10. Demon in a Bottle (21)
10. Demon in a Bottle (21)
A stale, animal reek had soaked deep into the walls of Phairen's office.
She worked with creatures constantly—a certain barnyard smell clinging to her quarters was unavoidable.
Clara fought to hold her composure.
She was doing everything in her power not to think about what had happened in this room the week before.
The moment she stepped inside and heard Phairen lock the door, though, a flinch seized her body before she could stop it.
That day was still vivid.
The day she had succeeded in switching bodies, Clara had stripped naked and rolled across this very sofa and floor with Phairen.
Her pupil—unfailingly meek and obedient until then—had devoured her flesh like a beast.
They were close in build, but for Clara, who had only just acquired a human body, overpowering her was impossible.
When Phairen went for her trousers after her blouse, Clara had tried to resist—fiercely.
The ugly words that spilled from Phairen's mouth, and the casual violence she brandished, had broken her.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'll—I'll do whatever you say, Professor... hic."
Tears spilled before she knew it.
Experiencing pain for the first time was utterly terrifying.
And the sudden reversal in Phairen's demeanor was just as frightening.
-Weeping is the brand of the slave which the heart stamps upon the flesh.
-Nothing is more bestial than a human ruled by emotion.
-Tears are the shabbiest ornament a woman can put on.
She tried to steady herself by summoning the words of great men and sages, the same way she had inside the flask.
None of it helped her endure physical pain or the dread of the present moment.
Begging her to stop was the best she could manage.
Fortunately, so long as Clara played the docile student, Phairen treated her like her usual benevolent professor.
"Ahh, yes. Good. That's my good Clara. Now—would you lie face-down on the sofa?"
Clara complied with every command without protest, and in return Phairen bestowed upon her pleasures she had never experienced before.
Under Phairen's devoted ministrations, Clara's mind blazed white and blank.
In that state, forming a thought or concocting a plan was out of the question.
All she could do was moan and clutch her partner tighter.
The next day, Phairen apologized through tears.
She said she had been so overjoyed to recover her body after seventeen years that she had lost all control.
Clara stopped her from hurting herself.
She forgave her student.
Phairen had never truly meant to harm her.
Besides, Clara herself had set her off with that careless kiss.
When she considered it coldly, Phairen had not changed into someone else.
Her maniacal obsession with her teacher—her possessiveness—Clara had always known about that.
For seventeen years, she had held Phairen's obedience not through any power of her own.
She had exploited the girl's fear that breaking the glass might kill her teacher, and her sympathy, in order to make use of her.
The problem now was that she was no longer in the bottle.
To Phairen, she was no longer a being to be handled with care.
"That stain still hasn't come out, I see."
Clara's eyes fell on the mark on the wooden floor, and she remembered her blunder.
In a room already scarred with the leavings of all manner of beasts, only that one stain looked recent.
In the middle of that violent night with Phairen, at the very peak, she had lost control of her bladder.
"Aah! Nngh, hah—!"
"You really are full of surprises."
Under her student's mocking gaze, she had spilled a puddle of rank fluid across the floor.
The stain was still dark and clear.
"My teacher's little accident has proved remarkably stubborn."
Phairen loaded every word with pure contempt and clicked her tongue.
Clara's face flooded crimson with shame.
"Th-the drugs administered to this body must be the cause..."
Voice unsteady, she began listing the substances used in the ritual, one by one. She stammered through a theory about how they might affect bodily fluids, too.
Phairen found her teacher unbearably endearing in that moment.
She wanted to pull her into a tight embrace and whisper that she loved her.
She crushed the impulse.
Instead she donned a mask of contempt and made her voice ice-cold.
"I don't want to hear excuses."
She understood that love alone was not enough to achieve proper taming.
Carrot and stick had to be applied with cold calculation.
Right now, the time was for shattering her teacher's self-esteem.
The soft stroking could come later.
She stood before her teacher and folded her arms.
"Teacher, would you mind taking off your trousers?"
Clara's hands clenched around her sleeves before she could stop them.
This—this was precisely why she dreaded the taming lessons.
"I-it's fine. Later, on my own..."
"Take them off."
Phairen's voice was a cold command.
Clara squeezed her eyes shut and slowly, haltingly, pushed her trousers down.
Smooth white legs, drawn with firm muscle, emerged in graceful curves.
Phairen's gaze fell to the place where those two legs met.
She was not wearing underwear.
Instead there was something wholly unbefitting her age.
Folded layers of white cloth.
A diaper.
Clara's hands shook; her eyes darted, unable to find anywhere to rest.
Phairen placed her hand against the front of the diaper and pressed—firmly.
The inside was damp and sagging.
"You've wet yourself again."
At the weary sigh in her voice, Clara could not lift her head.
"Aren't you glad you listened to me? Without the diaper, you would have been utterly humiliated in front of everyone. Just like that child—Reina."
"Y-yes, you're right..."
Only this morning, setting out, Clara had loudly declared that she had fully adjusted to the body now and there was nothing to worry about.
Those confident words rang hollow after she had had another accident during class.
The same thing had repeated itself every single day for the past week.
