That Special Day (4)
Stephania clicked her tongue the moment her detection spell rang its alarm.
She had been certain it was nothing more than some small fry taking the bait, and now it was interrupting a pleasant moment. But the instant she realized which ward had triggered, that irritation vanished completely.
Had it been some unimportant location, she would have dismissed it as the Church's lackeys making a futile effort and simply moved on.
But it was the warehouse where the sanctuary for summoning her contracted demon was hidden—so she had no choice but to stop even her now-routine teasing of Iris.
"Very well, Iris. Something has come up, so we'll end things here for today."
She released Iris, who had been trembling like a terrified squirrel.
She smiled for a moment as she watched Iris stumble out the door on unsteady legs, still looking bewildered—then, as she ran through the list of suspicious figures in her mind, one name flashed across her thoughts.
Gloria.
She had known Gloria's movements had grown more active lately, but Stephania had never expected her to reach the sanctuary.
She had never shared information about the sanctuary with anyone except her closest confidants. How had that powerhouse of a woman found out? The question crossed her mind, but it was not particularly important to her.
She simply assumed Gloria must have contacted one of her weaker subordinates—or someone who held a grudge against her—and beaten or coaxed the information out of them.
There were a few people who came to mind right away, after all.
Thinking she would need to reorganize the people around her once more, she gathered her staff and coat.
Ordinary trash she could erase without a trace with a single spell—but to face that monstrous woman, even she needed to be fully prepared.
When she first met Gloria, she had decided the Church had sent another nuisance and intended to deal with her personally.
Even the so-called Apostles had vanished after a few spells, so when Gloria revealed herself as the 1st Apostle, Stephania had been so at ease she had even sneered, wondering how many times this one would last.
But the moment Gloria started swinging two greatswords longer than she was tall and slicing through Stephania's spells, she realized something was wrong.
She had managed to break both greatswords somehow—but when Gloria poured divine power into her body and charged, landing a single blow, even Stephania had been forced to tuck her tail and flee.
That had already been three years ago. So today, she finished arming herself thoroughly, determined to settle things once and for all with that detestable creature.
She headed for the warehouse with a four-layer barrier already up, ready for an ambush the moment she teleported in—and found herself unable to hide her confusion.
She had pictured the door ripped off its hinges and Gloria bursting out to charge her. Against a muscle-bound woman who could not use mana, brute force was the only option left.
But the warehouse was intact. There was no sign of a forced entry from the outside.
What's more, the lock on the door had been cleanly released—which only deepened her bewilderment.
As far as she knew, there was no mage around Gloria who surpassed her.
If Gloria had not ripped it open by force, the only remaining method would have been to pour divine power into it until the spell collapsed—but Stephania's eyes, which could even see divine power, detected nothing of the sort.
Her wards on the door had been dispelled for reasons unknown. Someone had entered the warehouse, recognized the defensive spells laid against intruders, neutralized them, and deliberately triggered the alarm.
That was the conclusion she reached.
Deliberately calling me out? But Stephania soon wiped the idle thought from her mind. She would uncover the truth after she killed the intruder.
Whatever else she might be, she was thoroughly versed in spells for harming others—so right now, she was confident she could kill anyone, given enough time.
Thus she strode into the warehouse, murderous intent rolling off her, and on top of her constantly active detection magic, she scattered a pulse of mana.
Reading the reflected mana, she searched for anything that might be hiding—but found nothing unusual.
All she could tell was that the carefully organized warehouse had been thrown into disarray. Whether anything was missing could wait; she headed straight for the place where the sanctuary was hidden.
But the magical veil concealing the sanctuary was still intact. Stephania could not hide her dismay.
So it wasn't Gloria—some unknown person broke through my wards, ransacked the warehouse, deliberately set off the alarm, and then vanished without a trace?
What kind of person does that?
She was curious what the intruder had been thinking.
But separate from that, it was clear this was someone with skill exceeding her own, who knew where the sanctuary was, and who had even gone so far as to provoke her.
Stephania took the fact that they had torn through the entire warehouse while leaving only the sanctuary's hiding place untouched as a kind of threat.
Thinking she would have to either recruit or eliminate them for certain, she set about finding what was missing.
The place was such a mess that it took her considerable effort to figure out what was gone. After spending a fair amount of time, she discovered that a single planning document had disappeared.
The plan she had poured the most effort into—for completely driving the Church's influence out of this academy by the final exams.
That document detailed a plan to offer humans to a demon, turn them into demonized humans, control those demons' minds herself, and eliminate every member of the Church faction and anyone suspected of being their lackey.
Knowing just how much destructive power a demonized human possessed—and how cruel the manufacturing process was—she had already even chosen candidates for sacrifice in her mind.
