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The corridors of Schale were quiet as Izumimoto Eimi walked through the halls, quietly looking for the man she knew would be somewhere within the many rooms of the building.
Sensei was nearly always working whenever she or anyone she knew messaged him, so it was a good bet that he would be here even though she hadn’t messaged ahead.
She didn’t have any business with him, so it wasn’t really important if he was here or not, she just wanted to see him.
‘Although, it would definitely be better if he was around’ she thought, and she kept looking right and left to see if he was in any of the rooms.
Just then, ahead of her she heard the sounds of guitar playing, and she quietly creeped forward as she heard a voice she recognised as being the very person she was looking for.
‘I wonder what he’s playing?’ With that in her mind, she made sure to secure all the items she had, even holding onto the zippers on her bra so they would make as little sound as possible.
His voice became more distinct as she got closer, and she started making out that he was singing! She didn’t know he sang, and he wasn’t particularly bad at it either. Then she made out the lyrics.
“ Eimi, what you wanna do? I think I could stay with you~ ”
She froze in her tracks. Was Sensei… saying her name?
“For a while, maybe longer if I do~”
She had never realised he had a good singing voice. His voice trailed off, and the guitar playing got slower, and she suddenly had the feeling that she had missed most of the song, and her heart started aching.
“I keep falling in and out of love with you~”
‘Falling in and out of love’? Eimi felt her face redden up as she heard those words; and as sensei continued with the outro she quietly slipped away with her face in a bright blush.
Arona hovered on the Shittim Chest as I put down my guitar. “That was a good song, Sensei! What’s the name of it? I never heard it before.”
“It’s called Amie, it’s a pretty old song, so I’m not really surprised you don’t know it.” I refrained from letting her know that I had only first heard of it a month or so ago myself. “I like the melody, so I thought I’d give it a try, shake the rust off these old bones.”
“Well you should! I didn’t even know you played the guitar!”
“One of those silly little skills you pick up in life. Never was much good at it though, not like Yoshimi or Ichika. Just don’t have the ear or skills for music.”
Arona’s mouth formed an O at that. “With how much you listen?! You’re just being hard on yourself, Sensei! You’re good! You should play for others more often!”
At the words of encouragement from my little assistant, I couldn’t help but smile, reaching out to the Shittim Chest to pat her head. “Thanks Arona, but I don’t think that’ll happen.”
I mean, I only played at night, who would come here to Schale at this time?
I reflected on that thought, before getting up to close the door. A scary amount of students would.
“Better hope none of them heard it,” I muttered under my breath. Don’t wanna know what they would do if they thought I was singing love songs.
Plana, watching the two of them interact silently in the corner of the Shittim Chest, decided it wasn’t the right time to let them know of the student that had been listening the whole time from outside the door.
Eimi’s heart was beating a million times a second as she rapidly closed the door to her room, only calming down once the air conditioning hit her at a cool temperature, or what others called subzero.
Her head wasn’t doing much better, her thoughts running as fast as her heart was as the sounds of Sensei singing imprinted itself into her memories.
“Singing to me…” Saying that out loud, her heart started beating even faster, and with a frustrated sigh she collapsed into her bed.
“What’s wrong with me?” She kicked her legs in the air as she squeezed her pillow, venting the annoyance she felt on it.
She wasn’t good with emotions, never had been, but she knew one person who might know what she was feeling…
Even if it was really annoying to ask her anything.
Himari stared gape-jawed at Eimi, her mouth sputtering out syllables.
“Yo-uh-wuh-hwa-”
“This is a serious matter, Himari. Matters dealing with the heart usually are.”
“Buh-wait, are you serious?” Himari’s sudden outburst didn’t do anything to Eimi, used as she was to arguing on basically every little thing with her.
“I am deadly serious. My heart should not be beating this quickly, it could be a latent condition that only decided now was the right time to start making itself known.”
“You…”
Eimi leaned in. “Me?”
“You… dense idiot.” Himari planted her face into her hands. “You are such an idiotic fool. How do you not even know this? No wait, of course you wouldn’t know this, you’re a fool.”
