I can read your mind, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

A hush fell over the crowded lecture hall as Dr. Eleanor Voss leaned forward, her sharp eyes locking onto the sceptical glances of her students. “I can read your mind,” she said, her voice calm but carrying the weight of absolute conviction. The words hung in the air like a dare. Some scoffed, others shifted uncomfortably in their seats, but a few—those whose thoughts were obscured by guilt—paled noticeably. Within moments, a chill crept through the room, not from the temperature, but from the unsettling certainty that this was no idle boast.

Eleanor had spent years perfecting her technique, combining advanced psychology, microexpressions, and subtle physiological cues to decode a person’s inner workings with eerie precision. But today, she wasn’t just demonstrating a skill—she was exposing truths. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” she added, and the words struck deeper than any lecture ever had. A student in the back, who had spent the last half-hour anonymously mocking her on an online forum, turned crimson. A professor in the front row, known for his cutting remarks behind closed doors, stiffened as if physically struck.

The brilliance of her method wasn’t magic—it was humanity laid bare. She had once described it as “the science of guilt written on the flesh.” Fidgeting fingers, dilated pupils, the faintest twitch of a facial muscle—these were the betrayals that told her everything. The room had become aStage for a duel between transparency and denial. Some scrambled to compose their expressions, desperate to hide their true thoughts, while others, surprisingly, began to laugh with uneasy relief. If she could see them, perhaps they no longer needed to hide.

By the end of the hour, the atmosphere had shifted from defiance to a thoughtfulness rarely seen in academia. The message was clear: minds were not as private as they seemed. And for a select few, the realization that they were being watched—or worse, judged—from within was enough to make them question themselves for weeks to come. As the students filed out, Eleanor remained at the podium, her expression unreadable. The game wasn’t over. Some minds were never fully unlocked. But in that moment, shame had walked into the light, and nothing would be quite the same again.