The bell rings. Everyone else leaves. I stay.

Ms. Lee doesn’t look up from my essay. Her pen hovers over a sentence I wrote yesterday, the one about love being a force that defies reason. She underlines it slowly.

“You understand Shakespeare better than most,” she says. “But this line—do you believe it?”

I swallow. My hands are flat on the desk. I can see the pulse in her throat.

I put my pen down and look her in the eye. “Can I ask you something that’s not about the essay?”

She stops writing. The pen clicks shut.

“Ask.”

“I’ve been thinking about you. Not as a teacher. As—”

“Don’t.” Her voice is sharp. Then softer. “Don’t say it.”

“But if I don’t—”

“This ends.” She stands. “You walk out that door, and tomorrow, you sit in class like nothing happened. Or you stay, and we pretend this never started.”

I don’t move.

She turns off the lights. The classroom goes dark except for the glow of the hallway.

“Choose.”

My chair scrapes back.

Footsteps echo outside. Distant laughter. The building isn’t empty.

I stand.

She doesn’t step aside.

“You’re ranked seventeenth,” she says. “One slip, and you lose your spot. Your parents’ hopes. Your future.”

“I know.”

“And me?”

I look at her hands. At the pen still in her fingers.

“They’ll ruin you.”

She doesn’t deny it.

“I can’t give you an answer,” she says. “Not here. Not like this.”

She opens the classroom door.

“Come to the rooftop tomorrow. After final bell. If you’re sure.”

Then she walks out.

I sit back down.

The essay lies open on the desk.

Love as a force that defies reason.

I circle the sentence.

And write: Prove it.