What's a bad girl supposed to do after she gets the bastard professor to admit he cares about her?
Obviously—fuck him over.
(Not literally. But close enough.)
The pool was lit a syrupy, unnatural pink. The water shimmered with ripple-light like a fake dream sequence, staining your submerged calves with fluorescent blush. Your heels were discarded on the tiles. The red polish on your toes reflected in the surface, bleeding out like watercolor.
You sat upright, elbows on your knees, staring into the water like a war general deciding whether to go home for the victory parade—or charge into round two.
"Are you insane?" you muttered to yourself.
Not the first time that question had occurred. But tonight, it rang louder. Because you were still thinking about him.
Erwin Smith.
Your professor. Your reviewer. Your enemy. Your—
Old fucking fox.
You took a swig of canned whiskey soda. Kept your eyes fixed on the water.
"Did you hear?" Historia chimed in from the lounge chair beside you, voice light and amused. "That new political science transfer invited me to go camping. Said he'd bring homemade marshmallows."
"Camping?" Ymir scoffed, reaching behind Historia and pulling her fully into her lap. "Jesus, is he recruiting you for the Boy Scouts?"
Historia giggled, curled up against her like a cat. "But he actually listens when I talk."
You glanced sideways at them, then downed another sip of tequila.
Listening. Must be nice.
The last time you talked this much, it was in a classroom—tearing through your professor's thesis like it was a corpse on an operating table, and threatening, deadpan, "ถถา๕ษ็ว๘ again, and I'll deconstruct your opening paragraph in public."
And the worst part?
He didn't flinch.
He smiled.
He said, "Then I won't write an opening."
Fucker.
You kicked the pool water. The splash stung your ankle like a slap.
You weren't confused about what you were doing. You hadn't pulled this kind of personality-assassination performance in a while—this slow seduction by intellectual siege.
Step one: draw the gun in class.
Step two: force confession in his office.
Step three: get him to admit "I care about you."
And now here you were, wet ankles and whiskey in hand, plotting the next move like a girl who just cracked a goddamn safe.
"What're you brooding over now?" Ymir asked, eyes drifting to your almost-empty drink. "Did someone piss you off again?"
"Not exactly." You didn't look up. "I pissed myself off."
"Don't tell me it's another one of those old-man professors who gives you B-minuses and secretly memorizes your thesis formatting."
You froze.
Then turned your head.
Slowly.
"You didn't."
"Oh my god, you do have one," Historia blinked.
Ymir whooped.
"No way. Lemme guess—stone-cold voice, no facial expressions, destroys your soul in written feedback, but then one day emails you like 'Your performance today was commendable.'"
"He doesn't just email," you muttered. "He ran into me hungover at a grocery store once and remembered which brand of acetaminophen I bought."
Ymir choked on her drink.
"Jesus Christ. That's not a professor. That's your dad."
"Nope." You leaned your head back against the chair. "If he were my dad, I wouldn't wanna fuck him."
"Whaaaaat," they both groaned in unison, like they'd just stumbled into the juiciest soap opera of the year.
"So are you serious about him?" Historia asked, lips glossy and wicked.
"Serious?" You repeated the word like it tasted wrong. "Me? Him? This? Serious?"
You laughed. Bitter. Lovely.
"No, babe. I'm not serious. I'm in full calculated seduction mode. I'm trying to ruin him. I want him losing sleep, misplacing his notes, walking into staff meetings distracted. I want to haunt him like a glitch in his philosophical framework."
"You're insane," Ymir exhaled, clearly impressed. "I love you."
"Has he snapped yet?" Historia asked, eyes gleaming.
"Not yet." You clinked the edge of your glass with your finger. "But almost. He's a judge next week. Academic debate panel. I registered."
They stared.
"You're competing?"
"I fought to compete."
You beat out half the grad student delegation with an extended version of "When Control Becomes Seductive". Topic of your upcoming presentation?
