[ENG.] Azazel - Lucifer's Son

11. With me.

The door shut in my face with a dull thud that seemed to echo through the entire building, vibrating in my bones.

I stood there, frozen, staring at the dark wood of the door like it might give me answers that weren't coming. I could just barely make out my reflection in the small rectangular glass panel. Pale. Confused. Pissed off.

What the hell had just happened?

The hallway was empty and eerie. The only sounds were the steady, maddening hum of the fluorescent lights overhead — that annoying buzz you usually tune out but that now seemed amplified — and the distant, rhythmic ticking of the wall clock at the end of the corridor.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor, backpack dropping beside me with a muffled thud. I pulled my knees to my chest and sighed.

I tried everything to kill the time that seemed to have completely stopped.

I played with my hair, mechanically putting it up and taking it down. Once. Twice. Three times. I tried thinking of something funny — the time Sebastian fell into the pond, or when we tried to bake an apple cake and nearly set the kitchen on fire — but every thought seemed to fizzle out before it could fully form, smothered under the weight of frustration.

I stared at my shoes — the black sneakers Sebastian had gotten me for my birthday, with the now-worn white laces — and started pacing up and down the corridor, arms crossed, counting my steps just to have something to focus on.

One, two, three, four, five... turn. One, two, three, four, five... turn.

My footsteps echoed in the silence.

When I checked the clock, absolutely convinced at least half an hour had gone by, I found out only twenty miserable, agonizing minutes had passed.

Twenty minutes that felt like twenty hours.

With an exasperated sigh that bounced off the empty hallway walls, I got up. If I had to be out here like a kid in time-out, I could at least feed that curiosity that had always been both my curse and, sometimes, my saving grace.

I wandered down hallways I barely knew, ones I'd never had a reason to explore. Past empty classrooms with chairs flipped up on desks, dusty bulletin boards covered in sun-faded notices months past their expiration, faded posters from events long gone. The smell was different here — old paper, dust, and that particular scent that only old buildings have.

It was rounding a corner that something caught my eye and made me slow down.

A glass cabinet.

It was low but wide, propped against the wall at the far end like someone had left it there decades ago and forgotten it existed. The frame was dark wood, nearly black, carved with designs that must have once been elegant but were now buried under years of built-up grime.

Inside were old books — incredibly old. Volumes as thick as bricks, with leather covers darkened and cracked from time, spines that looked like they'd crumble if anyone so much as touched them. Some were trimmed in gold that had long since oxidized. Dust had settled over everything, a gray-brown layer that made it hard to read the titles printed in gothic script along the spines.

I got down on my knees — jeans were already a lost cause at this point — and tried to open the cabinet door. My fingers closed around the cold brass handle and I pulled.

Nothing.

I pulled harder, shifting the angle.

Still nothing.

It was locked — sealed, practically airtight.

"You can't open it."

The deep, way-too-familiar voice behind me made me jump so hard I nearly smacked my head against the glass. My heart shot up into my throat. I spun around, losing my balance and having to grab the wall to keep from completely wiping out.

Professor Stan was right there, a few feet away, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest in that posture of his that seemed specifically designed to be intimidating.

But it wasn't the intimidation that got to me. It was the amused expression on his face — that half-smile curling at the corner of his mouth, that look that said gotcha — that made me want to throw something at him. Preferably something heavy.

"Oh wow, thank you so much!" I said, loading every syllable with as much venom as I could muster, jumping to my feet maybe a little too quickly. I brushed off my knees with sharp, irritated swipes. "I genuinely never would've figured that out without your incredibly helpful, deeply enlightening input."

I plastered the fakest smile I owned onto my face.

He just looked down at me — damn it, he was tall, I had to actually tilt my head back to meet his eyes — and there was something in the way he was studying me that made me feel both completely exposed and... something else I refused to examine.

"It's airtight," he said, and this time his tone was different — almost educational, like he was explaining something to a student. His gaze shifted from my eyes to the volumes behind the glass. "The books are kept in a controlled atmosphere. Nitrogen, mostly. To keep them from degrading."

He paused, tilting his head slightly toward the cabinet.

"They're quite old. Some go back to the seventeenth century."

"Like you," I said, unable to help myself. It was stronger than me.

For just a second — just one — I saw something flash in his eyes. Surprise? Amusement? The corner of his mouth lifted in what could technically be called a smile, even if it was thin, barely there.

"Indeed." He nodded slowly, and when he spoke again his voice had taken on an almost playful note — dangerously playful. "Old enough to have seen a great many things..."

