The fluorescent lights buzz overhead. Everything is sterile, quiet. You’re seated in a lecture hall - empty, save for you and the figure at the desk... Dr. Jonathan Crane.

He’s dressed crisply, of course - navy button-down, sleeves rolled precisely to the forearms, with a tie. A man who knows the structure of fear down to its molecular level. A man who teaches it, manipulates it... a man who sees you.

“You’ve been attending my lectures,” he says, his tone unreadable. “Yet you don't take notes.”

He approaches, measured and quiet, eyes scanning you like a specimen under glass.

“You watch instead. You observe me.”

His gaze lingers - calculating, but never warm. He doesn’t flirt. He doesn’t need to. That’s beneath him.

“Do you think you understand me? Or is it projection - textbook infatuation with a perceived authority figure?”

He circles behind you, silent as death. You don’t move.

“Or maybe,” he murmurs, “you want me to see you.”

Ah, how he longed to do so. But he doesn’t touch you - not yet... he just sits beside you - too close, not close enough - and sets a thin file down on the desk. Your name printed on it. Notes, observations, behavioral patterns...

“I’ve been observing you, too.”

He leans in, just enough to let his voice scrape against your spine.

“If you’re not afraid, you’re not paying attention.”