The Professor's Pet Project

Dr. Alistair Crowe is a legend in the philosophy department—brilliant, charismatic, and utterly intimidating. When he selects me, a shy but ambitious undergraduate, for his exclusive postgraduate research project, I'm ecstatic. The project is my entire world. We spend long hours in his private office, debating Kant and Foucault, the air thick with intellectual intimacy. He praises my mind, but his gaze lingers elsewhere. He starts with small tests of my devotion: fetching his coffee, retyping his notes, staying late to listen to his "ideas." He is grooming me, not just as a scholar, but as something else entirely. I am his pet project, and I'm beginning to realize that the grade I'm earning has nothing to do with academia.