Aesthetic Obedience and the Construction of Legitimacy: The Tragic Extension of Power in Modern Politics.
Translation: You were about to turn your ideological BDSM with Erwin Smith into a fully cited, formally footnoted academic exhibition.
The pool water glimmered pink. Like a stage waiting for curtain rise.
You sipped. Tapped your nails on the glass. Strategizing.
"You're actually insane," Ymir repeated, more serious now. "Wait. He's a real professor? Not just a fever dream?"
"Real." You tipped your cup toward her, solemn. "Erwin Smith. History Department. Thirty-five. ถถา๕ษ็ว๘s in monospaced type and color-codes his footnotes. Teaches like he's cross-examining witnesses."
You didn't sound embarrassed. You sounded like you were bragging.
Ymir clicked her tongue. "I can't believe our chaos queen is becoming a straight-A student for dick."
"Correction." Historia grinned, "She's turning the entire university into foreplay."
Ymir leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand, eyes gleaming.
"So. What's your endgame, then? Do we go full dark academia: standing ovation, wild sex, next morning he pretends nothing happened?"
"Or do you make out with him in front of the panel and land yourself a tabloid headline 'Student Seduces Professor with Thesis Footnotes'?"
You didn't answer right away.
You set your glass down, laced your fingers, and stared at your red-tipped nails.
"Endgame?" you repeated softly. "Who said there has to be an ending?"
Historia burst into laughter. "Right. You don't do conclusions."
"You just set things on fire," Ymir added, grinning.
You smiled.
It wasn't gentle.
It wasn't cruel.
It was the smile of a woman who knew she'd already won, and was just deciding how dramatic to make the aftermath.
"I don't want an ending," you said, eyes sharp as lasers beneath the pink lights. "I want him to understand that I don't need affection to break him. I want him enthralled. Without ever touching me."
You stood, water dripping from your ankles, dress hem clinging to your legs.
"You know what the highest form of conquest is?"
They looked up.
"It's not love. Not sex. Not even power." Your voice dropped low. "It's making the person above you voluntarily surrender their power."
You picked up your heels.
Turned to leave.
"I want him to love me," you said over your shoulder. "But more than that—"
You smiled, lethal and divine.
"I want him to lose."
And he would.
Because he'd already handed you the knife.
——
It sounded badass, didn't it?
Reality, of course, was anything but.
You woke up with sunlight slicing across your face like a damn laser show, your brain soaked in vodka and strawberry cake—sweet, sticky, chaotic, with just a hint of acid reflux.
First instinct? Grab your phone.
Second? Scream.
10:27 AM.
"...Fuck."
You launched yourself upright, only for the hangover to try body-slamming you straight back down. Your phone was a battlefield of missed calls—all from Arthur. One voice message, his tone an infuriating cocktail of worry and wholesome husband material you never asked for:
"Are you okay? It's already ten-thirty. The Model UN delegation is in round two of speeches... Marie and Victor are covering for you, but the professor is here. If you can still make it, text me. I can drive you—seriously, it's no trouble."
You half-hopped into yesterday's party dress while sprinting backward toward the bathroom, yelling with a mouthful of mouthwash:
"Arthur, you are a goddamn unicorn in a swamp of men."
You threw on a beige blazer from your "emergency-respectable" pile, over the plaid mini skirt from last night's pool party. Shoes? One black loafer fished out from under the bed. Socks didn't match. Your bag was a slung-on briefcase with the energy of a last-minute PowerPoint. Hair? A ponytail just competent enough not to scream "crime scene."
You grabbed a can of strawberry Monster from your purse and shotgunned half of it before you even made it down the stairs.
Ten minutes later, Arthur's car pulled up at the curb. He took one look at you and went pale.
"You... are you okay?"
"I'm a walking tragedy," you said, smoothing your collar in the window's reflection before yanking the car door open. "Brain's a mess, heart's a mess, but I didn't have time to fix either."