He paused, and those gray eyes locked onto mine with an intensity that knocked the breath right out of me.

"But young enough to still seem... how shall I put it..."

Another pause. Deliberate. Calculated.

"Attractive?"

He raised an eyebrow in a silent challenge, waiting.

I felt heat explode in my cheeks — burning, completely betraying every attempt to keep a neutral face. My heartbeat spiked. I swallowed, throat suddenly dry. I mentally cursed myself, my body for responding without permission, for giving me away.

Yes, he was more than attractive — he was insanely, undeniably compelling, with the way he moved, sure and fluid, the way he spoke in that deep voice, the way he looked at me like he could see straight through every wall I'd built — but rather than confirm that, rather than give him that satisfaction, I would have sooner swallowed broken glass.

"Didn't you say," I said, clearing my throat because my voice had come out embarrassingly high, "that there wouldn't be any breaks during your class time?"

I yanked the conversation in a completely different direction, crossing my arms over my chest in an unconscious mirror of his posture.

Stan tilted his head slightly, studying me, and for a moment I thought he wasn't going to answer — that he'd call me out on that obvious deflection. But then he spoke.

"I came out to check on you." He said it finally, voice neutral, almost professional. He made a vague gesture toward the hallway I'd come from. "You weren't where I told you to wait."

He paused, and I watched his brow furrow slightly, like he was realizing something in real time. An almost surprised expression moved across his face.

"Am I really explaining myself to you right now?"

There was genuine disbelief in his voice, mixed with something that sounded almost like self-deprecating humor.

"Well," I replied with a shrug, trying to appear way more indifferent than I actually was, "I was bored."

My tone was deliberately light, like all of this — getting kicked out of class, wandering restricted hallways, getting caught by him — was the most normal thing in the world.

For a moment we were both quiet.

A strange, loaded silence that seemed to fill the space between us like something physical. I could hear my own breathing, too loud in my own ears. I could hear his. The hallway felt like it had gotten smaller, the walls closer.

I looked away first, pretending to be interested in a faded poster on the wall — something about a 2019 conference — just to have somewhere else to focus that wasn't him.

"You know this hallway is off-limits, right?"

His voice broke the silence, and when I turned back toward him, Stan was gesturing vaguely toward the start of the corridor, where — now that I actually looked — there was a large yellow sign with black lettering: "RESTRICTED AREA — NO STUDENT ACCESS."

"There's no way you missed it," he continued, and there was a glint of amusement in his eyes. "Given the enormous sign at the entrance."

He let that hang in the air, then pushed his hands into his jeans pockets and straightened up.

"Now go back to class."

He turned and started walking toward the classroom, his footsteps echoing on the linoleum floor, his broad shoulders moving away.

"So..." I started, staying where I was, my voice coming out less steady than I wanted.

Stan stopped. He didn't turn all the way around — just enough to look back at me over his shoulder. The fluorescent light cast shadows across his profile, sharpening the line of his jaw, the curve of his nose.

There was something in his eyes I couldn't fully decode — a flash of amusement, maybe, or challenge, or something else entirely that made my pulse pick up.

"So you'll still be getting your extra lesson today," he said, and this time the smile was undeniable — slow, almost predatory. The corners of his mouth lifting gradually, showing a hint of white teeth.

He paused, letting those words hang between us.

"With me."

Then he kept walking, hands still in his pockets, not looking back, leaving me there standing in the hallway staring at his shoulders as he moved away.

I watched him turn the corner and disappear, the sound of his footsteps fading until there was nothing left.

I stood completely still for what felt like forever, a tangle of emotions I couldn't even name twisting my stomach into tighter and tighter knots.

Frustration. Anger. Confusion. Curiosity. And something else — something subtle and dangerous hovering just below the surface, something I didn't want to name. Not yet.

I sighed, running a hand through my hair and wrecking my already-sorry ponytail a little more.

With me.

Those two words kept echoing in my head, over and over, like a sound that refused to die out.

I looked at the ceiling. Then the clock — another ten minutes had gone by. Then back at the empty hallway where Stan had vanished.

What the hell was happening to me?

And why — despite all the anger and the frustration — did some small, buried, completely undeniable part of me actually kind of can't wait for that stupid extra lesson?

I shook my head, like I could physically knock those thoughts loose, and started slowly walking back toward the classroom, my legs seeming to move on their own.

Something had changed.

I could feel it in the air, in the way my heart was still beating too fast, in the lingering sensation of his gaze on my skin.

Something had definitely changed.

And I wasn't sure I was ready to deal with what that meant.