We're Dating Now
I followed behind her.
"No one will overhear us here."
Yupi led me out of the lecture hall and around to the deserted back of the building.
So it's finally come.
I had always known this confrontation would arrive someday. I had braced myself for it long ago. Three whole years — that was how long I had to live at the Academy, and I never once imagined I could spend all of it dodging her.
What must she think of me?
In that dazed, half-conscious haze, I had put my hands on her while she was helpless, and I had finished inside her. I had forcibly stolen the purity that any woman would have wanted to protect until she chose to give it away.
Ordinarily, tearing me limb from limb wouldn't have been punishment enough — but Yupi had only struck me down with lightning and done me no further harm. She hadn't reported my crime to anyone either, which told me she had no intention of punishing me at all.
I knew that about her, of course. I knew she was the kind of magnanimous soul who would forgive a knife planted in her own back — because I'd read the web novel.
But she doesn't know that I know.
Some part of me still suspected she might hold resentment toward me. That she'd only swallowed it because she couldn't bear to let anyone know what had been done to her. She might have come here to settle the matter once and for all.
Stay sharp, Solis.
I was just steadying my resolve when—
"So go on — say whatever's on your mind!"
"You have something you want to say to me, don't you?"
"..."
For all my caution, Yupi simply shouted at me as if nothing in the world were wrong. Bright and hearty — the Yupi Citrine I knew. If anything differed from usual, it was that her eyes were shut. And squeezed tightly shut, at that.
That was the reaction she'd shown in the web novel when Eva called out her outfit. A sheepishly grinning Yupi had darted her eyes this way and that before squeezing them shut and mumbling that it wasn't as if she'd chosen to wear it.
So what answer am I supposed to give here?
"If you mean what I'd like to say — do you wish to hear about what happened at the dock?"
"Yes! Exactly that!"
"Then may I ask which part of it, precisely, and what impressions you wish to hear?"
"..."
A red flush bloomed across Yupi's cheeks. Dyed as scarlet as a pomegranate, she looked for all the world like a shy young girl confessing her first love.
I had brought up the night she lost her maidenhood, braced for her wrath — and instead she was radiating something entirely unexpected.
Could it be...?
"Before I give you my impressions, may I ask one question first?"
"Ask anything you like."
"I assumed you would hate me, Instructor Yupi. Whatever the circumstances, I still did that to you."
"H-how could I possibly hate you! It was an accident! Neither of us was in our right mind — who's to blame for that?"
I had no defense to offer even if she'd scolded me, yet here she was, soothing me instead, telling me it wasn't my fault. Watching her declare, with pure sincerity, that no one was at fault, I finally understood everything.
She doesn't know I did it of my own will.
Yupi hadn't been in her right mind that day. She'd climaxed from a man's mere touch; with a cock thrust in front of her face, far from recoiling, she had licked it, smelled it, and rutted like a beast in heat. She must have simply entrusted her body to me, dismissing it all as nothing more than a wild fantasy.
She kept murmuring something about a dream partway through — maybe she didn't believe that moment was real at the time?
But the instant the act ended and her senses returned, she took stock of the situation and dropped a lightning bolt on me out of sheer shame. I'd blacked out immediately and missed what came after, but I imagine Yupi couldn't lift her head from mortification.
I did it with a student.
Was I under hypnosis magic? Did my body move on its own?
And she had concluded that I, too, must have been in the same state she was.
That's it. Nothing else explains this.
Say, for argument's sake, that Yupi had forgiven me because being with me felt so good she'd lost her mind to it. Even granting that she'd told no one and demanded no accountability — in a situation like this, she still would have given me a stern lecture about how love forced upon another person is never right. The fact that she didn't even do that could only mean one thing: she saw me as a fellow victim, just like herself.
And here I thought there was no way I'd slip past this one.
Everything had unfolded exactly as that mysterious system window foretold. Because Yupi believed I was wracked with guilt and tormented by complicated feelings over having 'raped' her — suffering every bit as much as she was ashamed — not so much as a single spark had flown.
