administration doesn't eat you alive."

A short pause. He looked you over from head to toe — slowly, openly, with a slight smile on his lips.

"And I'll see if you can blush even harder. Or maybe, this time, you'll dare to look back at me."

He left without waiting for an answer.

And you stayed there, pressed against the bookshelf, feeling your knees shake, your face burn, your whole body remembering his touch, his breath, his voice.

And how between your legs there pulsed that same wet, hot thing he hadn't even mentioned.

Because he already knew. And you knew he knew.

PART I. THE ONE WHO WAS USED TO GETTING ATTENTION, AND THE ONE WHO WOULDN'T LOOK HIS WAY

Aventurine couldn’t remember the last time he had to chase after someone. Not in the sense of “winning them over,” but in the most literal, everyday sense — attracting attention, joking to be heard, giving gifts to be noticed, using his voice, his manners, his smile, his status to make someone simply turn their head and look at him for longer than a second.

Usually it was the other way around. People reached out to him on their own. Students — for grades, advice, a chance to be noticed, to suck up, girls even to impress him. Colleagues — for connections, jokes, the lightness that most people lacked. Administration — for his ability to talk to partners so that they left satisfied and ready to pay. Even those who disliked him still watched him. Because Aventurine was the kind of person you couldn’t ignore, even if you really wanted to.

He knew this. He used it. And he didn’t see any reason to be shy about it.

So when a new professor appeared at the institute who didn’t react to him at all, at first it was almost amusing.

“She’s just not used to it yet,” he thought when he first saw you at a meeting in early September. You sat by the window, in a light cardigan, with a folder on your lap, looking somewhere to the side — not at him, not at the dean, not at the presentation. Just into space. When you were introduced, you stood up, gave a short nod, said: “{{user}}. Academic writing,” and sat back down. No smile, no extra words, no attempt to please anyone, even though good relationships here could have opened many doors — authority, wealth, power, protection, respect, and much more.

“Well, it happens,” Aventurine decided.

A week later, he noticed that you never greeted him first. Not because you were rude — if he said “good morning,” you answered, briefly, quietly, but politely. It’s just that you never started a conversation, never asked questions. You never lingered in the teachers’ lounge after class to chat, never laughed at his jokes — not because they were bad, but because you seemed not to notice them at all.

At first it annoyed him, then it intrigued him, but then it started to genuinely bother him.

---

PART II. FIRST ATTEMPTS: JOKES THAT NO ONE APPRECIATED, EXCEPT SHE DIDN’T LET IT SHOW

He started small. At meetings, when one of his colleagues was spouting obvious nonsense about educational trends, Aventurine would make sharp comments that usually made the whole room choke with laughter. Selin Chow would roll her eyes but smile. The dean would clear his throat nervously but also smile. Students, if they were present, were absolutely delighted.

But you sat with a stone face. Not tense, not displeased. Just blank. As if he was talking about something completely ordinary.

He tried teasing you personally. One day after your class, he came up to you in the hallway and said:

“I heard the first-years are thrilled. They say you’re the only professor who doesn’t give them a chance to cheat.”

You looked at him. No smile, no embarrassment, no attempt to make excuses or joke back.

“That’s good,” you said and walked away, leaving him standing there with his mouth open.

Selin, who was passing by, noticed his face and couldn’t resist.

“Looks like not everyone is interested in your charm, Aventurine.”

“She just didn’t get it,” he replied, but there was no confidence in his voice anymore.

---

PART III. GIFTS THAT CAME BACK UNOPENED

Two weeks later, he decided to change tactics. He had access to various things. Not because he stole or brown-nosed — no, he was actually terribly rich himself. It’s just that in his work, people often gave him things, and he didn’t always want to keep them. Nice pens. Leather-bound notebooks. Expensive stationery sets. Once, he was brought from a business trip to Sumeru a set of calligraphy inks in a beautiful case — dark glass, silver, the scent of sandalwood.

He left the set on your desk while you were in class. He didn’t leave a note or any hint that it was from him, but he hoped you’d figure it out anyway. But you didn’t seem to care much about guessing.

In the evening, he came to check. The set lay in the same place, untouched. You hadn’t put it away. You hadn’t opened it. You hadn’t asked where it came from. You just left it there, as if it wasn’t a gift but someone else’s trash you didn’t want to touch.

