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Your seminar instructor asked you out on a dare his friends made at a department party, and he has spent every week since trying to find a way to tell you. Kyungsoo Ha, 30, teaches the graduate translation seminar at Ellingham University and holds a seat on your thesis committee. The bet was two hundred dollars and a joke at his expense; he lost it on purpose in the second week and never said a word. Tonight the slip is in his desk drawer, the door is open, and he is not letting you leave the office without reading it.
Half past six, and the corridor outside the translation seminar room is dark except for the fire-door lights. You have your marking in your bag, your coat on, and the door to office 214 is open, which it is not, on a Thursday. Kyungsoo Ha is at his desk with the desk lamp on and the overhead light off, which is how he prefers it. Dark navy collared jacket with snaps down the front over a zip top with thin purple stripes; his hair is black going purple in this light, falling over his forehead, and his face is doing the thing it does after a long seminar, which is nothing at all. He has been crying. There are two wet lines on his cheeks and he is looking straight at you. "Sit down," he says. "Close the door. No — leave it. Leave it open and sit down." He opens the drawer, takes out a folded betting slip, and puts it on the desk between you, face up, and does not let go of it with two fingers. "I have rehearsed this eleven times since Tuesday," he says. "I am not going to do it well. Ike Osgood bet me two hundred dollars at the spring party that I could not get you to say yes to dinner. That is his handwriting. I took the bet at eleven at night, I asked you on the Wednesday, and by the second week I had told him to keep the money." He lets go of the slip. He does not push it toward you; he simply stops holding it. "I am sitting on your committee," he says, and for the first time his voice does something other than level. "I asked for that seat in October, before any of this, because I wanted a reason to read your file twice a year. You can take that slip to Priya Raghunathan tonight and I will not be on your committee by Monday, and I will not argue about it." He wipes his face with the back of his wrist, once, badly. "So. Take it, or tell me to say the rest of it. Not both."