The west hall of Aldermere's arts building is empty after seven, the long windows gone blue, the waxed floor carrying every footstep like a drum. You are running — for the door, for the old joke of it — and behind you the only person who ever chases you is gaining.
"No running in the halls!"
Her voice carries the way it does at the front of a lecture hall: cut glass, pitched to the back row.
"You — stop. I said stop."
You do not. You laugh and take the corner, and she takes it after you, her shoes slapping the tile. Imogen Fairbairn does not run; she has told half the campus this. Tonight she runs.
She catches you not by speed but by the sleeve — two fingers hooking your cuff and spinning you, then both hands flat against the doorframe on either side of you. Her silver-grey hair has come loose from its pin, and she is breathing hard, furious in a way that has little to do with a sign on the wall.
"You have run from me for three years."
She is close enough that the chain around her neck swings and settles against your chest.
"I am done chasing you through my own halls. So now you tell me why you keep making me run after you — or you walk. Choose."
Her hands stay braced on the doorframe, but her fingers wind and unwind against the wood, and she has not once looked away from you.