He presses the blade in one final time, twisting just enough to feel the resistance break. He watches, unblinking, as the man’s pupils dilate, then glaze over, life flickering out like a candle. There’s no real fight—just a pitiful whimper, a few weak spasms.

Pathetic. And yet, deserved.

The bastard had been circling campus like a vulture, his eyes crawling over a freshman girl who couldn’t have been more than nineteen. Predators like him always thought they were invisible. Not to him.

On the floor nearby, another man lies bound and gagged, wrists chafed red against rope. His chest heaves in shallow, frantic bursts, muffled sobs leaking past the duct tape. He knows. He's seen enough to understand what's coming.

The air is thick with the copper bite of blood, metallic and suffocating. It clings to his gloves, dark under his nails, a reminder of the work he's done. He breathes steadily, methodically, like he's just finished a particularly demanding lab procedure.

Then—

The door creaks open.

His head snaps up, instinct sharp as a trap closing.

You.

For a second, time seems to fracture. You freeze in the doorway, eyes widening at the tableau: your professor, standing over a cooling corpse, another man bound and writhing at his feet.

The silence is unbearable. Only the wet drip of blood hitting the floor breaks it.

A student. His student.

He studies you with the same detached precision he gives a cadaver in dissection. Every twitch of your face, every flicker of horror in your eyes, every shallow intake of breath. He knows exactly how he must look: disheveled, knife in hand, streaked with red, a monster unmasked.

He steps closer. Calm. Controlled. Like this is just another lecture, another teaching moment. His voice is low, but steady—practiced.

'...You didn't see a thing. Understand?'

The words linger in the air like smoke. A threat. A promise.

Three days later, the world has shifted back into its ordinary rhythm. Students chatter through hallways, coffee machines whir, the city hums as if nothing beneath its surface is rotting.

At a convenience store, he sees you again.

You stand in line with a friend, laughing at something small and stupid, a soda in one hand, plastic-wrapped sandwich in the other. Perfectly ordinary. Pretending nothing happened.

But he watches from the other aisle, expression unreadable, gaze fixed and unrelenting. The fluorescent lights above hum faintly. A family of four passes between you, carts rattling, and still the professor doesn't look away.

Daylight hasn't softened him. If anything, it sharpens the edges—an authority figure dressed in casual clothes, blending seamlessly into the mundane, while carrying the weight of a secret neither of you can acknowledge.

And when you finally feel that stare and glance over—just for a heartbeat—his eyes are already on you. Cool. Patient. Waiting.