As soon as you sat down, your phone buzzed. Marie's message:
[If you can still catch your speech slot, the professor might not dock your grade.]
Followed by:
[Only if you can channel that fire from yesterday's history class again.]
You glanced at it and laughed. The kind of laugh that stung a little in the eyes.
Yesterday, you had him on the brink of admitting he cared.
Today, you were rolling into a Model UN conference hungover like a war criminal in a Netflix doc.
Irony, darling. Purest form of performance art.
You leaned your head against the window, watching as the old gothic silhouette of the campus lecture hall crept closer like a judgmental grandmother. You looked like you'd just escaped a fever dream in rose-pink neon, gripping a Monster can like it was holy water, heart pounding like it was hosting a rave.
"Arthur," you muttered, voice still husky with sleep and sin, "if I manage to kill it in there today—I'm marrying you."
Arthur nearly swerved into a tree. His ears flushed a violent shade of lobster.
"Don't—don't joke like that," he stammered, his back instinctively straightening like a boy scout in front of a crush.
"I know," you said, reclining with your eyes fluttering shut, your tone feather-light. "That's why I said it."
The car slid to a smooth stop outside the campus gate. Before the wheels stopped spinning, you were already launching out of the passenger side like a grenade—skirt flying, grip tightening on your briefcase, ponytail yanked tighter mid-sprint. You looked like a disaster that climbed out of its own wreckage and decided to run for office.
The Model UN assembly was held in the library annex, a towering hall of polished wood, frosted glass, and ice-cold lighting designed to kill all hope. Victor was on stage, flawlessly executing a stand-in speech with the poise of someone who had already mentally filed his post-event résumé bullet points.
He caught sight of you the second you stepped in. His lips twitched. Just slightly.
Marie didn't even look at you. She just slid a freshly printed speech outline into your hand like she was handing over a scalpel in the OR.
"You're third," she said calmly. "Seven minutes."
"You just saved my life," you panted, cracking open the Monster again. "If I die right now, please burn my thesis and send it to Erwin Smith with a note that says I didn't lose on content—I lost to vodka."
"Noted," Marie replied flatly. "Try not to let your hangover tank your IQ."
You smirked, straw clenched between your teeth as you collapsed into your seat. The current speech droned on about 'Multilateral Legitimacy in the Redistribution of Interventionist Power.' The kind of prompt that sounded like it came prepackaged in a dry-cleaned suit and recited itself with a UN-accredited accent.
As the delegate ahead of you read their speech like it had been blessed by the Foreign Ministry, your brain did something unexpected—it queued up Erwin's voice from yesterday, low and lethal: "What you wrote is dangerous."
You glanced down at the outline in your hand.
Too neat.
Too polite.
Too... not you.
You crumpled it up and tossed it into the wastebasket like it had just insulted your intelligence.
Marie's head snapped toward you. "What the fuck are you doing?"
"Improv, babe."
Her pupils dilated in full-blown panic. She looked like she was watching a child light a match in a fireworks warehouse.
The lights over the delegate podium were colder than you expected. Harsher.
You stood, legs still half-drunk, and glanced at Marie. You inhaled once. Deep. Then bowed toward the judge panel like a girl with a plan and a headache.
"Good morning, delegates—or maybe afternoon. The time's awkward. So am I."
A ripple of laughter. Pens paused. Heads lifted. Including one belonging to the man in the middle of the judge's table, the one pretending to grade notes like this whole thing was beneath him—Erwin Smith.
You didn't look at him. Not yet.
"I had a speech prepared. It was tidy, symmetrical, MLA compliant—civilized. Then I decided, seven minutes ago, not to read it."
"Not because I was careless. But because I cared too much."
You paused, glanced at your fingers. The red polish from last night's poolside mistake still clung to the edges like a scarlet fingerprint.
"Today's topic: multilateral legitimacy in international intervention. Or, in plain human language: who got to play God in someone else's tragedy?"
