I see you reading this, Sophi.

A lock slamming shut.

Adrian Lewis didn’t just text me; he established immediate, total surveillance, tracking my connection status and timing my hesitation. My carefully constructed world cracked the moment the white text hit my retina.

My fingers spasmed on the screen, killing the light. I couldn’t breathe; the air in the lecture hall was suddenly thick and viscous. How could I go to class and pretend to care about literary theory when the only truth was the man who had just re-entered my life, possessing my phone number and the exact key to my psychological surrender?

Adrian’s defining characteristic was the assumption of total obedience. He never pleaded, he commanded. After five miserable months, every nerve ending in my body remembered the terrifying rush of being compelled. The terror was countered by a devastating, raw surge of excitement. The silence was broken. I was no longer disposable; I was claimed.

The memory of his last command—Then kneel—flashed behind my eyes. The surrender had been absolute, and his absence had caused a complete, existential disorientation. I couldn’t reply. A reply was the immediate, full collapse of my recovery. I needed time to construct a rational narrative for why I should not respond, even as my body screamed for his power.

I jumped up, shoving the phone deep into the back pocket of my jeans, crushing it against my thigh. If I couldn’t see it, the order was technically delayed. It was a childish game of avoidance, the only defense mechanism I had left.

I threw on my coat, grabbed my bag, and bolted out the classroom door, the hallway now feeling like a trap. Cleo’s earlier warnings echoed in my head, ringing with dreadful prescience: You need to keep your head down today. Dr. Vaughn’s lecture is your first class.

Irony coated the inside of my mouth. My first class back was with the woman who hated Adrian Lewis more than anyone: Dr. Lisette Vaughn, his jealous ex-submissive and intellectual rival. It was a trial by fire, a forced confrontation with my own fractured identity.

***

The university hallways were a sensory overload of nervous chatter, but all I perceived was the intense feeling of being watched. I walked quickly, eyes forward, trying to appear purposefully busy, but every shadow felt like a threat. I see you reading this, Sophie. The knowledge of his unseen presence—a surveillance that spanned the campus—made my skin prickle, a phantom leash tightening around my neck. I was the subject in the cage.

I entered the lecture hall, slipping into my usual seat far in the back, near the window. The room was half full, buzzing with new semester energy. The moment my body made contact with the cold plastic chair, I felt the familiar weight of the gaze.

Dr. Vaughn was already positioned at the podium, sharp and magnificent in a tailored black suit that looked carved from granite, contrasting brutally with her bright, unforgiving red lipstick. She looked up, and her eyes, an arctic blue, locked onto mine with unnerving precision.

It wasn’t pity anymore. It was vigilance. She wasn’t just observing her student; she was watching an active geological fault line, waiting for the inevitable fissure.

The bell rang, and the room fell silent.

“Welcome, class,” Dr. Vaughn began, her voice cool, filling the large space. “This semester, we are diving into Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. Specifically, the concept of the Panopticon. The idea that a single, central tower can monitor all prison cells, creating a sense of permanent, unseen observation that compels the individual to regulate their own behavior.”

I froze, the pen dropping from my numb fingers. Foucault. Adrian’s intellectual weapon. The text he used to dissect my life and command my body. Now, Vaughn was teaching it, holding it up like a silver mirror to my own recent, devastating history.

“Foucault argues that power is not merely repressive,” Vaughn continued, walking slowly, her eyes sweeping over the class, always pausing longest on me. “Power is productive. It produces subjects constantly under surveillance. You are never truly alone, and therefore, never truly free from the gaze of power.”

I see you reading this, Sophie.

Everything she was saying felt like a direct, personalized assault on my psychological stability.

Vaughn stopped directly in front of the window. “But the central tension we must examine is: what happens when the subject chooses the gaze? When the prisoner, free to walk away, begs the warden to keep the door locked? When the feeling of being controlled is interpreted, mistakenly or intentionally, as a form of care?”

Her eyes drilled into mine. This wasn’t a lecture; it was an inquisition. Don’t mistake control for care. She wanted me to denounce him, to perform the role of the righteous victim.

“Self-sacrifice is often an internal calculation, Professor,” I heard myself say, the words surprisingly steady. “Submission is externalized. It requires an agent of power, the Dominant. But the underlying difference is that submission is a contract. The submission is the choice. To submit means to knowingly enter the cage, to transfer agency. The contract provides the framework for the subject to feel free from the burden of their own will.”

She didn’t wait for my answer, turning back to the board to write the word Apathy. But the question hung in the air, aimed precisely at the core of my identity crisis. You no longer remember how to choose for yourself.

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