Teacher Romance 단편 소설 & Regret 소설

My twin sister Selena was the most troublesome grad student my fiancé, Professor Adrian Hall, had ever taken on. Skipping class, showing up late, doctoring observation curves. Every time she walked into his lab, the two of them seemed ready to set the whole college on fire. I told Adrian to stop using that tribunal tone with her. But he explained, "Eve, if she keeps drifting like this, sooner or later she'll ruin herself." When he looked at Selena, his gray-blue eyes were as cold as a lake on a winter night. "Have every raw record on my oak desk before eight tomorrow morning. One page short, and you don't set foot in the observation tower for the rest of the month." I felt embarrassed for Selena, and grateful that I'd fallen for the right man. Adrian Hall was the youngest tenured professor at St. George's College. Tall and lean, always in a dark gray cashmere coat, shirt buttoned to the very top. He could dismantle an entire model in the calmest voice, and still hold an umbrella over me on a rainy night, so gentle it made me believe I was the one exception outside his academic world. Until the day we were preparing the wedding invitations. I borrowed his tablet, and my finger accidentally slipped into a document buried under layers of folders. Inside were five hundred and twenty memos. [Punishment No. 519: Selena talked back to me again. I kept her in my office and fucked her until three in the morning;by the end she didn't have the strength left to even look up at me.] [Punishment No. 520: She got jealous. She insisted I leave something behind inside Eve's wedding dress — to prove that the white gown meant to symbolize purity could be dirtied by her too.] With trembling hands, I scrolled to the video at the very bottom. On the screen, the aloof and untouchable Professor Hall was down on one knee on his office carpet, kissing the rose tattoo on Selena's ankle. "Selena, stop torturing me. Whatever you want, I'll give it to you, alright?"

For our ninety-ninth engagement ceremony, Julian booked us a skydive. He said he wanted to tell me he loved me at thirty thousand feet. My chute didn't open. I got tangled in a big tree. I survived, yet suffered multiple fractures all over my body. In the ward, I accidentally saw a message on the screen of our jump instructor's phone. It was addressed to Julian, and it carried a video. The video showed someone tampering with my chute before we boarded. So the "accident" was Julian's idea? I dragged myself out of bed on crutches, every bone in my body screaming, ready to confront him. I made it as far as the hallway. He was already there, talking to someone, and the moment I saw the other man, the floor tilted under me. The man across from him was the same driver who'd hit me with his car the night before our last engagement. The hit-and-run that should have killed me. "Mr. Veil, if you ever need me again, please reach out." Julian's voice was flat, almost tired. "There won't be a next time. I've tried everything I can think of. The engagement can't be postponed anymore." "And the woman you actually love, sir?" "I'll keep loving her," Julian said. "But Ada is the one I marry. Her mother gave my father a kidney. That's the debt. I have to pay it." I stood there shaking, and the truth rearranged itself behind my eyes. The camping trip he had planned, where I got lost and nearly died of hypothermia in the woods. That had been him. The vitamin C he had handed me, the one that put me in the ICU. Him too. And this time — the skydive, thirty thousand feet, “I want the sky to witness our love”. All of it. Every single one of those accidents was him trying to delay the wedding. But Julian, I thought, I could save you the trouble. The next morning I accepted an offer that had been sitting in my inbox for weeks: an invitation from a world-class orchestra on the other side of the planet.

On Teacher's Day, my wife, Hera, was promoted to associate professor. Even for our marriage we simply registered without a proper ceremony, yet this time, she specifically prepared a feast at home to celebrate. During the dinner, she took out the flowers a male student had given her and was about to put them in a vase. Without warning, I knocked the flowers out of her hand, flipped over the vase, and, under the bewildered gazes of the whole family, calmly said, "Let's get a divorce." Hera was stunned at first, then angrily snapped, "Stanley Lawson, what's gotten into you? I’m just putting some flowers my student gave me in a vase. What's the big deal?" My mother-in-law, Sarah Swift, chimed in, "Hera just got promoted to associate professor, and it's Teacher's Day. What's wrong with a student giving her flowers? Are you seriously getting jealous over that?" I glanced at the scattered petals on the floor and slowly said, "Yes, it's because of these flowers that I want a divorce."