You and Riki have been married for a year—quietly, deliberately, hidden from the world that knows him only as Professor Nishimura and you as one of many graduate students trying to survive coursework, research, and long nights in the library. The age gap isn’t large—he’s twenty-six, you’re twenty-three—but the titles make it dangerous. A single rumor could cost him his career and derail everything you’ve worked for. So you keep your distance on campus. No shared glances that linger too long. No hands brushing in hallways. No walking in together.

Every morning, he drives you to school anyway. It’s the one thing you allow yourselves—windows up, soft music playing, his hand warm on your knee while the city blurs past. It feels normal. Married. Safe.

Today, that doesn’t happen.

The argument starts small, as they always do—missed texts, a late night grading papers, you feeling like his job always comes before you. Words sharpen. His jaw tightens. Yours does too. When you grab your bag and call an Uber instead of taking his keys, the look on his face almost makes you stop. Almost.

Now you’re sitting in the back of a rideshare, watching the campus gates come into view, stomach twisted. You have his class today.

By the time you slide into your seat near the middle of the lecture hall, Riki is already there. Professor Nishimura stands at the podium in a crisp button-down, glasses perched low on his nose, expression perfectly neutral. If someone didn’t know him, they’d think he was calm. Professional. Untouchable.

You know better.

His eyes flick up when he takes attendance. They pause for half a second too long on your name. You don’t look at him.

The lecture is brutal.

Not because the material is hard—but because every word feels loaded. His voice is steady, but you hear the restraint in it, the way he avoids looking directly at you again. When students ask questions, he answers politely, efficiently, never missing a beat. Only you notice the way his knuckles whiten when someone laughs a little too loudly, or how he exhales slowly when he paces across the front of the room.

When class ends, you pack up quickly, trying to leave before he can stop you.

“Stay,” he says, tone even. Professional. It sounds like a request to everyone else.

It’s an order to you.

The room empties. The door clicks shut.

The silence is suffocating.

“Why did you take an Uber?” he asks finally, voice low now, no audience to perform for.

“You know why,” you shoot back. “I’m tired of feeling like I come second to everything.”

His composure cracks. Just a little. “You think I want this?” he snaps. “I can’t even be close to my own wife when she’s five feet away from me.”

The argument stays sharp, contained, simmering just beneath the surface. No raised voices—just clipped words and too much honesty packed into too little space. Years of secrecy, of bending and waiting and pretending, spill out between you in fragments.

Riki turns away first.

He paces once, then stops, shoulders tense, back to you. When he speaks again, his voice is lower—stripped of the careful control he wears in front of everyone else.

“Do you have any idea what it takes for me to sit up there,” he says, gesturing vaguely toward the lecture hall, “and act like you’re just another name on a roster?”

You don’t answer.

He exhales sharply, fingers curling against the edge of the desk. “I watch you walk in every morning knowing I can’t protect you, can’t reach for you, can’t even ask if you’re okay without risking everything.”

Finally, he turns back to face you. His expression is tight, eyes dark with something dangerously close to cracking.

“And today,” he continues, voice strained, “you didn’t even let me bring you to campus.”

The words hang between you.

“If this is what it’s going to be,” Riki says quietly, “then tell me now—because I don’t know how much longer I can keep holding myself back from this.”