I was unusually excited for his lecture.

I was always excited for when Hashirama was lecturing because of course I was. But this time, I was even more so since we hadn't heard from each other in a while.

We had this mental play sometimes, when he would ask a question to the class, and I would raise my hand, and he would look at me, raise an eyebrow, and choose someone else. Then, I would think about it as he fucked me.

I hadn't heard from him since I told him how to implant the chip, and he hadn't heard from me, either. I'd just been busy studying for my exams as well as reading more about neurology. I'd found an interest in the subject and I had noticed it came easily to me. That was an aspect of myself I did like; when completely absorbed in something, I didn't have to play hard to get; I just was. And I figured that would entail the tension between us would be extra wound up.

I was trembling a little with nerves. I had deliberately seated myself quite close to the front of the lecture theatre, without anyone next to me to make our playful exchange easier. Sometimes, I sat with others just to bother him. "I hate it when I don't have you all to myself", he would complain. But this time, I wanted to give him exactly what he wanted.

As he stepped onto the podium, I felt my heart burst. He looked stunning, in suit pants and a white linen shirt that was slightly oversized and not tucked in. I bit my lip, waiting for him to turn around and look for me as he always did.

He didn't.

He turned on the computer, made sure the PowerPoint slides showed on the screen, and started lecturing, looking everywhere but at me.

At first, I felt hurt. But then, I smiled. He was toying with me. Of course he was. He was trying to make me desperate for him. Well, two could play this game. I started taking notes on my laptop vigorously. When he asked questions, I deliberately kept my hand down which was terribly unusual for me. As the lecture drew to a close, I bit my lip; I was getting nervous about fucking him. The tension between us had never been like it was now. We had never ignored each other like this. 

As the lecture ended, I stayed put, my back turned to the stage where he stood, packing my bag slowly.

But as I turned round, he was gone.

I frowned. Really? Was this how we played? I slung my backpack over my shoulder, went to his office and knocked on the closed door, but there was no answer. I waited for a while, figuring he might have gone to buy coffee in the cafeteria before coming, but he never came. I waited for thirty minutes, then realised I needed the last fifteen of my break to actually eat lunch.

I took my backpack and left, terribly confused.

I didn't hear from him or see him all week. I kept studying, both for my exams but also about neurology. On the Thursday, three days after the lecture, I was seriously considering texting him, but I didn't, not wanting to nag him. Instead, I went to the building where his lab was. But as I blipped my card, it got rejected. I frowned, trying again. It got rejected again.

I went to the information desk, spoke to the lady there.

"I can't enter the lab where I work."

The kind lady behind the desk took my card, wrote the number on it in her computer.

"Your access has been removed."

My heart sank.

"By whom?"

"By professor Hashirama Senju."

I felt my heart sink

"Since when?" I asked.

She mentioned a date. Three days after I told him how to implant the chip.

"Thank you for your help", I said to the lady and turned to leave.

On Sunday night, I decided to text him.

Me: Are you lecturing tomorrow?

I hated myself a little, feeling pathetic, but what was I to do? This was unbearable. As I went to bed, he hadn't read my message. When I woke up, I checked first thing I did, but not only had he not answered; he had still not read it which I knew was some bullshit because he was always quick to read. And answer, for that matter.

But then, as I was walking to classes, I saw he had read.

But not answered.

Which I realised was a million times worse. 

Before his next lecture, I was nervous again. But this time, it wasn't that exciting, tingling nervousness of last week. Instead, I felt like I was going to throw up. I sat next to a group of people I was friends with, in the middle of them, and could hardly look on the empty stage before he entered. As he stepped up on it, a deep sadness filled me up from my toes up to my heart. What is happening, Professor Senju?

I had decided to behave as I normally did, raise my hand as I normally did, but when it came to it I didn't, simply because I didn't feel like it. I took notes, looking down on my computer screen but it was hard to focus as my mind painted up a million different scenarios. What if he was still playing with me? Wanting to increase the tension so that he could fuck the living daylights out of me? But it was getting ridiculous. And would he really decline my access to his lab as part of the play? I cursed myself for not having written a contract with him. He had paid me for my work, yes, but between us were just a decision that I worked for him, and no legal protection at all.

The dream that he was just toying with me was crushed as he once again left without paying any attention to me. I made a decision, set my face, took my backpack and ran after him.

"Professor Senju!" I screamed at his back in the corridor. "Professor Senju, wait!" People turned to look at me, but I was too heartbroken to care. "Hashi!!"

At this, he finally stopped, turned around.

He looked hostile.

"Professor Senju, what the fuck is going on?!" I screamed.

"Mr Uchiha, I really can't have you screaming obscenities at me in the corridor. If you swear one more time I will tell the principal to deal with you."

