Chapter 1
You watched anxiously as your professor handed back your graded essays and research projects. This was your capstone project and you just really needed to pull off an A to get into the law school of your choice, which at this point you were settling for Columbia University. Not to mention the grades needed to pull a scholarship from there. This typically wouldn’t have been an issue, but this semester had truly been one from hell. The group that you were assigned barely showed up for class, not to mention the project meetings that you had held. At the beginning of the semester, you figured you would just deal with yourself, but then it spiraled out of hand, and halfway through you found yourself pleading the very professor who was about to drop off the graded rubric at your desk.
The silver haired man gave you a lazy look, that still somehow looked smug as hell. He put the rubric on your desk, facedown, leaving you with more anxiety than you had before. Out of your four years at NYU, you had never experienced a poli-sci professor who was as much as a ballbuster as Professor Hatake. Every other professor that you had in your previous classes had been charmed by your enthusiastic, but serious ways, as they had always been captivated by your riveting debates and thought-provoking case studies and reports. You were a favorite among the tenured old men, and spirited middle-aged women who carried their NPR tote bags filled with their organic lunches purchased from Wholefoods and tennis shoes for their Soul Cycle class after their lectures had been finished. You had been invited to Dean dinner after Dean dinner, consistently praised throughout the Poli-Sci department, and you always had first dib of internships every summer vacation, when you would also delicately balance summer classes as well. Your previous professors practically fought for the opportunity to write your letters of recommendation. Each of them wanting to cheer you off to Harvard Law School. But Professor Hatake was the exception to the rule. Brand new, just out of grad-school, and the man who couldn’t have been more than four years your senior, despised you with everything he had.
When you first signed up for your capstone, you thought nothing of it. He had no reviews on Rate My Professor since he was new and you couldn’t find any real-world experience on him, so you figured your last class of your undergrad career was going to be a breeze. What a joke. You walked in on the first day of your last spring semester, of your last undergrad class to find this man, reading an erotic fiction novel at his lecture podium. You practically gaped at him as you went up to introduce yourself. Thoughts of the ‘Me Too’ movement running through your head. He had given you a lazy once over as you cleared your throat to get his attention that day, holding your hand out to shake his. He just stared at it. “Can I help you?” he simply said. He sounded bored, and as if you were a nuisance. Typically, when you had done this in the past, professors were impressed by your professionalism, and here was this man, who was no older than 26, staring at you as if you had interrupted his lover confessing to him. It had gone downhill from that day. From him consistently shooting down the points that you would make during lectures, to him not calling on you at all when you politely raised your hand, to putting you in the group of students who had only appeared in class once or twice, to denying you when you had gone to him for help when the group was not assisting with the final project. You were just ready to get this class over with and to never see this man again in your life. The thought about the affects your grade would have on your GPA swirled in your head, as you knew that you only had a small range of law schools in the New York City area.
You took a breath and flipped over the paper to see a big fat ‘-C’ staring back at you with red marks all over the rubric telling you exactly what you had done wrong. You sighed, and then mustered up your courage to drag yourself to his office once the allotted period had ended. He didn’t even send the class off with any encouraging words. A class filled with the new political figures and law makers of the world, and he had nothing to say other than a quick “see ya”. It infuriated you to no end. How did this man end up teaching at one of the best universities on East Coast?
You knocked on the mahogany door to his office and heard an annoyed “come in”. You put on your best fake smile and walked through the door; your eyes immediately drawn to the stack of erotica on his desk. It killed you to not rolled your eyes at the sight, but you resisted.
“Good afternoon Professor Hatake, I was hoping I could speak to you before you finalized grades” you said, trying to not sound sickly sweet.
“Oh, don’t worry Miss. L/N, they’ve already been entered and finalized,” he stated, not even sparing you a glance up from whatever trash he was partaking in.
“Well in that case, let me just get to my point. I don’t think the grade you gave me is fair. Especially seeing how I did the entire project alone, and I spoke to you about my concerns around midterms,” you said, dropping your act.
“These all sound like excuses to me Miss. L/N. You think as a lawyer you’re always going to have a team of paralegals there to help? Do you think as a Senator or United Nations representative that you’re always going to have interns to do your work for you? Do you think the professors at Harvard will be swayed so easily by your flirting and charming antidotes?” This was the most words you had ever heard him speak to you at one time. Your jaw dropped at the sheer audacity that this man contained in the one beauty mark below his chin then you had in your whole body. You breathed in and recomposed yourself. He was still reading his book and couldn’t be bothered to look up.
“Professor. I think if you took a look over my academic history you would see that I’m a very diligent student. Cum Laude and all, and this is our ONLY grade for this class, and it’s my last class of undergrad,” you all but spat.
“That’s the point of a capstone, Miss. L/N. I’m not changing any grades, and that is final It’s in the syllabus. You can explain to the admissions board at Harvard why you got a C in your capstone and hope that they’ll be charmed by your shoe-licking tendencies or perhaps you can continue to enjoy the riches of whatever older man you have swindled into an engagement and forgo law school altogether.” You could feel the imprint of your perfectly polished nails digging into the palm of your hand as you struggled to not scream at this man. He was referring to the princess cut diamond that sat delicately on your left ring finger. Easily a 2-carat nestled in a rose gold band. You let out an angered and defeated breath before you stood up from the chair that sat opposite of the subject of your anger at the moment.
“Fine, but a few words of advice Professor. Look at your students when they have the gall to speak to you about personal matters” you were almost out the door.
“Well, why should I bother when there isn’t much to look at,” he said matter of factly as he turned a page in his book. You yanked the heavy wood door open and almost ran into a curvy woman about your age, another one of Hatake’s fan girls, probably coming to whisk him away now the semester was over. You shot him one last glare over your shoulder “It’s Columbia Law School, you asshole, take some time to learn of your student’s goals instead of being so self-absorbed for once” you sneered and pushed past the tacky look woman in front of you. As you walked away you heard her say something along the lines of “Now that you’re no longer my professor, what about a drink?”
You, yourself would be needing one of those tonight as well.