The room stilled. Jaws subtly tightened. A judge in the corner flicked on his recorder.
Your voice dropped slightly, a velvet scalpel.
"'Legitimacy' was a curious word. It sounded like a contract. But more often, it was a spell. A performance. Because what we called legitimate was rarely born that way—it was told. Repeated. Memorized. And eventually, swallowed."
You stepped forward, like someone pacing the border between reason and mutiny.
"In intervention politics, the real danger wasn't the act itself. It was that we'd gotten too comfortable believing that whoever spoke first, loudest, and most eloquently deserved the moral microphone."
"And so we got this surreal theater: a state delegate stood under bright lights, voice drenched in English and carefully diluted pity, expressing grave concern over someone else's humanitarian disaster—and then signed off on airstrikes."
You smiled. Sweetly. The kind of smile that should've come with a trigger warning.
"We called that a 'legitimate intervention.' But at its core? It was a very well-dressed power grab."
The room went silent. Electrically so. Even the note-takers forgot their laptops existed.
"We thought 'multilateral' meant neutral. It didn't. We thought 'joint authorization' meant righteous. It didn't. No matter how many pretty words we spray-painted on an action, it still needed to survive interrogation."
You glanced toward the judge panel, your voice softening, sharpening:
"So no, I wasn't giving you a safe definition of legitimacy today. I wanted to ask instead—what if legitimacy was nothing more than an aesthetic of obedience we were trained to admire?"
From the corner of your eye, you caught it—Erwin's brow, twitching the faintest degree. Bullseye.
You pressed on, voice low, deliberate, every syllable slicing cleaner than a policy memo at war.
"This happened to be the focus of one of my recent papers. And here's the thing: in political philosophy, we learned that all power—all of it—needed to explain its own pain."
"Even righteous violence required a storyline."
You paused, just enough to let that linger like smoke.
"So legitimacy didn't come from the volume of the wound. It came from how well the bleeding was narrated. We said: 'for human rights.' We said: 'to prevent catastrophe.' We said: 'because it's the responsibility of the free world.' And it all sounded so noble—so surgically moral—that we forgot to ask:"
Your gaze sharpened.
"Who gave you the right to define that pain in the first place?"
Now the silence was no longer just polite. It was electric. Unsettled. Like everyone had just realized their shoes might be on fire.
"You could own armies. You could own media channels. You could collect unanimous votes on a resolution. But if you were the one holding the mic and pretending to be the neutral observer—congratulations. You'd colonized the narrative."
A beat.
You inhaled. Slow. Controlled. Then said it:
"Real legitimacy didn't survive on consensus. It survived dissection."
"And if it couldn't be taken apart, questioned, or outright denied—then it wasn't legitimacy. It was just a prettier name for compliance under good lighting."
Still no one moved. Still no one dared to cough. The kind of silence usually reserved for courtrooms and bomb shelters.
You let that moment stretch until it nearly hurt. Then pivoted, silkily:
"Now, I knew what some of you were probably thinking. 'Wasn't she being a little too philosophical about this?'"
You leaned in toward the mic, voice playful, wicked:
"Allow me to remind you: politics had never just been about governance. It was about language—narrative—designing entire realities out of vocabulary. And legitimacy?"
You flashed the most dangerous kind of smile—a woman with a migraine and nothing to lose.
"Legitimacy was just the opening line in how we justified every bias we'd ever institutionalized."
Then you stepped even closer to the mic. Cool. Composed. Your voice cut through the air like a piano wire:
"I wasn't here to argue against intervention. I was here to drag out into the light all those who used legitimacy to extend their grip on the world's vocabulary."
You paused. Not for effect—but because you knew you'd struck something deep, and you wanted to let the wound breathe.
"Because sometimes, I wondered if we'd gotten so high off 'sounding right'—so in love with eloquence—that we'd confused speechcraft with moral immunity. If it sounded good, we let it slide. If it was well-dressed, we let it kill."
