Exhibitionist X
"……."
Standing before me was Elise, clutching a small, razor-sharp blade that looked exactly like a surgical scalpel.
Her hands were shaking like aspen leaves in a gale.
Her face looked ready to burst into tears at any second, and she couldn't bring herself to take a single step closer.
Haa… this is seriously pathetic.
I sat perched on the edge of the bed and looked at her with undisguised exasperation.
"Hey. How long are you going to stand there like that? Are you going to do it or not?"
I snapped at her, irritation plain in my voice.
"But… but behind me…"
Elise trailed off, her voice thick with unshed tears.
"Haa…"
I made no effort to hide how ridiculous I found this, and this time I directed my irritation past Elise, toward the people standing behind her.
"Excuse me. If you keep staring holes through her like that, how is she supposed to get anything done? Could you maybe stop watching?"
At my words, the three women standing awkwardly behind Elise all flinched at once.
…Okay, but why are those people even here?
Rina. Senior Bella. And Professor Emila.
The three of them were watching Elise with terrifying intensity, like wardens—or bodyguards.
Rina's eyes were a mixture of worry and anxiety. Senior Bella's held disapproval and a thread of anger. And Professor Emila's… were complicated, heavy with guilt.
Their searing gazes were clearly making Elise shrink even further into herself.
I sighed again and prodded the trembling girl in front of me. I wanted this stifling, awkward situation over with as soon as possible.
"Hey, Elise. I said hurry up."
At my prompting, Elise's face twisted with frustration.
Then she roughly seized my wrist and shoved the blade she'd been holding in her own shaking hand directly into mine.
"…What?"
I asked, baffled. Elise nearly sobbed the words out.
"I'm too scared to do it! So you do it yourself!"
"No, wait a second."
I stared at her, utterly incredulous.
"You're an alchemist. What's so terrifying about drawing a little blood? You spend every day locked in your room cooking up weird chemicals and blowing things up."
"I'm scared! I said I'm scared!!!"
Elise suddenly shrieked as if she were having a fit.
Tears welled up in her eyes all over again.
"There are already way too many people crammed into this tiny space and I can barely breathe—and those people keep glaring at me with those terrifying eyes! My hands are shaking too hard to do anything!"
She was practically wailing her appeal.
Uh… Elise?
For a moment I was speechless.
There were only five people in this entire spacious alchemy lab.
And she was suffocating?
How does this girl even attend class on a normal day?
I'd known she had social anxiety, but I hadn't realized it was this bad…
Haa… of course you would be like this.
I sighed inwardly.
Resigned to just doing it myself and getting it over with, I lifted the blade now resting in my hand with another sigh.
The instant I brought it toward my forearm—
A single, bone-chilling realization sliced through my mind.
…No. Wait. This… this situation right now… I'm about to cut into my own body with my own hands, in front of other people, in a public place?
I was still human, after all. Sometimes… urges I simply couldn't suppress would rise up.
Because of this damned ability of mine, once I'd tasted the pleasure that pain could bring, there were moments when holding back became nearly impossible.
When that happened, I would slip away somewhere no one could see me and inflict wounds on myself in secret.
So…
What I was about to do right now…
This act of cutting into my own body…
Was, for all practical purposes…
Basically… masturbation, wasn't it…?
"……."
"Absolutely not!!!"
I shouted, shaking my head hard.
Then I shoved the blade back into Elise's hands as if dumping the whole thing on her and snapped,
"No! You were the one who was supposed to do this! Your family ordered it! So you do it yourself! Right now!"
My sudden change in attitude left not only Elise but the three watching from behind looking thoroughly bewildered.
But their reactions didn't matter to me in the slightest.
I had to escape this mortifying situation by any means necessary.
"Yeon, calm down! What's wrong all of a sudden?"
Senior Bella started toward me with concern, but I refused to let her near.
"Stay back!"
I barked sharply and retreated.
"All of you, get out! Get out of here right now!"
I started snatching up every piece of lab equipment within reach and hurling it at them.
Beakers. Test tubes. Glass bottles filled with unidentifiable chemicals.
Crash! Clatter!
Glass shattered. Liquids spilled across the floor, releasing a foul stench.
"Yeon! Stop!"
"Please calm yourself!"
"That's dangerous!"
All three cried out at once, dodging or batting away the flying objects.
Faced with what looked like a complete loss of reason, they hesitated, no longer daring to approach.
Surveying the wreckage of the lab, the three of them finally exchanged glances as if conceding there was nothing else to be done, and took a step back.
"…We'll wait outside for now."
Professor Emila spoke for the group, then led Senior Bella and Rina out of the laboratory.
Just before the door closed, I felt their complicated, worried gazes on me—but I deliberately looked away.
Bang!
The door shut. Once again, only Elise and I remained inside the lab.
Among the overturned equipment and shards of broken glass, Elise was still staring at me with a face full of terror.
Completely overwhelmed by the manic display she'd just witnessed, she couldn't even move.
Breathing hard, I searched through the scattered lab tools until I found the blade Elise had dropped—or that I had thrown—and picked it up.
The cold, smooth feel of metal against my palm.
