Professor, You Can't Get Away

That night in the alley behind the bar, she cupped my face and asked, "Do you like it?"

On the morning of the opening ceremony, she stood onstage and said, "The point of college is learning to face yourself."

When we were alone, she called me "Qingye." When my mother was there, she called me "Xiao Ye."

But I knew the bar receipt tucked at the back of her bookshelf was dated the night we spent together, the only night we ever had.

She's running. I'm chasing.

She draws a safe distance, so I cross the line, one step at a time. She uses ethics to hold me back, so I bring up her own lectures on Lolita. She says we can't, and I ask her

"Then why won't you look me in the eye?"

This is a story of relentless pursuit.

And a story of tender surrender.