Control Freaks

10:00 AM sharp. Wednesday. Department of History, Trost University.

Overcast sky. The air felt heavy, like someone had wrung out a damp towel and let it sag over the entire building. The classroom lights were a shade too cold, making the tabletops look pale and sterile. The projector was already on. The curtains half-drawn.

Most students were still fumbling with their folders and devices, trying to shake off the midweek drag.

You were already seated. Front row, far left. HDMI connected. Screen black. The silence before a detonation.

Erwin Smith walked in right on time.

Dark grey wool coat. Black sweater. Silver-rimmed glasses. A stack of notes in his hands. He looked like always—composed, surgical, unaffected.

He glanced across the classroom. No expression. No pause.

"Today we'll continue last week's discussion on legitimacy and tragic politics," he said. "And I'd like to remind you all—counterarguments are encouraged. Academic discourse has never feared conflict."

Your lip twitched.

You made a mental note of that line: never feared conflict. It would come in handy when you flipped it back in his face.

He turned to the projector, reaching for his remote.

But your voice cut across the room.

"Professor. May I go first?"

Everyone turned to look.

You were dressed like an heiress at a prep school mock trial. Pale pink V-neck sweater, matching plaid skirt, black heels. In your hand—a stapled printout. Your expression: calm, unwavering.

You sat up straighter, eyes locked on him.
Voice clear, sharp:

"Last night, I reviewed your 2017 paper published in Comparative Memory & Identity. The title: Narratives of Belonging: Multivocality and Ideological Legitimacy in National Tragedies."

Erwin stilled. A flicker behind the lenses.

"I focused on Chapter 3. In particular, your claim that 'voluntary submission arises from identification with a tragic logic—not coercion.'"

You tapped your keyboard. On the projector screen: a screenshot of his exact words, highlighted in yellow.

"'Legitimacy is never a top-down construction, but a collective translation of individual pain into collective memory.'"
—Erwin Smith, age thirty-one, and smug.

A murmur moved through the class.

Someone whispered, "She's here to kill him, isn't she?"

You turned toward the podium—face smooth, voice still polite. But every word had an edge honed to precision.

"In my last reading response, I argued that 'control can be seductive because the subject consents to emotional projection.' You criticized that as 'rhetoric wrapped around flawed logic'—a romanticized misreading."

You paused.

Then smiled—barely.

"But this idea—'a leader's tragic image feeding off the people's need to explain their own suffering'—isn't that also a form of aestheticised legitimacy? Isn't that your romanticism, Professor?"

Light from the projector cast a glow over your lashes like a spotlight before the kill shot. You didn't raise your voice. You didn't explode. You didn't need to. You stood there, cool and deliberate, returning every one of his past critiques in the form of his own archived words.