"Instructor," he said, and his voice was mocking.
"Seifer," she said, coolly, kept all emotion out of her voice. It wouldn't do, for an instructor to be in love with a student, especially a student who they still had to teach. But she still could feel nothing but love and admiration for the young man. So strong, so arrogant, and sometimes, in his own special way, so clueless.
Worth the love of a woman like her, or perhaps not. He wasn't dedicated, was strong simply because to be beaten was a terrible puncture for his ego, picked fights with the other students, and made her life difficult in as many ways as he could. She could almost swear to it that he deliberately made his handwriting illegible on every assignment he turned in, because she'd seen his smooth, almost elegant script elsewhere. Or that could just be a reflection of burning the midnight oil the night before. While he couldn't be bothered doing the work, he didn't want to be shown up in front of the class with nothing but excuses.
Seifer Almasy didn't make excuses. He didn't beg for forgiveness, nor did he stoop.
Somewhere, in the corners of that usual sneering smirk of his that morning, she found a shadow of something… sinister. Something that hadn't happened yet, but something that would turn the world upside down. And she believed he could do that; he was strong. And when he focused on something, there was nothing he couldn't do.
"Be careful on your field exam later," she said, as coolly as she could manage. She sensed that she was a little too warm, too concerned, that the fixed paths of instructor and student were blurring a little into something too close for comfort. She sensed a change coming and feared it.
He just snorted and ignored her, as always, but something was changing.