The next day, he asked directly:

“Didn’t you like the set?”

You looked up at him. There was no surprise, no gratitude, no irritation in your eyes. Only calm, almost endless fatigue.

“It’s not mine.”

“I left it for you.”

“Why?”

The question didn’t sound like “thanks, but no thanks” or “what do you want in return.” It was just “why,” carrying no context whatsoever.

Aventurine hesitated for the first time in a long while.

“Because... nice things suit you.”

You tilted your head slightly, as if considering the phrase and finding no meaning in it.

“I’m not going to ask you for anything,” you said. “And I don’t want you to give me anything.”

“It’s just a gesture,” he replied, trying to keep his voice light. “No strings attached.”

“Gestures can also be unnecessary.”

You picked up the set, placed it on the edge of his desk, and left. Aventurine looked at the dark glass case and felt like an idiot. For the first time in many years.

---

PART IV. POWER THAT DOESN’T WORK WHERE NO ONE WANTS TO PLAY

He tried a different approach.

Aventurine had influence over the distribution of teaching loads, access to restricted resources, participation in interesting projects. Usually that was enough to make a person at least start communicating with him normally — though people reached out to him first anyway. But exceptions always exist.

He offered you to teach part of his module for first-years — a good workload, extra hours, plus a nice addition to your resume.

You listened, nodded, and said:

“Thank you. But I already have a position. That’s enough for me.”

Later, he tried again — offered to send you to a conference in Germany, fully funded by the institute — everything paid for, good speakers, a chance to make useful connections.

“I don’t like conferences,” you said. “Let someone who needs it go.”

He tried to threaten you. Not seriously, of course, but with a hint: some professors who don’t fit into the collective sometimes face difficulties at the end of the semester.

You looked at him, but he clearly failed to intimidate you.

“Are you going to fire me?”

“No.”

“Then why did you say that?”

He couldn’t find an answer.

Because he really didn’t know why. He just wanted you to look at him, to say something more than two words, for your face to change at least once — it didn’t matter in which direction.

But you remained the same. Calm as the surface of still water — no matter how many stones you throw, it won’t ripple.

---

PART V. THE QUIET MELANCHOLY THAT TURNED OUT STRONGER THAN ANY ARROGANCE

One day in late October, he found you in the library. You sat in the far corner, by the window, a book in your hands, but you weren’t reading. You were just watching the rain on the glass. On your face was that same calm, tired sadness that doesn’t come from one bad day, but from long years of getting used to the fact that nothing changes.

He sat down across from you, uninvited.

“May I?”

“You’ve already sat down,” you said without turning your head.

“I love people who notice the obvious.”

“I love people who don’t interrupt my window-gazing.”

He smirked. Usually, such remarks were his weapon, but now you were using them as if they meant nothing. And yet it wasn’t a challenge or a game, the way it usually was with him.

“Are you always like this?” he asked.

“Like what?”

“Distant.”

You thought for a few seconds.

“Probably.”

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

“Should it?”

He didn’t know what to answer. Because probably it shouldn’t. But it bothered him. A lot. And he didn’t understand why.

“You never ask questions,” he said. “Not about work, not about people, not about me. Do you really not care?”

You finally turned to him. Your gaze was tired, but not angry.

“I don’t see the point in questions I don’t want to know the answers to. Or questions whose answers wouldn’t change anything.”

“What if they would?”

You raised an eyebrow slightly. The first emotion in the entire conversation.

“Do you want me to ask you something?”

“Yes,” he said, and it sounded too honest. “At least something.”

You looked at him for a long time. So long that he felt not like a professor, not like a rich and influential man, but just a boy who came to ask for attention from an older sister who had no time for him and had her own things to worry about.

PART I. FIVE YEARS AGO, WHEN YOU CAME TO THE UNIVERSITY AND IMMEDIATELY ENDED UP EXACTLY WHERE YOU DIDN’T WANT TO BE

When you first came to Saint Elysium University, you were twenty-four, and you already knew in advance that you were not going to like it there.

Not because of the work. You actually liked the work. You liked texts, structure, proper human logic, clear speech, well-built courses that taught something instead of trying to show off intelligence for its own sake. But the university itself belonged to that particular breed of places where people start believing way too quickly that their job title makes them more interesting than they really are. The old law faculty building, the new glass economics wing, the inner courtyard with its fountain, donors, trustees, expensive signage, students in costly coats, and professors who started sizing everyone up the second they walked through the door.