“If you aren’t going to say anything useful, I’ll just go ask Sensei-”
“NO!” Himari nearly leapt out of her wheelchair to stop Eimi. “He is the absolute last person you want to ask right now! Look, aren’t you saying that he’s the reason why you feel like this now?”
Eimi slowly sat back in her chair. “Well, my heart only goes faster when I think of him…”
“So, knowing how worried he gets, don’t you think it would be better to try to figure out what ails you so first before you worry him more? I can’t help you with this, but what about asking Chihiro?” Himari took in a great gulp of air after that, leaving Eimi with a sense that she was hiding something with how much fasttalking she had done.
Rather than call Himari out on her bluff, she instead took her advice. “Then, I’ll go ask Chihiro- senpai about this.”
With that, Eimi took her leave, and Himari let out a breath she didn’t even realise she had been holding.
“Of all the problems that girl could have come to me with, she comes to me with love problems?! Honestly, what a problematic junior.” Taking the remote, she cranked up the temperature.
“I do hope Chi-chan won’t be overwhelmed by that girl.”
It was 3 in the afternoon, and Chihiro had not had enough coffee. She hadn’t worked overnight, she wasn’t currently crunching deadlines, and she wasn’t dealing with the fallout of another incident caused by her juniors.
It would have been a good day, maybe she would have had time to go over to Haruhabara and look at some things. Instead, she needed coffee because she needed to be caffeinated to deal with whatever this shit was .
“-so Himari told me to ask you what to do, senpai.”
Of course it was Himari. Chihiro loved Himari as a respected senior and a good friend despite what some gossipers around Millennium said, but even after being forcefully removed as Veritas’s President she still treated Chihiro as her Vice-President.
That was to say, giving her all the things she didn’t want to do.
She put her nice face on as she considered the best way to tell Eimi it was probably love she was feeling. In love with Sensei? Chihiro knew some people who had crushes on Sensei, but she never really felt that way for the adult herself. How does one even tell a person like Eimi that what she was feeling was probably, most likely love?
“Well, have you thought it could be an… emotional reaction?”
Her junior cocked her head to the side in puzzlement. “An emotional reaction? But it’s physical?”
Oh god . “Well, sometimes, emotional feelings can have an effect on your physical state too.”
“How?”
Under her desk, Chihiro rapidly typed out a message asking Maki, Kotama or Hare, just anyone to get her a cup or twenty of coffee.
She was gonna need a lot of it.
Eimi nodded as she wrapped her head around what Chihiro-senpai had said.
“I see, so this is love?” Her head kept moving as she comprehended the idea of being in love, all the while paying little attention to Chihiro who was face first on her desk, or the other Veritas girls who had been continuously making sure her cup was full of coffee.
Getting up, she gave a little bow to the mess of blue hair on the table. “Thank you for the explanation, Chihiro-senpai. I’ll try to sort out the rest of this myself.” She made her exit, leaving the Veritas members alone with their exhausted Vice-President.
Once they heard the footsteps fade out, as one they turned to look at Chihiro.
“Uh, you alright Pres?”
From Chihiro’s limp body, a thumbs-up rose from her arm, barely raising above her head on the table before it fell back down.
“A-alright.”
“Could you pass the mustard, Arona?”
“Sensei, there isn’t any mustard, and even if there was I can’t pass it to you! Go to sleep!”
“Arona-senpai is right. Go to sleep, Sensei.”
I’m fine! I’ve only been awake for-
“Sensei, are you forgetting to open your mouth again to speak?”
I remember how to open my jaw and use my vocal cords, only for a large yawn to let itself out against my will. “Gah, my mouth is dry.”
“That’s because the last time you had a drink was four hours ago.” Plana’s voice was dry as she pointed out the reason behind my sudden bout of dry mouth. “You should go to sleep Sensei, if you can’t even recognise that you need to drink.”
