**All characters are over 18**
Sarah sat and scowled, waiting for the university disciplinary committee to come and start their kangaroo court against her. She crossed her arms over her ample chest, huffing for the umpteenth time. The university was putting her on trial. For what? Telling the truth!?
Only one member of the disciplinary committee had bothered to come on time: Professor Yamada, who leaned her pencil-skirted arse on the table facing Sarah. Yamada was fifty-four, but her clothing, manner, and dominatrix-smirk showed she knew -- and knew everyone knew -- that she'd aged like wine. Her dress-shirt, jacket and trousers were tailored to hug her bountiful curves and accentuate her hour-glass figure. Yamada radiated (what Sarah called) "respectable eroticism". Sarah might have fantasised about the respectable Professor making her a moaning mess, had Yamada not been leading a bogus trial against her.
Yamada was reading the university newspaper, and read aloud:
"'The Skeletons Under the Foundation Stones, by...'" Yamada smirked as she looked at Sarah. "By our naughty little rules-breaker... 'You know how this university was founded. A classic rags to riches tale of a century ago, of how our founder Archibald Tullius Fitzmonger Jr. scraped together enough coin to found our alma mater. A classic tale. And like most classic tales -- bullshit.
"'Documents newly discovered by yours truly...' Yah-dah, yah-dah, yah-dah... Ah. 'Fitzmonger had less a love of learning and more a love of laundering his drug and brothel revenue.'"
Yamada lay the newspaper folded on the table.
"Don't stop there," said Sarah. "You'll miss the juicy parts."
"Did you really think the university's centenary was a suitable for your gotcha?" Yamada grinned.
"An honest institution has nothing to fear from honesty." Sarah grinned right back, slouching in her chair.
"The kind of holier-than-thou sophistry I'd expect from a... what? Nineteen-year-old?"
"Twenty." Sarah sneered at Yamada. If Sarah could see herself, she'd admit that the sneering face of a fresh-faced, pixie-cutted sophomore looks more sulky than intimidating.
"Then I must apologise," said Yamada. "I'm only thirty-four years your senior, only thirty-four years more acquainted with the ways things are and are not done."
Sarah knew that tone of voice. Not a drop of hostility, not even passive-aggression. Yamada spoke like someone certain that she could crush you between her fingers. Yamada probably thought she was powerless, Sarah thought. Yamada would have the disciplinary committee suspend or expel her, and that'd be that -- but oh, no!
Sarah prayed she'd be expelled. She'd have two bombshells for the press, the real press. Both the dark past of a prestigious university, and the university's malicious attempts to silence a brave truth-teller. A scandal and a cover-up. That story was worth more than any journalism degree.
"The committee will not look kindly on your failure to produce the documents you claim to have discovered," said Yamada.
"A bloody knife is safer with the detective than the murderer." Sarah suppressed her smugness. She'd have to write that line down for her expanded story.
Yamada had been leaning on the table's edge. Now she stood, chuckling like she'd caught Sarah in a silly lie.
"That's the problem with university students: you all think you're qualified to be iconoclasts," said Yamada. "You see one crack on one brick and you want to blow up the whole building."
With a cocked head and a crooked grin, Yamada glared down on Sarah. From the way Sarah's tummy tumbled, Sarah had to admit that, in friendlier circumstances, she'd be begging Yamada to spank her.
Sarah ignored the tingle in her pussy. "Just doing what a good journalist should, exposing the truth and bending to no vested interests."
"Utterly predictable, putting these silly little ideals (which not even you believe in) above the gratitude you should feel towards your school."
Yamada bent over Sarah's desk, the cleavage of her F-cup breasts exerting a gravitational pull on Sarah's eyes. Yamada brushed her long, black hair over her shoulders so she could pull a silver chain from under her collar, and a pendant from between her breasts.
"Your problem, young lady," said Yamada, dangling the pendant in front of her cleavage, right in Sarah's eyeline, "is that you don't respect authority."
Here it is, thought Sarah. The oldest speech in the book. She'd roll her eyes, but she couldn't help looking down Yamada's shirt.
"I got this pendant just last month," said Yamada, "to celebrate thirty-five years as a professor here. That's right, I became a professor at nineteen. I was smart. Smarter than you. Smart because I didn't think I was smart enough to question or contradict authority. I knew I wasn't smart enough to challenge the authority of this university."
"Maybe you--"
"What does my pendant say?"
"That doesn't--"
"What. Does. It. Say?"
Sarah hissed through her teeth. She'd have to play along with this soapbox.
The pendant was the university crest, plated in gold. Circling the coat of arms was the university motto in miniscule writing. If Sarah had read the motto before, it was too anodyne to stick in her head.
"It says, 'For the... For the sake'?" Sarah trailed off.
Yamada had started swinging the pendant. It swung barely a fraction of an inch back and forth, back and forth, but Sarah couldn't follow the tiny writing.
"'For the sake...'"
The pendant swung just slow enough that the words were tantalisingly legible. Yet, whenever Sarah's eyes got used to the swaying, got ready to read the next word, the gold would glisten in the light, making Sarah squint and blink and lose her place.
"Can you stop swinging..." Sarah whined.
"Aw," said Yamada, not slowing the pendant's undulations. "Is our hot-shot reporter having trouble reading?"
Teasing on top of a lecture!
"'For... for... the...sake'." Sarah was speaking from memory. Following the pendant back and forth, back and forth, made her eyes too watery to see anything but a shining, glimmering, gold pendant.
"Poor baby," cooed Yamada. "Are your eyes tired?"
Sarah wanted to show Yamada. She tried blinking away the bleary haze, but that just made her eyes heavier.
"'For... the... s...'."
"Tired eyes make a tired mind. Heavy eyes make a heavy mind. Hazy eyes make a hazy mind."
The pendant's swing had become a smear in Sarah's vision. Her eyelids drooped. Her neck drooped. She slurred the syllables she remembered. "'For... fo... sa...ke'."
"I know what you need," said Yamada, her voice as slow and regular as the swaying of the pendant. "I've taught university students for over three decades. I know when a student needs a nap."
A nap? Sarah wasn't a fucking... fucking... pre...
"No... nap..." was the only defiance she could muster as her mouth hung open.
"You misunderstand me. I am your professor. I am your elder. When I give you advice, you will accept it, gratefully and without question. When I count from three to one, you *will* thank me for my advice, and you *will* take a nap. Three."
Sarah's head drooped so low she couldn't see the pendant. But... no... she wouldn't take a nap.
