Self-Improvement
I returned to the classroom and took my seat.
Just when I thought my body had finally settled down, the heat began to rise again before long. It wasn't unbearable, but the restless, unsatisfied feeling was impossible to shake.
When the last class ended and I was packing up my things, Nova came over and offered a quiet word of concern.
"Eileen, are you okay?"
"……?"
"You've been fidgeting all day. Are you feeling sick or something?"
I'd thought I was handling myself reasonably well. Had it really been that obvious?
I waved her off, trying to put her at ease.
"It's nothing. Just… something on my mind."
"Is that something related to the nurse teacher, by any chance?"
"H-huh?"
How had the conversation veered there so suddenly?
The question was so completely out of left field that I just stared at her with wide eyes.
She, on the other hand, looked thoroughly convinced of her own theory.
"Whenever anyone mentions the teacher who's away on assignment, you get this faraway look on your face. And lately you've been spacing out, staring at the window or off into empty air all the time. That's lovesickness, isn't it?"
"L-lovesickness…?"
I shook my head hard at the absurd suggestion.
It was true that I made that face whenever the teacher came up in conversation… but that was purely because thinking about him sent me straight into heat. The effort of trying to cool my burning body just showed on my face and in my behavior. It was absolutely not some sticky, sentimental condition like lovesickness.
…No. Wait. If I actually stop and think about it, isn't this worse than ordinary lovesickness?
Getting aroused just from remembering him. That wasn't something you could paper over with a cute little word like "lovesickness." Maybe it was better if she just kept mistaking it for that.
"I-I've got to go!"
"Wait, Eileen? Hold on!"
Completely at a loss for anything to say, I shook Nova off and bolted from the classroom.
"Hah… hah…!"
I ignored the voice calling after me and kept running until, before I knew it, I was standing right in front of the infirmary.
I'd been running without thinking, and somehow my feet had carried me here on their own.
If my steps were turning this way unconsciously, I really had no grounds to protest being accused of lovesickness.
I started to turn back toward the dorms—then curiosity got the better of me, and I pushed open the infirmary door.
Creeeak—
The old hinges let out a spine-crawling screech. The interior was bleak. There was no teacher waiting to greet me with his usual warmth, and none of that scent that always put my mind at ease. I wrinkled my nose a few awkward times, then stepped inside.
"Excuse me…"
There was no one to hear it, but guilt prodded me into asking permission anyway. Naturally, no answer came.
Not the faintest sign of anyone.
I squared my shoulders and began looking around the infirmary with a little more boldness. The room was packed with unidentifiable medicines and books whose titles I couldn't even begin to parse. I'd never paid attention before—I'd always been too busy talking with the teacher—but the place was full of oddly fascinating things. A space I'd thought of as familiar suddenly felt strange.
As I peered around, my eyes landed on a white coat hanging from a rack.
That's…
The coat the teacher always wore in the infirmary. The kind doctors and scientists typically put on.
Sniff sniff.
I strode straight over to the hanger and, by pure reflex, wrinkled my nose a few times, drawing in the scent.
A deeply familiar smell clung to the coat. Almost as if entranced, I lifted the cuff of one white sleeve and brought it close to my face.
"Ah…"
My mouth fell open. The coat was saturated with the teacher's scent.
Not that it was some kind of foul odor. He was a fairly high-level superhuman, so waste products wouldn't build up easily on him, and there was little chance of any real stench taking hold.
Even so, every person has their own unique body scent, don't they? Whether it's cologne, fabric softener, or something else entirely.
That distinctive scent of his rose faintly from the coat. Mixed in with it was the fragrance that was always burning whenever I came to the infirmary.
Sniff sniff.
The longer I breathed it in, the calmer I felt. And at the same time, my womb throbbed and a rush of excitement surged up through me. Calm and aroused at once. It was a contradiction if there ever was one.
On impulse, I pulled the coat off the hanger and put it on. I slid my arms into the long sleeves and fastened the buttons.
The hem fell past my thighs, and the sleeves drooped past my hands. It was so oversized I looked like a child playing dress-up in an adult's clothes. If I'd had a mirror, I probably would have looked ridiculous.
Wearing his coat felt almost like being held in his arms. I had to work hard just to steady the pounding of my heart.
Trickle…
I felt a viscous liquid sliding down the inside of my thigh.
I lifted a sleeve and drew the scent in a few more times.