“Plana-chan’s right Sensei!” Arona’s eyes were tearing at the corners as she pressed up against the screen of the Shittim Chest. “You can’t subsist on just energy drinks! You don’t even like mustard! Why did you ask for it?!”
“Huh? There’s a hotdog in my hands though?” I held up the hotdog.
“That’s a legal form!”
“It’s-”
We were interrupted by Eimi entering the room, and the always-shy Arona immediately disappeared from the screen, leaving a bemused (I assumed) Plana.
Eimi walked up to my desk, and asked me a question. “Sensei, are you free?”
I looked at the pile of papers on my desk reaching her head, and shoved some of it out of the way to give me a clear line-of-sight to her. “Yep. Completely free. What do you need?”
Pointing a finger at me, she leaned in. “Sensei, I am in love with you. I will aim to win you over from today onwards.”
We looked each other in the eyes, and I stuck a finger in my ear to clean it out. “I’m sorry, what did you say? I thought I heard you say-”
“I am in love with you, Sensei.” She brought her hand up to her chest. “This feeling can be nothing else. Whenever I think of you, my heart keeps racing, and I feel a warm fluffy feeling in here. I have been told that it is love, hence I am in love with you and I will try to make you fall in love with me so we can be mutually in love.”
I looked at her, and she kept her gaze steady. “Uh, alright?” I gave her a thumbs up. “Sounds good?”
She nodded, and left.
Barely a moment passed before Arona appeared back on the Shittim Chest screaming her virtual lungs out. “SENSEI?! DID YOU JUST GIVE EIMI-SAN PERMISSION TO WOO YOU?!”
“Huh? You mean that wasn’t a sleep-deprivation induced fever dream?” Looking down to my watch, I mentally ran some calculations to see when 8 hours would have passed from now, taking about a minute with how mentally exhausted my brain was. “Wake me up at 4am.”
With Arona’s voice screaming at me about the situation that absolutely had not happened, I put my head down and immediately fell asleep.
A shake on my shoulder slowly woke me up from my slumber, and I blearily raised my head up from the sofa, my hand groping around to find something to hold to keep up, only for a hand to grasp mine and direct me.
A soft voice spoke to me, and I smelled the scent of baked goods somewhere. “Sensei, I’m making you breakfast. Go shower first, it’ll be done once you’re out.”
I got up, and was halfway to the showers in Schale when I realised that A: I had been sleeping at my desk, B: Who was making me breakfast, and C: It was now 8am.
I ran back to the office in a frenzy, and opened the door to see Eimi in an apron laying out a plate of toast bread on the sofa table.
“What?! Huh?! What?!”
“Sensei, have you showered already? I’m still not done with breakfast… I had thought you would be done in at least five minutes, not one.” She came up, and started pushing me to the showers, but I dug in my heels. Whatever was going on here, I had no time to deal with now, Rin was going to kill me!
“Sorry Eimi, but I don’t have time for breakfast, I need to finish up my paper…work?” The pile of papers on my desk was gone.
“I filled out most of those. The only ones left are the ones that need your signature.”
“That’s… huh? Eimi, how long have you been in Schale?”
“Hm? From when? When did I join?”
“No, I mean, since last night.”
“I never left.”
I stared at her, silently asking her to elaborate.
She obliged. “I was making dinner for you, but when I went to ask you what you would like, you were asleep. So I moved you to the sofa, and started clearing out the paperwork.”
The image of the paperwork I had left on my desk superimposed itself in my vision. “You, did all of that? In twelve hours?”
“Sensei, I did tell you last night I intend on courting you? I did some research, and partners are meant to assist each other. Thus, I just did what was natural.”
“Oh. Huh. Ok.”
This time, when Eimi pushed me in the direction of the showers, I went without a fuss.
Only when I was in the showers did I completely comprehend what she had said.
Eimi raised her head from the plate she had set out as she heard a scream coming from the direction of the showers.
“WHAT THE HECK?!”
Inside the Shittim Chest, Arona and Plana both perked up at that sound.
“Oh, Sensei finally realised what’s going on!”
Plana just sighed.