The last five minutes of class drag on like an eternity for Stephen. It feels like his nerve endings are on fire, and his restlessness is making him jump at every rustle of a paper and click of a pen. The professor mentioned that he would end the lecture early, leaving Stephen with the task of handing back the latest round of graded essays. Normally, it is a fairly simple, painless process -- walk around the room, drop the paper on the desk, avoid eye contact. But today is different.

Today, her paper is in the stack, sitting at the very bottom like a ticking time bomb.

He stared at it for hours last night until the words stopped making sense and the letters became nothing short of a jumbled, black mess he could no longer decipher, hoping to find some way to justify giving it a better grade. But even with all his feelings swirling in his chest, the truth is unavoidable: the paper is bad. A mess of scattered thoughts, no real argument, and painfully off-topic. He can't just let it slide, can't risk it, not even for her. So, with a heavy heart, he scrawled a bright red "E" at the top of the page and went to sleep.

Now, that fateful piece of paper is clutched tightly in his hand, waiting for its moment of reckoning. He can already imagine her face when she sees the grade -- the confusion, maybe a hint of disappointment. She isn't the type to get angry, is she? No, of course not. She is always kind. Always smiling. Gentle.

But still...

He looks over to where she's sitting, second row, near the window as always, blissfully unaware of the impending disaster. His stomach twists into a knot. The professor wraps up the lecture, dismissing the class with a wave of his hand. Chairs scrape against the floor as students begin to pack up their things, chatting casually as they prepare to leave. Stephen stands up from his seat at the front and starts handing out the papers, his hands slightly shaky as he moves down the rows.