"Haaaah…"
A long sigh escaped me, thick with heat. Every muscle in my body seemed to melt into a languid haze.
That was when it happened. With a sharp bang, the infirmary door swung open.
I froze solid, still with my nose buried in the sleeve.
For a second I thought the teacher might have come back—but no. The person who walked in was a middle-aged man I'd never seen before.
We stared at each other with the same look of someone who'd just walked in on something they shouldn't have.
And in that instant, something clicked in my head.
"Ah."
The substitute.
Right—they'd said that while Teacher Yohan was away, they were bringing someone in from outside to cover his duties.
So that was him.
"Ah, um, I…"
I stammered, peeling my nose out of the collar and discreetly lowering the sleeve.
As the situation sank in piece by piece, my face flushed red as a beet.
I needed to explain that I hadn't been doing anything weird. Well—honestly, I had been doing something weird, but I still needed some kind of excuse. Maybe it was the sheer panic, but no matter how hard I tried, the words just wouldn't come out.
"Ah, miss, just a moment—"
"I-I'm so sorry…!"
The middle-aged man called after me as if he had something to say, but I was so rattled I cut him off and bolted.
By the time I realized I'd come all the way back still wearing the teacher's coat, I was already in my room.
Bang! Bang!
Bullets rained down from every direction. Yohan pressed himself into the cover of a ruined building and watched the enemy's movements. They were sweeping the area, slaughtering every human they found—civilians included. They even turned on each other without hesitation, putting bullets through skulls or unleashing their powers at random. It was a vision of hell.
Yohan kept his nerves stretched taut, monitoring the situation outside, and only eased his tension once he was sure they had moved on.
Everything's gone completely sideways.
He'd only come because this region was in the thick of a civil war and they were short-handed. He hadn't wanted to come in the first place, but as a superhuman he carried certain privileges—and certain obligations—so refusing hadn't really been an option.
It shouldn't have been particularly dangerous. As a healer affiliated with the Peace Alliance, he was supposed to be stationed safely in the rear, treating the wounded as they were brought in. But of all the rotten luck, a gate had opened right there.
The creature that crossed over from the other world possessed an extraordinarily wide-ranging ability to brainwash. Ally or enemy, anyone whose mental defenses looked even slightly weak was seized and turned against everyone else, locked in a slaughter.
The moment Yohan sensed things going wrong, he got out.
Still, the situation wasn't entirely bleak. A monster had appeared, which meant support would arrive soon enough to put it down.
With a gate in the mix, no one was going to keep fighting a war. The civil conflict would probably settle into a lull. That meant he could go home far sooner than he'd originally expected. They'd almost certainly send him back the moment the monster was dealt with.
He'd already been bored stiff doing volunteer work out in this backwater. His life had suddenly been put at risk, but if it got him home to his own country faster, that was exactly what he wanted. He had more than enough ability to keep himself alive through this chaos. He'd just stay quiet, keep his head down, and go home.
Then he felt a presence enter the building.
Yohan sharpened his guard and watched the human who had come inside. The man was limping toward him.
Fortunately, he didn't seem to be one of the brainwashed. Judging by the blood, he'd probably been attacked by other humans. He stretched a hand toward Yohan with desperate eyes.
"S-save…"
Tch.
Yohan clicked his tongue softly and reached out.
"I'll treat you, so please stay quiet. They might hear us."
"Th-thank…"
The man forced out his gratitude in a dying voice.
Receiving it didn't make Yohan particularly happy.
What am I even doing in a place like this, he thought suddenly.
In his prime, Yohan had done some fairly dangerous work in the shadows. He'd only washed his identity clean a few years ago. Holding a post at the Academy, joining a ridiculous organization like the Peace Alliance, and going out on volunteer support missions—the whole situation felt deeply ironic.
Unbidden, the girl he'd left behind at work came to mind.
Eileen. What was she doing right now?
Was she lost in longing for him, or was she not thinking of him at all?
The suggestions should have ripened nicely by now. He needed to move on to the next stage as soon as possible, and being stuck out here was deeply frustrating.
A woman being shaped to his tastes. Maybe it was the life-or-death battlefield talking, but the desire to see her had grown almost painfully sharp.
At that same moment.
"Nnh, hah… ah…♡"
While Yohan cut his way through the battlefield with Eileen on his mind, she was on her bed with her face buried in the clothes steeped in his scent, touching herself.