Then I strode straight toward her.
"…!"
As I closed in, Elise tried to back away in even greater fear—but she was already against the wall. There was nowhere left to go.
I stopped directly in front of her and forced the blade back into her hand once more. The cold metal pressed against her trembling palm.
"Eek…!"
Elise let out a frightened whimper and tried to drop it, but I seized her wrist hard and stopped her.
"You. Do it. Yourself."
I glared down at her with terrifying eyes and growled the words low.
For all the chaos that had just erupted, the blood draw itself was over almost anticlimactically fast.
In the end, cowed by my threats and pressure, Elise managed—with shaking hands—to draw a small amount of blood from my arm.
She did leave a few extra little nicks on my arm in the process, but that much I could write off as a cute bonus.
Now Elise had transferred my blood into a test tube and was analyzing it atop a complex magic circle floating in front of her.
Using various reagents and mana, she was breaking down and reconstructing the components of my blood, straining to uncover something.
"So? How is it? Find anything?"
I asked, sitting in a chair with my arms crossed.
Elise answered curtly without even meeting my eyes.
"Results don't come that fast. Could you be quiet for a bit? I can't concentrate."
It was a markedly different attitude from the trembling, pathetic mess she'd been earlier.
Apparently, when she was deep in research, she could be surprisingly sharp and focused.
Seeing her like this made her look almost like a different person.
…So she can actually get it done when it counts.
I'd thought she was just a pushover who only ever took hits, but in her own field she put on a decent show of expertise.
Well—she was the young lady of the Lapellasia ducal house. Maybe that was only natural.
There was a simple reason Elise was researching my blood like this.
It was the condition.
Thanks to the new headmaster, I had at least avoided the worst-case scenario of being dragged off to the Lapellasia Duchy immediately.
In exchange, the condition the duke had set was this:
In return for remaining at the academy until midterms, I would regularly cooperate with Lapellasia's research.
And that research, needless to say, was aimed at uncovering the secrets of my physical condition—especially my resistance to Contamination.
Since I only needed to stay at the academy until midterms anyway, I had accepted the terms.
Of course, once midterms were over, I would be hauled off to the Lapellasia Duchy with no room to argue.
And waiting for me there would be… probably a cold examination table and a sharp scalpel.
…Dissection.
The moment the word crossed my mind, a pleasant smile spread across my lips without my meaning to.
The image of cold metal instruments parting my skin, rooting through my flesh, extracting my organs one by one for analysis.
That sensation of watching my body be dismantled helplessly while my consciousness remained perfectly clear…
Just thinking about it sent a thrill through me.
Heh heh.
Ah… anyway!
That wasn't what mattered right now.
Problems I needed to solve immediately were piled up like a mountain.
And the one that weighed on me most…
Was the academy's new headmaster.
The sudden appointment I'd heard about through the dorm supervisor. And the overwhelming authority that had been enough to make the Duke of Lapellasia back down.
The new guardian who had descended from the Spiritual Realm to fill the vacancy left by my master's departure.
Her true identity.
I already knew it.
She was an unforgettable presence who had appeared in the game Tales of Aethesia.
Golden hair. Otherworldly beauty. And the form of an angel missing one wing.
She was none other than… the former Celestial God who had once ruled the angelic race, sealed away after her defeat in battle against the System Administrator.
And the final boss of Chapter 3 who had driven players to despair in the original game: Elaha.
Haa…
I let out a long breath.
I genuinely had no idea what I had touched, and how, to twist the game's setting into this much of a mess.
According to the original, Elaha should still have been sealed.
So why had she broken free of her seal—and not only that, claimed the position of Tera's guardian and academy headmaster?
Did it have something to do with my master's annihilation? Or had some other variable I didn't know about come into play? My head was a tangle.
Before I transmigrated, it had frustrated me.
I couldn't understand why the protagonists of web novels and game isekai stories never tried to change the original plot and only ever tried to follow the predetermined path.
If they just showed a little courage, they could build a better future—so why were they so passive?
But now that I was actually in that position, I understood.
Changing the story was far more dangerous than I'd imagined.
Just as a butterfly's tiny wingbeat could summon a massive storm—
Having personally experienced how every trivial choice I made rewrote the world into something I could no longer control…
I was beginning to understand, at least a little, why those protagonists had clung so hard to the original.
In any case, one thing was certain: she was neither on humanity's side nor on the Evil God's.
She would move solely for her own purposes.
Which meant there might be no reason for her to clash with me directly for the time being.
For now, all I could do was quietly watch how she moved.
Not that I was in any position to "watch" anything.
She was a Level 10 Transcendent.
If I dared defy her in my current state, a single flick of her fingers would erase me like dust.
The gap in power was utterly overwhelming.
I still had no idea why she had gone so far as to stand against the Duke of Lapellasia—for my sake—just to keep me at the academy.
Simple whim? Or had she found some other use for me?
But… whatever the reason, I would have to exploit her whims for everything they were worth, for as long as I could.
With my master gone, I needed every scrap of opportunity I could get.
There wasn't much time left until midterms.
I no longer had the luxury of confusion or hesitation.