"Good morning, Chihaya-sensei!"
"Good morning."
At the start of the new week, hurried footsteps filled the corridors of Chihaya Academy, and passing teachers and students warmly greeted Kiyoharu.
Since joining the faculty, Kiyoharu Chihaya had consistently held the top spot on the "Most Popular Subject Teacher" list. The students had always treated him well.
But today, they were especially enthusiastic.
Mixed in with it was an air of anticipation, as though something huge was about to happen.
No one knew who had started spreading the news, but by morning, virtually everyone at Chihaya Academy knew that Takagi Akane would soon be arriving to register.
Three years ago, Takagi Akane had been a first-year student at Chihaya Academy, and Kiyoharu had happened to be her math teacher.
By all rights, she should have been in college by now. But after taking a leave of absence when her whole family moved to South America, she could still return and study under Kiyoharu, who taught second-year students.
"It's hard to believe she didn't do it on purpose..."
"Come to think of it, what did she do over there if she wasn't attending school? Don't tell me she was running with the mafia."
"Maybe she was studying witchcraft. I heard Takagi Akane got along really well with the local witches. She often visited churches, and she sometimes reposted occult stuff online."
"Eek! She dared to confess to Chihaya-sensei right in front of him before. Now that she's learned witchcraft, won't she be unstoppable?"
"Unstoppable might be a bit much, but personally, I think Takagi might use witchcraft to create a human transmutation circle with our entire school, tear open space-time, and take Chihaya-sensei to another world..."
That last remark was so absurd that everyone turned toward its source, only to find that Kiyoharu had somehow joined the discussion in all seriousness and even added his own sharp commentary.
The students looked awkward.
Smiling, Kiyoharu lightly tapped the girls on the head with his textbook. "All right, all right, stop gossiping and get ready for class. Whoever keeps talking about Colombian witches will be the first one I call up to solve a problem."
Under Kiyoharu's firm yet gentle discipline, the class was quickly brought into order enough for the lesson to begin.
Managing students was a bit like herding sheep. You could not be too harsh with the flock, but neither could you be weak. You had to strike a delicate balance, and a teacher's personal charisma also made a major difference.
For Kiyoharu, achieving the classroom atmosphere he wanted was easy.
But he had to admit that Takagi Akane was the kind of student he could not control—a complete little lunatic.
Out of the basic principles of teaching and guiding students, Kiyoharu had once tried to reform Takagi Akane. Yet one day after work, he found a small piece of pure white fabric stained with an unknown liquid in his briefcase, and Takagi Akane's signature girlish, hormone-laden scent hit him in the face.
"Stop babbling! I'm going to make her disappear from Tokyo forever!" Young Lady Airi beside him had flown into a rage.
And then Takagi Akane had been exiled.
As Kiyoharu stood before the whiteboard arranging his markers, he heard the regular sound of little leather shoes stepping along the hallway from afar. From the sound alone, he pictured the owner's slender figure and the perfect curves of her legs.
Her athletic physique, the smooth lines of her legs, and the proud curve of her chest all brimmed with vitality.
More than ten seconds later, a girl matching those features appeared at the classroom door, dressed like a sweet and spicy gyaru, with a seductive foxlike face that had barely changed in three years.
While driving to work that morning, Kiyoharu had already received a message from the head of academic affairs, telling him to make arrangements to welcome the transfer student.
There was nothing much to arrange. Even the self-introduction would merely be a formality, since Takagi Akane was practically an Urban Legends-level figure at Chihaya Academy.
"All right then, before we begin today's lesson..."
Just as Kiyoharu was about to go through the motions, Takagi Akane dropped to her knees on the podium with a thud and gave him a textbook-perfect dogeza.
"Chihaya-sensei, I was immature before and caused trouble for you and Young Lady. Please forgive me, teach me, and let me continue my studies and continue being a proper person!"
"I'm terribly sorry!"
Oh-ho--
The whole classroom exploded.
Everyone had guessed that Takagi Akane might do something outrageous, but they had not expected outrageous in this sense.
Shouldn't she have declared war? Shouldn't she have said that she would reclaim Chihaya-sensei, whom she had failed to win before?
Instead, she had pulled a complete one-eighty and immediately surrendered.
Pathetic. Way too pathetic.
The classmates were deeply disappointed. They had thought they would get to watch a samba fairy battle a Tokyo demon, only for the show to wrap on its very first episode.
"You needn't get so worked up, Takagi. Please stand up first," Kiyoharu advised.
"Chihaya-sensei, does that mean you've agreed to forgive me?"
"I forgive you. Everyone has their reckless youthful days," Kiyoharu said with a soft sigh. "The past cannot be shaken, but if you keep moving forward, one day it will become only a tiny segment on the scale of your life. Welcome back to the right path, Takagi."
Kiyoharu recited those classic lines used to forgive war criminals and whitewash their pasts, trying to gloss over Takagi Akane's kneeling confession as quickly as possible.
The enemy had surrendered before the battle even began. That seemed like a good thing.
But who knew whether Takagi Akane had truly turned over a new leaf, or whether she was merely laying bait?
Kiyoharu could only try his best to appear magnanimous, lest people see him and think the Chihaya Family's son-in-law would not let things go even after gaining the upper hand.
Even in his position as a teacher, he had to uphold the Chihaya Family's dignity.
—Even though Gen'ichiro's standards for Kiyoharu were low, he still had to meet the bare minimum of decency.
Faced with Kiyoharu's offhand, proverb-like forgiveness, Takagi Akane first froze hard, then let out a pitiful little sound like a small animal.
"Awoo~ Chihaya-sensei, you're such a good person!"
Takagi Akane lifted her face and gazed up at Kiyoharu. Beneath the open collar of her shirt, with two buttons undone, lay an abyss of sin.
Kiyoharu fought to keep his eyes from being drawn into that abyss and said evenly, "Please get up quickly, Takagi. There is no need to feel inferior. Just study and live normally with everyone else. There's an empty seat by the window in the front row. Is it all right if you sit there?"
"That's fine! Wherever Chihaya-sensei tells me to sit is fine. From now on, I'll listen to everything Chihaya-sensei says!"
Tilting her head and blinking, Takagi Akane skipped happily toward the window.
The jade rabbits wrapped in her school uniform shirt bounced like a spring love song.
Kiyoharu made a rough visual estimate. They were larger than Airi's but smaller than Shimaura Hitomi's, though their perkiness gave them the edge.
Being young is great... No, it wasn't just youth. Only girls who regularly went to the gym for proper training—not just taking photos and posting them online—could possess such perky wickedness. The strength in her slender waist also made Kiyoharu instinctively imagine certain high-difficulty moves.
Smack, smack.
Kiyoharu lightly patted his cheeks and stopped fantasizing.
People could not imagine things beyond their knowledge, and Kiyoharu had experienced far too much in matters of love between men and women in his previous life. His imagination was rich enough to be inhuman.
Get back on track with a peaceful life. With that thought, Kiyoharu opened his lesson plan.
At least on the surface, Takagi Akane gave off the air of a reformed gyaru.
Hopefully, she had truly mended her ways.
Yet Kiyoharu always felt that Takagi Akane's voice had subtly changed compared to three years ago. More strangely, when she had first appeared in the corridor in those little leather shoes, the sound of her footsteps had stirred an inexplicable restless feeling in his heart.
What was going on?
Could it be that too many women had been teasing me lately, and my resolve was wavering?
...Sigh. Looks like I still need to listen to more audio and unload more when I get home tonight. Mira-san, love!
Before you continue