Ishan Malik set down the newspaper with deliberate slowness, the rustle of paper unnaturally loud in the sudden hush of the lecture hall. His gaze swept across the room,not the perfunctory glance of a professor taking attendance, but the focused intensity of someone who had already mapped every face in the room weeks before this moment. "I know you," he said, and the words weren’t a greeting but a statement, flat and undeniable. "Each of you. Every name. Every grade from last semester’s prerequisites." His knuckles rapped once against the desk, a sharp punctuation. "We’re all here to study. And we will."
The silence that followed wasn’t the nervous quiet of students caught whispering; it was the kind of stillness that settles over a forest when a predator pads through. Even Mariyam’s fingers stilled on her notebook, her earlier bravado momentarily checked. Ishan didn’t smirk. Didn’t soften the edge in his voice. He simply turned back to the whiteboard and uncapped a fresh marker with a click that made the front row flinch. "No more discussion," he said, and it wasn’t a suggestion.
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