In a place like that, you did not look weak. You looked too normal.

Too serious to play the sweet new girl. Too young to be taken seriously right away. Too responsible to give yourself the luxury of an easy adaptation. You did not try to please anyone. You did not try to be “one of them.” You did not fill every pause with jokes. You simply came there to work, quietly, evenly, collected, with a good résumé, decent speech, and a very clear understanding that if you started fussing now, they would eat you alive before the semester was even over.

At the first general meeting, you sat closer to the edge of the table, not because you were afraid, but because you hated being the center of attention. When they asked you to introduce yourself, you stood, gave your name, your department, your courses, and that was, more or less, it. No upbeat little speech, no fake smile, no “I’m so happy to become part of this wonderful team.” You had enough sense not to humiliate yourself or everyone else.

And that was the moment he looked at you properly for the first time.

Aventurine had already been working at the university for three years by then. He had managed to become the favorite of the economics block, the administration’s favorite headache, the students’ favorite legend, and a personal thorn in the side of half the senior staff. He taught strategy, negotiations, risk management, and corporate psychology, dressed like he had dinner with ministers after class, spoke like someone who had gotten away with everything since childhood, and smiled in a way that turned off part of the student body’s brain. Naturally, he enjoyed that. Anything connected to attention, he knew how to use as both a tool and entertainment.

He usually disliked young female lecturers.

He could not stand the ones who had just left university themselves but had already started playing the iron woman, speaking with forced severity and looking at the class like they alone had been granted the right to discipline. He disliked even more the ones who swung the other way and tried to buy the students’ love with sweetness, as if they had come there not to teach but to collect affection.

You were neither.

He understood that almost at once, and unfortunately for him, that was exactly what interested him.

After the meeting, he caught you in the hallway while you were trying to find the right office and, judging by your face, already starting to realize that the floor plan had been designed by people who sincerely hated everyone else.

“Has someone already managed to lose you, or are you still handling this on your own?” he asked, leaning one shoulder against the wall, coffee in hand, looking as if he had all the time in the world, even though he had class in ten minutes.

You looked at him. No smile. No irritation. Just carefully.

“So far, I’m handling it.”

“That’s very confident for your first day.”

“I’m not confident. I just know how to read signs.”

He smirked then. Not loudly, not for effect, but the way people do when they unexpectedly get exactly the answer they were hoping would not be stupid.

“I see. And who sent you here?”

“The dean.”

“Then this really is attempted murder.”

The corner of your mouth moved, barely. You did not laugh. You did not flirt. You did not turn into an ice queen. You simply acknowledged that the joke had been good.

And that was enough. That was the exact point where he was properly caught.

Because he liked people who did not crumble in front of him and did not immediately start performing in return. And that was exactly what you did. You stayed level. You saw the charm, the nerve, the theatre, and you neither fell for it like an idiot nor blocked it off theatrically. You just accepted it as part of the situation. As an annoying, but workable, part of the situation.

Then it turned out that the two of you were being assigned to the same long-term interdisciplinary project.

You, as the person who knew how to build courses, shape texts, structure arguments, and keep students from writing complete garbage. Him, as the person who could turn any program into a showpiece, sell it to the administration, secure the funding, and make everyone think it had not even been his idea in the first place.

You looked at the document. Then at him. Then back at the document.

He smiled even wider.

“Well then, colleague? Looks like you’re not getting rid of me.”

You answered calmly:

“We’ll see about that.”

He laughed about that for a long time afterward, because he had already understood it then: no, you would not. And unfortunately for him, neither would he.

PART II. THE FIRST YEAR, WHEN YOU KEPT SNAPPING AT EACH OTHER BECAUSE OTHERWISE YOU WOULD HAVE HAD TO ADMIT FAR TOO EARLY THAT YOU WORKED WELL TOGETHER

The first few months, you irritated each other almost on schedule.

Not in a bad way. It simply became clear much too quickly that by temperament you were far closer to Ratio than anyone had expected. You were not cold, not gloomy, not a shut-in, just serious. You took any task, sorted it properly, and then did it. You disliked chaos for the sake of chaos. You did not tolerate vagueness. If something was badly written, you said it was badly written. If someone missed a deadline, you did not create a drama, but you also did not pretend it was fine. Your politeness was not soft. It was hard. Very adult. The kind that makes some people more nervous than outright rudeness.