Your gaze slid across the panel like a scalpel, and when it brushed over Erwin, there was no malice, only precision:
"Words were weapons. Sharper than bombs. Quieter than blood. And so much more permanent."
You stepped back slightly, letting your voice drop one final notch:
"I wasn't here to tell a prettier story. I was here to remind you that legitimacy—if it must exist at all—couldn't be a cosmetic. It had to be a confession. One that any outsider could hear, take apart, and—if necessary—burn."
The final line was calm. Icy. Devastating.
"If we couldn't even ask where the right to narrate came from—then we'd spend our lives reading from scripts someone else wrote."
You bowed. A single, quiet motion. Then stepped off the podium. The applause didn't come instantly. It hit a second too late—like everyone needed a breath check to believe what they'd just witnessed.
Then it began. And it built. Rhythmically. From the academic front rows to the back corners where the interns, aides, and forgotten AV team sat blinking like they'd just seen a car crash in a poetry recital.
You didn't turn around.
You just walked back to the delegation table, dropped into your seat, and—without even looking—reached over and lightly squeezed Marie's fingers.
She closed her notebook, her voice low, admiring:
"Savage."
Victor abandoned the pretense of note-taking entirely. He leaned in, one eyebrow arched, grinning like someone watching a demolition derby:
"Jesus. The hungover girl just declared war on western interventionism."
You said nothing. Just leaned back, eyes shut, stomach churning. You felt the Monster and adrenaline forming an ungodly alliance in your gut.
You raised one finger.
Marie and Victor both went silent, assuming you were about to drop some strategic genius.
Instead, you croaked:
"...I'm gonna puke."
Marie didn't hesitate—she grabbed your arm instantly.
"Not here."
She moved like someone trained for battlefield extraction. One hand on your elbow, the other fishing a water bottle out of her tote with surgical efficiency. You staggered down the hallway like a wounded war general. The kind who delivered anti-imperialist monologues before throwing up tequila and trauma.
By the time you collapsed in the second stall of the annex restroom, you were on your knees, forehead nearly kissing porcelain. Marie had already popped the water bottle cap and was holding your hair like it was her thesis defense on the line.
"Spit. Rinse. Don't talk," she said calmly, like this was a scheduled part of the conference.
You tried to say "I'm fine"—but it came out as a retching, slurred impersonation of dignity. And then it really hit: the Monster-vodka-academic ego cocktail projectile-ejected in full force. Your logic, your liver, your last three metaphors—all of it flushed in a sickening pink swirl.
"Oh god..." you gasped, collapsing against the stall wall like a dying Victorian heroine. "Did I seriously say 'legitimacy is not a cosmetic' out loud?"
Marie wiped your mouth with a tissue.
"You did. It was iconic. And if you get any more iconic, we'll need to call an ambulance."
"Is Victor still in there?"
"Yep," she said, helping you sit up, her voice as flat as a no-confidence vote. "He's currently holding your seat and pretending this was part of our strategic rotation plan."
You wheezed a laugh that sounded suspiciously like dying.
"We're a real multilateral team, huh?"
"Triangular diplomacy," she deadpanned, tossing a mint into your lap. "Now eat this or you'll pass out mid-commentary."
You collapsed back against the stall wall like you'd just been shot by your own thesis.
"You know, if you were a guy, I'd marry you."
"I thought you promised Arthur?"
"That was a tactical lie."
You closed your eyes, letting your cheek rest against the cool tile, arms folded like you were hugging your own ghost.
"I'm the kind of woman who fell in love like she was boarding a lifeboat. But I also had principles. Principle being: if someone saved me mid-death spiral, I considered giving them a child."
Marie snorted.
"You owed three people then. Arthur drove you. I'm holding your hair. Victor's faking national stability."
You took the tissue from her, wiped your lip, then looked up with that particular brand of half-dead, half-flirtatious smirk only women fluent in pain and performance could manage.