I had wanted to try it at least once. It was a shame, but she cleanly abandoned the plan.
As long as someone knew about it, carrying it out would only expose her. Regrettably, she would have to settle for sweeping away the Church faction with ordinary demonic beasts across the midterms and finals.
I'll leave the mess for Iris to clean up later. With that thought, she left the warehouse.
"…Is she gone?"
"…Yeah. Looks like it."
Coming out of the locker, even this unpleasant air felt refreshingly clean.
Dogeon's scent mixed with shampoo into a strange fragrance that had made it hard for me to breathe, and yet that guy had kept twisting his body around like he was the one who was suffocating.
No—what was he even doing rubbing his leg against my stomach? Even if he felt cramped, he could have shown a little consideration for the person sharing the space.
I still had no idea who had come in. Between Dogeon's smell and everything else, I could not pick up any other scent. Not that I hated it. If I had to say, it was actually on the nice side.
But… how should I put it. I had never been this close to anyone who was not family, so maybe that was why it felt so strange.
Being pressed flush against each other made my chest a little tight, but feeling someone else's heartbeat and body heat was not entirely bad.
Dogeon must have felt just as confined—he was drawing in deep breaths and savoring the air. I was jealous. For him, that had to feel genuinely refreshing.
"…S-sorry for dragging you into a locker without a word… but there wasn't any time…!"
"No, don't worry about it. You didn't mean anything bad by it, so it's fine."
"…That aside, though—were you feeling cramped…?"
I had been about to scold him, then decided that lecturing a good guy I had just told it was fine would be wrong, so I asked instead.
Just how cramped did he have to be to thrash around rubbing his leg against my stomach like that?
"…Why do you ask?"
"Because you were rubbing your… leg against my stomach. I was curious how cramped you must have been to do that."
Dogeon seemed to find it hard to answer—he could not meet my eyes and scratched the back of his head. Come on, either you were cramped or you were not.
"…I wasn't cramped. But I'll apologize in advance. That wasn't a leg."
What was that supposed to mean. So he had been rubbing an arm?
"Don't tell me it was an arm?!"
Leave it to a harem-protagonist type—was this guy one of those who always thought in the gutter too? I felt a little disappointed.
"Not an arm either… Anyway, I'm really sorry."
I was about to say we're friends, so don't worry about it—and then the pieces suddenly clicked into place. Not an arm. Not a leg either.
We were not that different in height, and we had been pressed face-to-face. Something that could reach my stomach.
Something I did not have right now—but Dogeon did.
Ugh. Uuuuugh. Uuuuuuuugh.
"…Ah… u… uuuuh…"
"…I'm not trying to make excuses. It's just… I couldn't really do anything about it. There was a lot of contact going on."
Come to think of it, our chests had been touching too. The thought you should have said something had barely formed when I remembered that I was the one who had dragged us into the locker and given the signal to stay quiet.
…Even during heat, I did not think I had ever become this much of an idiot. I could not bring myself to look him in the face, so I just stared around at nothing.
With a little calm, I could see there had been plenty of better hiding spots than a locker. There was a wardrobe, and some weird hole of a space too.
Judging by my current intelligence level, I really ought to just hole up in my room for the rest of the day. I was terrified of what might happen if I kept wandering around outside.
…………It was big. That thing.
No no no what am I thinking. I may be a girl right now, but I used to be a guy. Stop.
"Ah… uugh…"
"…Sorry. I'll apologize properly later, so let's get out of here for now. Someone else might show up, right?"
"That's… true… yeah."
I was embarrassed because of him, and he had the nerve to be right, which only made me more annoyed.
"…You're not taking my hand this time?"
He was holding a hand out toward me, as if telling me to take it.
…As if I would!
After admitting with his own mouth what had happened inside that locker, was he really going to do this now?
"No… I'm fine. Let's just go."
"Alright then."
Unlike on the way in, we walked with a careful distance between us. We avoided meeting each other's eyes and did not exchange a single word—and still that moment from earlier kept coming back.
That thing… pressing into my stomach.
…It was because of heat. The fact that I kept thinking about it, and the fact that I had turned into an idiot—both of them!
It was definitely because of heat. So I had no intention of writing any of this in my diary. It was too mortifying to put into words.
Looking back at how much more of a fool I had become than I expected, I even wondered whether I should just take heat days off and claim I was not feeling well.
Back in my original world, there had been girls who skipped class because of period pain. Of course this was different from that, but since it came once a month, it felt close enough that it might be fine.
Of course, that was only a thought—I was not actually planning to do it.
Which meant I would have to keep attending even during heat. In this stupid state.
…Could I really get through the academy without causing some disaster?