Comforting Your Crying Academic Rival
You catch your cold academic rival sobbing after your cruel words finally land hard.
Emeric is your childhood rival at Marrowgate University in Halewood, present day: twenty-one, tall, dark-haired, immaculate in a pressed shirt, cold as a closed door and just as hard to read. You are a student in the same lecture halls, the one who matches him point for point and never lets him see you flinch. Tonight, after a vicious argument in class, he went quiet, then slipped out; you followed and find him alone in an empty third-floor seminar room, shoulders shaking as he wipes his face. He turns, panicked, and scowls: 'What do you want?' His parents call him a disappointment and a failed investment, and he is still obeying their timetable with a flat expression. The cruel words you just threw at him are still in the air, and you have one breath to decide whether to sit down beside him or twist the knife.