I just gaped. All the fun he stood for in my life was washed off him, as if someone had poured a bucket of bleach over his head.

"What in the world happened to you?" I asked.

"I'm busy. Leave."

He turned and left himself before I could.

Tears burned in my eyes. I saw he was on his way to his office, and I turned left to take a shortcut there. As he arrived and saw me, he looked angry.

"You're clingy", he said.

"I'm too old to be fixated about not being clingy. What is going on?"

"Don't scream in the corridor." He unlocked his door, stepped in. He didn't invite me in, but he left his door opened so I followed, closed it behind me. I stood set, crossed my arms.

"You're wasting your time. And mine." Hashirama sat at his desk. He didn't even look at me.

"What has happened?"

He finally looked at me then. His face displayed something I never expected to see; disgust. I suddenly felt terribly, terribly dirty. A sense of panic snarled itself around my throat, and I wanted to run home and have a shower.

Hashirama, however, was a display of calm hostility itself. He braided his fingers in front of him on his desk, sighed and looked at me as if talking to a stupid child.

Maybe, that's what I am, I thought. A stupid child. A stupid child with a student-professor dream.

"You bore me", he said suddenly, and my heart froze to ice.

"What?" I whispered, tears in my voice.

"You. Bore. Me. Your work with me is done. Fuck off."

My lower lip started trembling pathetically. My vision blurred as if sensing I couldn't deal with the world as it was right now, and so wanted to protect me from seeing it.

I turned and I left Hashirama Senju's office.

I didn't go home to shower.

Instead, my feet took me to my brother's flower shop.

The doorbell pinged, that familiar and comforting sound, and then I stood there, in his doorway, and I could finally burst into tears.

Madara looked up.

"Oh, God! Gorgeous!" He dropped everything he had at hand and ran to me, put his arms around me. "I'll kill him! I'll fucking kill him!!"

"How do you-" I snivelled. "How do you know what happened?"

"It must be him. I just know it. That motherfucking and fatherfucking bastard. What did he do to you?!" He suddenly looked terrified. "Did he force himself on you?!"

"No!" I said and shook my head. 

He took me to the back room where he sat me down and gave me a mug of tea. I explained the situation. Madara started pacing back and forth.

"Oh God. I knew it... I knew it!!"

I looked up at him.

"Knew what?" My voice was muffled from all the crying. How had I let myself fall so deeply into the hellhole that was fucking your university professor?

"The age gap itself was a huge red flag", Madara begun.

"But age is-"

"Just a number?" Madara finished for me. "Fuck that. Izuna, it would be one thing if you were thirty and he was forty. Or even if you were twenty-seven or twenty-eight. But your twenty-three. You're in the midst of exploring yourself! Of finding out who you are and who you want to be. He's already been through all that! And being with someone in such a fundamentally different place in life will destroy you! And that's even without taking the power position he has over you into account."

I snivelled. I hadn't really considered that.

Madara sighed.

"I know what happened", he said.

"You do?" I asked.

"Izuna, he..." He looked away. "I suspected it from the beginning, but this proves it." Madara looked back at me. "I suspected he was only using you to get help with what he wanted. And now he got that..." Madara hid his face in his hands, turned round; he couldn't finish his sentence.

I looked down, mortified.

"I gave him what he wanted, so now he'll dispose of me."

"Exactly", Madara said, still turned away from me.

"But why didn't he wait until it was all done? How can he be sure what I told him works?"

Madara looked at me again.

"I thought he'd told you that at least. He told me he'd told you."

I felt an icy hand grab my heart.

"Told me what?"

Even if I knew the answer, Madara saying it turned my world upside down.

"I performed the surgery. I implanted the chip. It worked." The ground disappeared from beneath my feet. "The computer program is alive."

Our university was placed on the top of a hill.

On a certain spot you had a splendid view of the city, and that was where I went to lick my wounds.

I sat down, let the orange sunset sky consume me as it was slowly closed up into night sky, as if it was putting on a dark marine velvet jacket and slowly pulling the zipper up.

I sighed, hugged my legs, tried to comfort myself, to mend my broken heart like those Japanese pieces of art consisting of broken vases put together with molten gold.

Problem was, I had no gold within me to melt. I had poured it all on Hashirama.

I was just about to start crying again, when...

"Hello."

A voice.

A deep, ragged voice.

I turned round, my heart going from zero to one hundred in an instant.

I gaped.

Because there, behind me on top of the hill he stood, tall, broad, with his white, ragged hair sprawling all over his head, clad in a grey sweater and simple, blue jeans, he stood.

"... Izuna." He smiled a little crooked smile. The smile was oddly non-human. "I think we're on first-name basis now."