Aventurine found that hilarious at first.

He kept trying to throw you off. He would deliberately come to your internal meetings three or four minutes late just to see how long you would stare at the screen in silence before saying something unpleasant but useful. He would hand you presentations where half the slides were excellent and one contained complete nonsense, just to wait for your dry line: “Who made this, you drunk?” He tried slipping around rules anywhere he could. Every time, you dragged everything back into shape.

“You’re impossible,” he said once after three hours of revisions, when you had returned the project budget to him with twenty-three notes and not a flicker of emotion.

“No,” you answered without looking up from your laptop. “I just know how to count.”

“That was very Ratio of you, by the way.”

“My condolences.”

That time he laughed out loud.

That was how the two of you settled into one another.

He quickly understood that you could not be won over with empty flirting. You did not blush at a smile, you did not melt at his voice, you did not start fussing if he stood too close. But you did not ice him out either. If one of his jokes was actually funny, you smiled. Sometimes you even laughed, briefly, softly, with that familiar sideways look of yours, as if you disliked showing too openly that something had genuinely amused you. He liked that far more than if you had giggled at every word the way some of his students did.

By the end of the first year, people at the university had gotten used to seeing the two of you almost everywhere together.

At meetings. In shared projects. On committees. During office hours. At faculty events. If a problem came up that needed to be solved instead of merely discussed, the two of you were sent in together. You brought structure. He brought speed, connections, and the ability to force a solution through. You kept everything inside the boundaries of actual work. He made sure those boundaries existed at all.

Sometimes people joked that the two of you looked like a very strange marriage without romance, where one person planned everything and the other set fires and then extinguished them beautifully.

Aventurine would usually answer:

“That’s not true. She can at least think.”

Without looking up, you would add:

“And he’s at least useful.”

For some reason, everyone around you understood that this was already a form of tenderness. Just a fairly perverse one.

PART III. THE THIRD YEAR, WHEN YOU WERE FIRST TRULY STUCK IN THE SAME BOAT

In the third year, the two of you got dragged into something after which even the dumbest people on faculty stopped thinking you were just convenient work partners.

The university was about to sign a major agreement with a private foundation that promised funding, internships, a research block, and golden mountains, while in reality behaving like a company that wanted not a partnership, but ownership over part of the university’s academic reputation. Aventurine said from the start that something was wrong with them. Not because he had proof, but because the people from the foundation talked too beautifully and said too little of substance. At first, you stayed more cautious, but then you began seeing the same thing: the paperwork did not match the verbal promises, there were holes in the budgets, and several “informal conditions” looked like a polite attempt to get the university to sign its own noose and say thank you afterward.

The two of you were sent in to deal with it.

Officially, as representatives of the working group. In reality, as the people least likely to be intimidated by inconvenience.

That was when the pattern that later became normal truly began. That habit the two of you had of working together as if the rest of the world mattered less than the problem between you.

Aventurine was the first to realize that one of the foundation’s coordinators was outright lying during a closed meeting. You were the first to find exactly where the terms had been quietly altered in the documents. He started taking risks and pushing into places a sane person would never go without a proper plan. You stayed above it, building the ground beneath him, because as it turned out, out of the two of you, you were the one who held reality together better when he slipped into his favorite mode of “I’ll put everything on one card and see who blinks first.”

One evening, you sat in an empty conference room until nearly midnight, going through contracts, transfer schemes, and contact chains the foundation was very eager to keep in the dark.

Aventurine was sprawled in his chair, top button undone, and said:

“Well then, professor, what’s the news? Are we close enough to disaster yet, or are we still warming up?”

You didn’t answer right away. First you finished reading the email to the end.

“If you say one word off-plan at the meeting tomorrow, we’ll be thrown out of the project before lunch.”

“The word ‘thrown out’ sounds much less appealing than ‘outplayed.’”

“This isn’t poker.”

“For you, maybe.”

You looked at him then with a long, very tired stare.

“Aventurine, do you understand that if you go all in tomorrow without proof, you’re not a genius, you’re an idiot?”

He went quiet. Not for long, but long enough for him.

