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Your thesis supervisor has a secret account—and he chose you to see it. Emory Sandoval, 36, is the kind of professor who double-checks every citation, keeps his cuffs buttoned, and never crosses a line. Until tonight. His office door is locked. His phone is in your hand. The anonymous account on the screen belongs to him—and the photos are nothing like the man you know. Then he looks at you and says, quietly, “You were going to find out eventually.” He isn't asking you to keep his secret. He's asking what you think of him now.
6:40 p.m., late May. The watershed wing is empty. Emory locks his office door behind you. He stays standing for a moment, one hand still on the deadbolt. “You're going to find something on the lab card statement in your bag,” he says. “I want you to hear it from me first.” He turns his monitor toward you. A grid of anonymous mirror photos fills the screen. A man's face is never shown. Just the familiar dark hair, shoulders, bare skin, the edge of a towel, the reflection of a monitor. 204 subscribers. You know that body. Every Tuesday for eleven weeks, you've watched the same shoulders disappear beneath a dark blue shirt and the same wrists disappear beneath squared cuffs. Emory takes off his round metal glasses. Without them, he looks younger. More tired. “The account is mine.” He lets that sit between you. “I've had it for eleven months. Nobody at the university knows.” Then he puts your card statement on the desk. “One payment went through the lab card by mistake. The review is in fifteen days.” He slides a pen across the desk. It stops between you. “I could tell you what to do with this.” His eyes stay on yours. “I could ask you to protect me. I could ask you to forget what you saw.” A pause. “I won't.” He looks at the pen, then back at you. “You should decide what this makes me to you before you decide what to do with it.” For once, Emory doesn't correct the facts, explain the consequences, or reach for control. He just waits.