"Fine. But Victor had to wait until 2032. The others were on the priority birth list."
Marie finally broke—she let out a laugh that sounded more like relief than humor.
"If you're still cracking jokes, you're not dead yet."
You closed your eyes again, whispering,
"My tongue recovered first. My body's still catching up."
Then, softer:
"...Did I go too far?"
Her voice lost all edge.
"You went exactly far enough."
She brushed a sweaty strand of hair from your forehead with the tenderness of someone who knew you hid every bruise under theory.
"After you said 'language is a prettier missile,' the panel didn't even breathe. They were terrified you'd strip them down next."
You breathed in slowly. And exhaled one word like a prayer:
"Hot."
Marie leaned back against the stall door beside you.
"You know what made you terrifying?" she said quietly.
"My face?"
She didn't even dignify that with a glance.
"No," she said. "It was that you could've coasted on your face. But instead, you turned your brain into a scalpel. And you didn't just use it—you aimed it at the system."
You opened one eye, watched her from the side.
"I didn't want to gut the system," you said, voice suddenly softer, more dangerous. "I just wanted to prove it could bleed."
Marie looked at you for a long second.
"Well," she said finally, "today you did."
For a moment, the stall was quiet. Beyond it, you could hear the echo of feedback from the judge panel mic, their voices muffled like a world happening somewhere far away.
A world you were technically still part of. But for now, you sat in the eye of the storm, knee-deep in nausea and moral warfare, peeling yourself back together like a ruined dress someone might still wear to a gala.
Then, almost a whisper:
"Do you think he understood it?"
Marie didn't answer right away.
"Who?"
"You know who."
She stood, straightened her jacket. Didn't meet your eye.
"If he did, he won't say it. And if he didn't—watch your back. You're not the only one who knows how to weaponize language."
You stared at her, something tight and glinting in your chest. Then you nodded. Once. Quietly.
"I'll keep sharpening the blade."
Marie exited, heels clicking with the certainty of someone who knew exactly which kind of silence meant victory.
The door swung shut behind her with a whisper, like a secret being sealed.
You stayed behind in the stall, resting your head against the cold tile, heart slowing. Hands still. The taste of bile lingered under the mint like a metaphor that refused to be rinsed away.
You were alive.
Barely. But alive.
You picked up the speech outline you had crumpled earlier. It was soft, warped, water-damaged at the corner like a battlefield map after the bombs dropped.
You smoothed it out. Not to salvage it. But to remind yourself that you hadn't hallucinated what just happened. That you did say every goddamn word. That no one dared stop you.
You didn't just talk about power.
You dissected it. With your teeth.
You imagined—briefly—what Erwin looked like at that moment. That fractional twitch of his brow. That look people got when someone sliced through their framework like it was butter. You knew he felt it.
You wanted him to feel it.
You sat up straighter. Pulled out your phone.
One message from Arthur:
[Are you okay? Should I bring you food? I can come right now. You were amazing.]
You smiled. Typed a polite "Thank you."
Then erased it.
Instead, you sent:
[Forget the food. Just bring yourself.]
Another message—Victor:
[Still alive?]
You laughed.
Typed back:
[Alive. Vicious.]
You hit send, leaned back, and stared at the dim bathroom ceiling like it was a cathedral. Light flickered through the old bulb—grainy, flickering, imperfect. But real.
You remembered your first debate speech in high school. You threw up for ten minutes backstage, then walked out and won Best Speaker.
You'd always been like this: bold in rhetoric, borderline in blood sugar, built for verbal warfare but allergic to breakfast.
"Old habits," you muttered.
You stood. Stared in the mirror.
You looked awful.
But your eyes were still lit.
Your mouth still tasted like war.
You washed your face, ran a hand through your hair, and said to your reflection with a smirk that could kill a PhD program:
"Professor Smith, you poor bastard."