It made no sense.
She could walk, run, control even the finest muscle movements—so why only this...
"Disappointing. Didn't you insist it was a mistake on the first day? Are you still going to blame the drugs?"
"I-I'm sorry. I—I still haven't grown accustomed to this body..."
"Heh. At your age, you would probably have accidents in your original body, too. You really are skilled at making excuses."
"Pi, Phairen..."
Clara's pupils quaked.
Phairen smiled inwardly, watching her teacher's authority crumble.
Keeping a bird that has left its cage from flying away was simple.
You simply had to break its wings.
That risked earning the bird's resentment, of course.
Losing the trust you had built with the bird was also a problem.
Taming through brute force was the work of amateurs in the first place.
A true master prioritized breaking the creature's spirit.
The way to keep a bird outside its cage from flying away was simple.
Implant in the bird the belief that it cannot fly.
Once it understood that it could accomplish nothing on its own, that it could not survive without someone's care, the bird would never even think of flight—it would stay in its cage.
Phairen had no intention of allowing the teacher who had emerged from the flask to go off and lead a free life of her own choosing.
She could not imagine living apart from the teacher she had spent seventeen years beside.
She meant to ensure her teacher could never slip from her grasp.
That was why she had mixed a diuretic into the medicine her teacher took each morning to maintain her body. She had turned that first night's accident into a tool, planting the suggestion that something was simply wrong with her body.
Phairen fetched a fresh cloth from the cupboard.
"Now—put your hands on the wall and spread your legs."
Clara's face went past red to something almost black.
"J-just leave it. I can change myself."
"Hmph. Such confidence. From someone who waddles around in a diaper in front of children decades younger than her."
"Ah..."
Clara felt her self-worth scrape rock bottom.
Was I truly this insignificant?
This body—artificially created though it is—is an Apostle of a great Demon God...
Inside the flask, she had conducted herself as though she were the greatest sage in the world.
From the Garden of Whispers, she had eavesdropped on every conversation there was.
She had listened to the councils of politicians who moved nations, to the fierce debates of scholars, to the petty squabbles of households tangled in complex human drama.
With the wisdom and knowledge she had amassed, she had believed that once outside the flask she could accomplish great things.
She had meant to manipulate the world from the shadows, to build her power, and one day to humble even the Black Magician himself.
Now she understood.
All of it had been a hollow dream.
The pitiful girl who could not even manage school life on her own—that was who she was now.
Tears dropped onto the carpet.
"Hic... hic..."
Seeing her cry, Phairen cheered inwardly, but she kept her face blank and muttered with practiced irritation.
"Ha, honestly. Now you're crying, too?"
"S-stop this... Phairen... I am... your teacher..."
Even so, she tried to cling to the last mask that held her up.
Her pride.
The self that had kept her going for seventeen years.
Her student's next words snapped it clean.
"You are not seriously going to act like my teacher in that miserable state, are you? At least wait until you can go to the toilet by yourself."
"Ugh..."
At that icy retort, Clara crumpled to the floor as if her bones had dissolved.
Her head, her shoulders, her legs—everything trembled pitifully.
Phairen's instincts told her the moment for the carrot had arrived.
She went to the weeping Clara and gathered her into her arms.
"If we stay too long, people will get suspicious. Come on—let's change that diaper quickly. What are you supposed to say at times like this, Clara?"
The gentle words steadied Clara's heart.
If there was one person in the world who was on her side, it was Phairen and Phairen alone.
She had looked after her devotedly for seventeen years.
Even now, away from her embrace, Clara could not function as a proper human being.
"...P-please... help me change my diaper... Professor."
The shame was still there, but her voice held a submissiveness far deeper than before. Phairen smiled.
The teacher of twenty years ago would never have been capable of this.
Phairen understood the true terror of her Inspira.
A flawless world with no pain and no change.
It sounded like nothing less than utopia.
There was a reason she could handle any animal with such skill.
They submitted to her in exchange for staying in that comfortable space.
But an animal could not be kept inside the glass too long.
Left too long in a cradle devoid of stimulation or interaction, animals forgot the tricks they had learned, lost their social instincts, and began to regress mentally.
She looked at her teacher, trapped in a flask with no walls and no floor.
Prisoners released after decades could not adapt to reality and fell through society's cracks—or so it was said.
Her teacher had been confined for nearly twenty years in a place with no light, no food, no touch, no interaction.
It would not be strange if her Inspira had rendered her socially imbecilic.
That was why she never questioned how easily her teacher was yielding.
"There—lift your bottom this way and spread a little. You're still managing to hold the other business in, aren't you? A good little hole deserves a special reward, doesn't it?"
"Ah—haah—Phairen, what are—no, Profes... Hyaang!"
Phairen had no intention of letting her regain a whole sense of self.
She meant to train her to depend entirely on her alone.
Breaking her spirit came first.
But if necessary, she was prepared to break her wings and disguise it as an accident.
Even if it meant cutting off her limbs, she would keep her inside the cage.
-The most important element in taming is 'deception.'
Yes, Teacher. I am faithfully carrying out your lesson.
She licked her lips and let out a small laugh.