Do I look pretty?

The next afternoon, Professor Bill Roscoe returned to his office after lunch with half a cup of coffee in one hand, fishing for his keys with the other.

Before he could put the key in the lock, the door swung inward a crack.

He pushed it open, then froze with his coffee halfway raised.

Someone was sitting in the visitor's chair across from his desk.

An Asian boy in a shirt and trousers was leafing through a stack of printouts—

His research group's progress report for the first half of the year.

Dense annotations in red ink covered the blank spaces on the pages.

The coffee rippled gently in his cup.

"So you remembered to come back." Bill Roscoe set his cup on the edge of the desk, walked around to his chair, and sat down. He brushed some nonexistent dust off the desktop with the back of his hand. "Nearly a year, and not even an email."

Gavin turned to the next page. "I don't think it makes much difference whether I come back."

He circled the third line of a derivation in red. "You haven't made much progress here."

The office fell silent for several seconds.

It was a silence uncannily reminiscent of something Bill Roscoe knew well and had little desire to experience again.

Instinctively, he picked up his coffee and took a sip—to hide his embarrassment.

"I've been supervising graduate students lately." He cleared his throat, reaching for what he considered a reasonable excuse. "You know how it is—some people aren't particularly gifted. They take longer to learn. Not that I'm calling them stupid, just—"

"Professor." Gavin closed the report, took off the pen cap and fitted it onto the end, then looked up at him with a polite smile. "Do you think I believe that?"