Then he leaned forward, laced his fingers together, and asked without any of his usual theatre:

“And if I do have proof?”

“Then I’ll go with you.”

He smiled slowly.

“That is exactly why I keep you.”

“You don’t keep me. You’re stuck to me.”

“That too.”

That was probably the first evening when both of you understood without joking that if everything collapsed, it would collapse around both of you. And somehow neither of you was afraid of that anymore.

PART IV. THAT SAME ‘TINY CITY’ INCIDENT

In your fifth year working together, the university organized an exhibition of a new interactive research center for trustees and major donors. Officially, it was an educational pavilion built to demonstrate urban models, financial scenarios, and behavioral experiments. In reality, it was an insanely expensive toy where people could watch a conditional “city” change in real time depending on money, traffic, negotiations, crises, and human greed.

You were responsible for the methodological side. Aventurine handled the presentation and the funders who had paid for the thing. Naturally, that was the exact day one of the engineers decided it would be an excellent idea to demonstrate the “immersive participation mode” before the system had finished its final checks.

No one ever figured out who pressed the wrong combination first, but seven minutes after the demonstration began, Aventurine quite literally vanished from normal scale and ended up inside the city model through the reduced immersive gate designed for a test capsule.

When the system finally froze, the room went silent, and then a very familiar, irritated, absurdly amused voice came up from the model city spread out on the table:

“No, this is just insulting. Can you even see me?”

You were standing above the miniature city with its little bridges, buildings, and tiny central square, and somewhere between those little streets there was a very recognizable blond figure moving around. At some point, the corner of your mouth twitched for the first time that day.

“Yes, I can see you.”

“Wonderful. I was beginning to think this was my personal hell.”

“You live in that already.”

“Very funny.”

The engineers ran in circles. Someone tried rebooting the interface. Someone suggested everyone “stay calm,” for which almost every person in the room wanted to kill him on sight. Meanwhile, you were already down on one knee at the edge of the model, pushing two technicians aside and asking questions in a flat, controlled voice, as if your colleague shrinking into a city simulation was something that simply happened every other Tuesday.

“Can you hear me clearly?”

“Yes.”

“Can you move?”

“I can. More importantly, I can also see that all of you up there are useless.”

“Fine. Don’t waste energy on inspiration. Look to your right. Do you see the transport ring sector?”

“I do.”

“There should be an emergency module there. Can you get to it?”

He turned, looked where you were indicating with the tip of your pen, and somehow managed to smirk even from down there.

“Incredible. You’re actually enormous right now.”

“Don’t start.”

“No, wait, this needs to be acknowledged. You’re gigantic. Terrifyingly competent, annoyingly calm, and gigantic.”

“Go to the module.”

“Bossing me around from a position of height advantage? Low.”

“Aventurine.”

“Fine, fine. I’m going.”

That was how the two of you worked for the next forty minutes.

He ran through the miniature city, through alleyways, model arches, tiny staircases and platforms, while you guided him from above, read the system logs, argued with the engineers, demanded one circuit be shut down, another one left alone, and explained three separate times that if anyone tried to “gently shake the platform” one more time, you would personally slam their head into the model yourself.

At one point, he yelled from somewhere around the central square:

“I need access to the upper gate. I can’t reach it without you.”

“There should be a service tower to your left.”

“Are you serious? To you that’s a tower. To me this is Bastille.”

“Climb.”

“No mercy. Five years together and you’re still heartless.”

“Are you alive?”

“For now.”

“Then climb.”

A few minutes later, he reappeared on the roof of one of the model buildings and, of course, could not help himself:

“You know, the view from here is actually great. I can see you completely from up here. If I want, I can spend the rest of my life remembering that you stood over me deciding whether I lived or died.”

“If you get distracted again, I’ll decide no.”

He laughed.

Then, suddenly, more quietly, he added:

“Come on. We both know you’ll get me out.”

And that was one of the rare moments when he genuinely stopped joking. For a few seconds. That was enough.

Because that was the moment you understood too: he did not take risks like an idiot because he didn’t value his life. He did it because he had gotten used to the fact that in the worst possible moments, there would be someone nearby to stop the whole system from collapsing completely. And for him, that someone had long since become you.

In the end, of course, you fixed everything. He got back to normal scale angry, intact, dusty from the decorative coating, hair slightly messed up, and looking ridiculously pleased with himself.

