"I'm telling you, either give up on this passion of yours or pursue it to the end," Nate, despite being a whole two years younger, was slowly reaching the limits of his patience.
'What kind of villain was I in my last life to be cursed with such a childish cousin?' he complained out to the heavens through his silent thoughts while fighting a losing battle not to let his annoyance show on his face.
"It just doesn't stick together!" Tesh exclaimed, slamming her hands on the cafeteria's table so hard, she drew some stares from the cafe's patrons nearby.
Aware of the attention she drew, she took a deep breath and slowly exhaled.
Being an academy elite was one thing, but making a mess at one of the more popular hangout spots for the other elites was a whole other question altogether.
"What are you going to do, then?" Nate asked while leaning his head over his right shoulder before taking a sip of the strong, sour coffee, his preferred drink of choice at this particular place. "We both know how your last attempt to figure that man out went. And unless you are d… naive enough," Nate quickly corrected his wording, not to overstep his boundaries too much, "then you won't try to raid his room."
Nate shrugged his shoulders before taking another sip of the drink.
'Damn, they really know how to brew it here,' he thought, silently amazed at the skill of the shopkeeper capable of so perfectly drawing out the strength and bitter depth from the fried grains without making the whole drink turn sour.
"And that," Nate then added, pausing for a moment to enjoy the aroma lingering within his taste buds for just a little longer, "leaves you pretty much with no options," he stated with another shrug. "It's not like that guy conducts any lessons himself, after all."
In the academy, the title of a teacher didn't necessarily mean one would teach the others. Just like the vice-principal officially still holding onto his teacher's license despite not holding a single lesson since forever, rather than a job, said license was more of a qualification necessary to work at the academy in the first place.
What's more, just like the students who had to work hard to make the most out of their time at the academy, the teachers didn't have it all that easy either. For if they wanted to earn money and credits through conducting classes, they had to gather enough student support to afford the flat fee of five academic credits to even get a class assigned to them in the first place!
"Wait, I know that's naive… But what if it actually isn't?" Tesh muttered, her eyes squinting in a fashion Nate found annoyingly familiar.
'Don't tell me she's got another of those 'genius' ideas of hers?' he thought, already wailing to the heavens at the prospect of all the mess that he himself would be tasked with clearing up.
"It would be naive to raid his room after he already caught me once. But doesn't that mean it's the last thing he would expect from me?!"
Hearing this, Nate shook his head, knowing better than to argue.
Any attempt to discourage his cousin from the course she plotted in her head would only make her all the more likely to follow it through, even if only to spite his words of caution.
No.
At this point, Nate's best bet was to just drop the topic and turn his cousin's attention elsewhere, so that she might hopefully forget about her stupid ideas before they came to bite her right back in the ass.
Still…
'How do you even plan to get to his room unnoticed when not even your illusion spell failed to fool his eyes?'
Only by washing his throat with another sip of the delicious coffee did Nate gain the strength to hold himself back from lecturing the naive girl down.
"Then again…"
Right as he was about to change the topic, though, Nate's eyes locked on a sight that stuck out from the crowd so much, he would have to be blind not to notice.
A man wearing a teacher's robe… with a massive burlap sack strapped over his shoulder as he made his way down the street, ignoring all the stares he attracted, his eyes brimming with excitement.
'Just what are the fucking chances?!' Despairing in his mind, Nate attempted to cover up the surprise on his face by taking up another sip, even though he almost just choked on the last one…
But it was too little, too late. And upon noticing his surprise, Tesh surely turned her head and scanned the area, curious to see what made him react like that.
"It's…" Her eyes turned wide as her mouth trembled a little, a memory of the humiliation from the night before now resurfacing fresh in her mind.
A humiliation she could only wash away by successfully raiding the man's room… Not to do anything in particular there, but merely to prove to herself that she still had what it took to do so!
And if she could figure out one or two of the man's secrets that would hopefully let her make more sense of the enigma that he turned out to be, then all the better!
Right now, however, watching the blood-stained sack filled to the point where it looked like it was about to tear itself open while the teacher in question casually waltzed straight through one of the more popular streets of the academy's compound…
'No, this can't be it…'
At this point, Tesh's curiosity and the desire to prove herself gave way to her sense of justice and… the primal fear that the man managed to strike into her soul just the day before.
For no matter how much she looked at the blood-stained sack… why did it seem to be filled with either someone unconscious, or even worse, a corpse?!