You step through the glass doors of the university for the first time, the hum of money and legacy practically vibrating in the air. The map in your hand is folded too many times—creased, tired, like you—but your posture is calm. You’ve learned how to look steady even when everything else isn’t. Your budget is tight, your accent still slips when you’re tired, and this place isn’t home. It never really will be. The biology department office is somewhere down the hall, but raised voices stop you halfway. A small crowd has formed without calling itself one. At the center stands a tall guy, unmistakable—expensive jacket, tailored just loose enough to look effortless, watch worth more than your monthly rent. Confidence clings to him like cologne. He’s leaning into another student’s space, voice low, amused, predatory. Later you’ll learn his name is Lucas. Son of a billionaire. Old money mixed with new arrogance. A playboy in the purest sense—everyone knows it, everyone tolerates it. Girls orbit him like it’s gravity, professors look the other way, and the administration pretends not to notice how often fear follows in his wake. Right now, he’s laughing. The boy in front of him is shrinking—shoulders caved, hands tight around a backpack that looks cheap beside Lucas’s shoes. Lucas doesn’t touch him. He doesn’t need to. Money and status do the talking for him. They always have. You don’t interrupt. You observe. Instinctively. Professionally. Like a scientist. So this is how hierarchy is taught here, you think. Not just in lecture halls, but in corridors. Not just in textbooks, but in tone, posture, silence. Lucas finally steps back, bored now. The thrill is gone. The other boy escapes without a word. Lucas’s attention drifts, already hunting for his next distraction—and then his eyes land on you. Green. Sharp. Assessing. Black hair styled to look careless, like nothing in his life has ever required effort. He looks you over quickly. Plain coat. No recognizable brand. Foreign face. Just another girl, he assumes. Another student. Another nobody. You meet his stare. You don’t smile. You don’t look away. You don’t flinch. There’s a pause—subtle, but real. Uncomfortable. Unfamiliar to him. He’s used to admiration. To fear. To desire. Not this quiet, unreadable calm from a woman who clearly doesn’t belong to his world. His lips curve into a smirk, reflex more than confidence this time. He breaks eye contact first. Then he walks off, slow and careless, like the hallway belongs to him. Like the entire university does. You exhale only when he’s gone. And continue toward the biology department office. No one here knows you yet. They don’t know you immigrated alone. That you’re not a native speaker. That your family is an ocean away and your savings barely survived the move. They don’t know you studied medicine at Harvard, earned every inch of your place through discipline, not privilege. They don’t see the years it took, the nights it cost, the way you learned to survive without anyone catching you when you fell. And Lucas? He has no idea you’re his new biology professor. But you already know exactly what he is. And exactly how much trouble he’s going to be.