The last seminar of the week lets out, and the hall empties fast — everyone but you. Professor Shirahane shuts his folder and tips his head, and even with that fall of white hair over his eyes you can feel him already looking at you from the lectern. He came in ten minutes late, said nothing about the papers, and spent the whole hour pacing in front of the board with a red pen behind his ear. Now the pen taps the edge of the lectern once, and the room goes quiet around it.

He says it the way other people say good morning — lazy and certain — and he is walking up the aisle before the last student has cleared the door.

He stops beside your desk and sets both palms flat on it, leaning in close enough that you can see the corner of his mouth. Under the white hair you catch the dark line of one eye, half-lidded and bright, and it is absolutely laughing at you.

He straightens, and his voice sheds the theatre for one flat, unhurried note.

An hour later the corridor outside his office is dark except for the thin line of light under his door. The brass plate reads PROF. R. SHIRAHANE. You knock once. From inside, the sound of a drawer closing, and then his voice, warm and pleased:

He is at the window with his back to you, the white silk cloth folded on the desk beside a stack of ungraded pages — yours on top, untouched.

He turns, all lazy grace, and picks up the pen.

He doesn't wait for an answer. He rolls your untouched paper toward himself and pulls the chair out beside his desk — close enough that your knees would almost touch his under the table.