Now I feel kind of bad about it.
The person who should be receiving an apology was busy apologizing. Honestly, it was absurd.
Of course, whatever my conscience whispered, I filed this away as the perfect opportunity and pressed the conversation onward.
"We were both powerless before it. It felt like being caught in some strange magic — do you happen to know what it was, Instructor?"
"I couldn't say myself. I felt wonderful, floating on air, drifting along — and by the time I came to my senses, it was already over."
"Same here. Exactly the same."
I slapped a plate of steel over my face and rode her misunderstanding for all it was worth. If the victim herself believed that version of events, then that was the truth.
"I couldn't bring myself to face you, the state I was in — but even now, I must apologize properly."
I bent at the waist to a full ninety degrees, presenting her with an immaculate posture of contrition.
Yupi took me by the shoulders and straightened me back up.
"Don't do that. I don't blame you. If anything, all I feel toward you is gratitude."
"I'm afraid I don't understand at all."
"That day — you saved me from being disgraced in front of the entire student body."
Ah, I remember.
She meant the moment her skin had touched mine. When I had instinctively unleashed my mana and erased every trace of the orgasm she'd felt.
"So don't dwell on it, and don't apologize. I'll keep it quiet as well."
"Instructor."
She stretched her arm up and patted my head. At the warmth of that hand — so like my mother's — I felt an emotion swell in my chest before I could stop it.
It was the moment a belated, unfamiliar guilt came surging in.
"In return, will you promise me just one thing? Keep this matter as a secret between the two of us."
"I'll carry it with me to the ends of hell."
If this got out, I'd be expelled from the Academy — as if I'd ever breathe a word.
I resolved, with iron discipline, to seal this truth away for good.
Is that everything she wanted to say?
"And this is a personal favor of mine, but..."
?
There was more?
Yupi's voice trailed off at the end. I waited for her words to come, but they didn't come easily. She only murmured strange, circling fragments.
"Well, it's... it's hard to say."
"Yes?"
"In any case... we did it, didn't we? Yes?"
"I... suppose we did?"
"So then, that... um..."
Yupi stammered horribly — not quite as badly as Eva, but close. Yet there was no way I could fail to grasp her meaning.
Oh. It's that.
Yupi was hoping.
Like an unforeseen accident born of a drunk night, like a careless game with fire — sudden though the relationship had been, she wanted, for all that, to keep it going.
The man to whom she'd given her maidenhood, whatever pleasure it had brought her. To a woman who, until days ago, had been a blushing innocent who'd never once held a man's hand, I must have looked like a prince arriving by fate — her very first.
I had a phase like that too, once.
No word is quite so bittersweet as "first time." I, too, kept the memory of those days tucked in a corner of my heart. Our feelings had crossed paths wrongly and we'd parted in the end, but I would never forget the memories of that season.
I could refuse her here, of course.
The choice was mine. If I told her I was sorry, she would only grow melancholy, think it a pity, and turn away.
But.
"Instructor, would you extend your hand to me?"
"My hand? Here you are."
What kind of shitbag is born with a dick between his legs, forces himself on a woman, and just walks away? Sure, I'm trash — but I'm not that grade of trash.
Chu.
"That is my answer."
A kiss on the back of her hand. Where I came from, it meant courtesy, respect, or devotion — but here, it carried a different meaning.
It meant: I adore you.
It was the very technique Eva's father had once used on Petra Amethyst — Eva's mother, and his future companion.
"Hwaaaah!"
She's dying of happiness.
Yupi's face was redder than it had ever been. She spun in place, round and round, creaking like a machine malfunctioning from overheating — until the violent excitement overwhelmed her and she fainted dead away.
"There we go."
I caught her in my arms just before she hit the ground and laid her gently down on the grass.
To think I'd conquer a heroine like this.
Either way, that matter was now handled.
<Dear Reader?>
One problem remained.
So the greatest obstacle was still waiting for me.