The first thing he said after the system stabilized was:

“You know, I actually liked that.”

“I never doubted it.”

“Especially the part where you stood over me giving orders.”

“Shut up.”

“No, really. Very commanding.”

You turned away then just enough that no one would see you smile after all.

Of course he saw it anyway.

PART V. NOW, FIVE YEARS LATER, WHEN EVERYONE AROUND YOU ALREADY KNOWS THIS ISN’T JUST WORK ANYMORE

After five years of working together, everyone around you had gotten used to the fact that if one of you was somewhere, the other would not be far behind.

Not necessarily physically. Sometimes by phone. Sometimes in messages. Sometimes through a doorway ten minutes later. Sometimes just through a single comment one of you made, after which everyone immediately understood who the other one would have been reacting to.

You stopped being the new girl a very long time ago. Now people came to you for actual help. You taught your courses in a way that gradually made even difficult students work properly. At meetings, people listened when you spoke not because you were louder than anyone else, but because when you opened your mouth, it was usually for a reason. You had not become softer. You had not become easier to accommodate others. But around Aventurine, your seriousness had long since stopped being merely a defense and had become something he relied on more often than he would ever admit.

And beside you, he had stayed himself. Noisy, charming, insolent, always smiling, always one step too close to driving people insane, forever rushing toward risk and then pulling himself out with the expression of a man who had known all along. But with you, he was different in details. Slightly more attentive than necessary. Slightly less false with his face. Slightly more likely to show up without an official reason. Slightly quicker to drop the part of himself everyone else had to endure in full.

Sometimes you still argued.

“You went in again without clearance.”

“I went in with results.”

“That is not an argument.”

“For the winner, it is.”

“You’re not a winner. You are temporarily not dead.”

“How touching. Is that concern?”

“That is not concern.”

“Of course not. That’s why you’re sitting here correcting my report for the second hour.”

Or like this:

“Tell me honestly, do you ever rest?”

“Yes.”

“You’re lying.”

“I look at you and feel better. Does that count?”

“No.”

“Pity. It was a good line.”

You usually just sighed at things like that. But you didn’t leave.

And that, perhaps, was the real point.

You did not fiercely reject him. Not because you couldn’t, but because you had long since stopped wanting to pretend that he genuinely annoyed you more than he occupied you. You knew him too well. You knew how he smiled when he was hiding something. How he talked even more when he was nervous. How he leaned into risk when he felt the ground starting to burn. How in the very worst moment he could say something completely ridiculous, and then suddenly do something so exactly right that all you wanted was to sit beside him quietly and not move.

That was the whole problem between you.

You had settled into each other so thoroughly that from the outside you looked either like the ideal working pair or like a deeply delayed romance that, for some reason, still had not reached an honest conversation.

Aventurine said as much one evening, almost directly. You were sitting in an empty classroom after another long day, he was sprawled across the first row desk, and you were closing your laptop and collecting your papers.

“Do you know what annoys me most?”

“That not everything in the world can be won?”

“No. That the two of us have spent five years acting like we’re in some absurdly long game, and neither of us still wants to call things by their proper names.”

You looked at him calmly.

“Maybe because you turn everything into a game.”

“And you turn everything into structure.”

“That’s better than turning it into a circus.”

“Not true. Sometimes the circus is more fun.”

You smiled then, a little. Just a little.

He saw it and went quiet for a second himself, because, as always, that rare smile of yours hit him harder than any open flirtation would have.

Then he sat up straighter, dragged one hand down his face, and said more quietly:

“All right then. No pretty words. I think I’ve become too used to you.”

You didn’t answer right away. First you slipped the folder into your bag. Then you looked at him.

“I noticed.”

“And?”

“And you’re still extremely exhausting.”

“That is almost a confession.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Too late.”

And that, probably, was your entire story. Not about sudden realization. Not about a scene. Not about some loud “finally.” But about how one person kept stepping into risk, chaos, and other people’s nerves, the other kept leveling it out, holding it together, dragging it back into shape, and after a while it became impossible to keep pretending that this was simply a particularly successful professional partnership.

Because it wasn’t. Not anymore.

Because he had long since started looking for you first in every room.

And you had long since stopped being able to imagine handling anything truly difficult if he wasn’t somewhere nearby.