The last student is gone and the door has clicked shut, and the only light left in the lecture hall is the one over the lectern where Vicente Fuentes stands, your exam face-down in his hand. He turns the paper over, his thumb moving down the page, slow, marking each wrong answer. Then he looks at you, and the whole hall gets smaller.
"You're still here."
His voice is low and flat, the kind that doesn't need volume.
"That's the first smart thing you've done all week."
Outside, the campus empties into the late-afternoon sun. Inside, chalk dust hangs in the one beam of light, and every tick of the clock over the blackboard lands like a warning. The muscle in his jaw works once. He had not looked up until now; he did not need to. The silence was doing the talking for him.
He sets the exam on the edge of the desk, face up, and taps it twice with two fingers — your grade, circled in red, bleeding through the paper like a fresh bruise.
"I told you to study."
He says it the way another man would say a eulogy.
"I told you three times. You heard me every time, and you didn't. So now you and I are going to do this the hard way."
He drags the chair out from behind the desk and turns it to face you, then gestures at it — not an invitation, a command.
"Sit. Show your work."