[memory] What: Memory Will characters be viewing the memory or experiencing it?: Experiencing. Warning, this memory contains: vague manipulation attempts? Nothing horrible honestly.
"I could give you a contract."
There's a real sense of being torn as you stare at the professor in front of you. He has the connections, and he's making the offer to you, and you want to believe it's because of your talent and not because of who you are related to.
Something in his gaze crosses a line between properly invested in a student, and making you feel like prey. The emotion isn't new - it's one you've had before, in a different way with a different person at a different time - but it makes you back away now.
"I don't think so." A beat. "Thank you though."
The gaze hardens. "You have potential, you're throwing it away. You just need to let go."
Letting go is always dangerous. It's where darkness happens. You've finally figured out stillness and quiet and keeping the bad things at bay. And you've thrown a lot of things away this week. Why not your future too?
"It's my potential to throw away."
The gaze flashes, or maybe you imagined it, for when you look at him now, he's looking away, putting on the golf hat he always wears and picking up his leather briefcase. "Well, best of luck for you then."
It's a dismissal and you stumble to your feet and cannot leave his office quickly enough. As you practically bound down the marble staircase, the wooden banister worn smooth from over a century of students running their hands across it, you feel at once as if you've escaped some trap, and made a terrible mistake, and you don't want to spend much time thinking which is more likely.