Your welfare. His conduct. How it affected you.
The language positions me as recipient of unwanted attention rather than participant in a relationship I chose.
My task is to inhabit that position convincingly enough to satisfy a classification specialist who nearly caught my concealment patterns three weeks ago.
“I appreciate that, Agent Davin.” I let my voice carry the quiet uncertainty of someone still processing a betrayal — not performing it, channeling it.
Because there is genuine confusion available: the confusion of loving someone who just sacrificed his career for you and being unable to acknowledge it. The disorientation of hearing the man you chose describe your relationship as pathological obsession in order to protect you.
Real emotions, redirected into a false container.
“Can you describe the nature of your interactions with Professor Constantine during supplemental instruction?” Davin’s pen hovers. Ready.
“He was — I thought he was helping me.”
I let my gaze drop to the table. The gesture reads as vulnerability. It also allows me to monitor my shadow suppression through peripheral awareness rather than direct attention, which reduces the micro-fluctuations that Davin flagged during my original assessment.
“The sessions started normally. Shadow manipulation exercises, elemental theory review. Standard stuff.”
“When did you notice the interactions changing?”
“Gradually.”
I pull from the real timeline — the one where what changed wasn’t boundaries eroding but trust building, where the shift from professional to personal happened through shared vulnerability rather than predatory escalation.
The emotional texture is authentic. The narrative I weave around it is not.
“He started staying later. Asking questions that felt more personal than academic. The physical contact during demonstrations became — prolonged.”
Davin writes.
Two strokes. Pause. Three more.
Through the bond, I feel Constantine hearing his own behavior described through the lens of misconduct, and the pain it transmits is sharp enough that I have to actively prevent my shadow suppression from wavering in response.
I’m fine,I send through the bond, though the word “fine” does more diplomatic work than it deserves.Keep listening. I need you to hear the truth underneath it.
“Did the physical contact make you uncomfortable?” Davin asks.
This is the question that requires the most precise calibration.
Too much discomfort reads as victimization that demands intervention and deeper investigation into the nature of the contact.
Too little reads as complicity that contradicts the misconduct frame.
I need the middle ground — a student who felt confused by attention she didn’t fully understand, who interpreted professional boundary erosion as mentorship intensity rather than recognizing it as inappropriate attachment.
“Not at first,” I say. “I thought it was part of the instruction. Fire-shadow integration requires sustained contact — he explained the methodology, and it made academic sense. But over time, the sessions felt...”
I pause.
Let the silence do the work of someone searching for language to describe something they haven’t fully processed.
“Different. More intense than they needed to be.”
“Intense in what way?”
“Emotionally.”
