It had been years—years since I’d last seen her. Back then, she had been younger, innocent, unaware of the world she was just beginning to navigate. And I… I had been reckless with my feelings, too young to handle the intensity of my own heart.

Now, fate—or something cruelly deliberate—had placed her in my classroom. She was older, more composed, the way she carried herself hinting at the quiet confidence that had always been buried beneath her bright smile. And here I was, standing at the front of the room, a professor, expected to maintain authority, expected to remain untouchable.

But the moment our eyes met, time stuttered.

“Professor…” Her voice was soft, cautious, like she was testing the waters of a memory she thought she’d buried.

I swallowed, gripping my notes a little too tightly. My voice came out colder than I intended. “You’ve changed,” I said, scanning her face, tracing the years that had passed between us. “Not just your appearance… your aura. You’re no longer the same girl I once knew.”

She shifted in her seat, biting her lip, trying not to betray the flutter of nerves I recognized all too well. “I—um… I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said.

My chest tightened. All the years of quiet longing, of guarding her from afar, of watching her grow and change—it all crashed down on me at once. “I didn’t expect it either,” I admitted, though my tone remained controlled, deliberate. “And yet… here you are. In my class.”

Her eyes widened slightly, a flicker of something dangerous and fragile at the same time. “I… I guess some things have a way of coming back to us,” she whispered.

I stepped closer to the podium, letting my gaze linger on her longer than propriety allowed. “Some things,” I said slowly, deliberately, “are harder to let go of than we ever imagined.”

She shivered slightly under the intensity of my stare, her hands clenching the edge of her desk. “I… I don’t know what to say,” she admitted, voice barely above a whisper.

“You don’t have to say anything,” I murmured, letting a fraction of the past slip into my tone, a promise hidden in the coldness. “Just… remember this moment. Remember me. And maybe, in time… you’ll understand why I couldn’t forget you.”

The bell rang, cutting the tension like a blade, scattering students into the hall. But for us, the room still seemed suspended in the space between past and present—years of longing condensed into one impossibly charged moment.