Teacher, I'm Actually a Villainous Magical Girl Chapter 4

And that wine bottle lying on the floor...

After a while, the gray-haired woman sat up from the floor with unfocused eyes and staggered toward Kirishima Ai.

Kirishima Ai stood there blankly, at a complete loss.

"Mm... Kirishima?"

The gray-haired woman suddenly spoke.

Her voice was slightly low and husky, cold and dry, yet inexplicably pleasant and captivating.

Kirishima Ai blinked.

Just now... had this person called her by name?

"Do you know me?"

Kirishima Ai asked uncertainly.

Soon, the woman came right up to her, and Kirishima Ai caught a strong smell of alcohol.

She was certain now. This woman had to be drunk.

Maybe they were standing too close, or maybe it was the alcohol on the woman's body, but Kirishima Ai's face reddened slightly, and her heart began racing.

Suddenly, a cold, slender finger lifted her chin.

Kirishima Ai froze.

The gray-haired beauty studied her with those hazy, slightly drunken eyes.

"...Looking at you like this, you're quite cute."

Her tone was fairly gentle, but it still carried a sense of indifference.

"Huh?"

With her chin being held up by such a beautiful woman, Kirishima Ai's heart raced even faster.

Her face was burning, her mind completely blank. She could not tell whether she was excited or something else.

Why was her heart beating so fast...?

But before she could react, the woman's cold, stunning face had already moved closer, narrowing the distance between them bit by bit.

Close enough for her to smell the alcohol that had seeped into the other woman's hair, along with her damp breath.

Kirishima Ai herself began to feel dazed.

At some point, something cold and soft touched her lips.

"..."

The woman gently kissed her lips. Their noses touched, their cheeks pressed together, and a decadent, rotten sort of sweetness nearly drowned her.

After a while, Kirishima Ai's eyes widened.

For a moment, her mouth was full of alcohol, yet there was a cloying sweetness to it... The touch had clearly been cold, yet it somehow felt scorching.

Kirishima Ai's body was somewhat stiff and cold.

She realized something.

—She had kissed this woman.

Drunken Angel

Inside the dim Materials Room, the drunken woman had kissed the girl.

The woman was very tall and had to bend down to kiss her. While they kissed, Kirishima Ai could see the woman's beautiful, misty eyes, the expanse of skin exposed beneath her disheveled collar, and smell the strong alcohol on her body.

Kirishima Ai's mind was blank. She stood there stupidly, not knowing why she had not dodged just now, nor which emotion she felt more strongly.

She took a trembling step back. Even without seeing her own face, she knew it was probably completely red by now.

Just now... had been her first kiss.

It had been taken by a drunken stranger.

She instinctively raised a hand and touched her slightly damp lips.

An indescribably strange feeling welled up inside her.

The woman lazily straightened up. A faint smile appeared on her originally cold face, as though she had no awareness whatsoever of what she had done.

After a while, the drunken woman seemed to sober up a little. Her previously unfocused eyes gained a bit more clarity.

The gray-haired woman covered her forehead with one hand, seemingly nursing a headache, and murmured groggily.

"Ah, sorry. When I'm drunk, I have a habit of kissing people at random..."

Kirishima Ai blinked in confusion.

What an awful habit...

Just now, this person must have been far too drunk. She had heard that some drunkards displayed all sorts of strange behaviors after getting drunk, but this was her first time seeing someone who went around kissing people.

Then she noticed that the woman seemed to have a teacher's badge hanging around her neck, though it was tucked beneath her outerwear.

So she really was a teacher?

But why had she never heard of such a beautiful teacher?

And why was she getting so drunk here?

"So, Kirishima, what did you come here for?"

The gray-haired woman called her by name again.

As though she knew her.

Kirishima Ai wanted to ask why the other woman knew her.

But asking someone this drunk a question like that seemed pointless.

"...I came to get an alcohol lamp."

Facing the strange woman, Kirishima Ai lowered her head and answered with little confidence.

"An alcohol lamp?" The gray-haired woman blinked, then tried hard to open her eyes wider. "I remember, mm... I think it was over there. I'll look for it."

As she spoke, she staggered off in a certain direction, making Kirishima Ai deeply worried that she might walk into something.

The woman went deeper into the Materials Room, and only then did Kirishima Ai notice the wine bottles scattered all over the floor. It was hard not to wonder just how much this person had drunk.

The gray-haired woman fumbled around for things in a daze, muttering to herself.

"Can't find it..."

"Am I too drunk... Where's the sobering-up drink?"

Suddenly, she touched a transparent glass bottle sitting on the table and casually picked it up.

The woman's lips brushed the mouth of the glass bottle. The clear liquid inside flowed down her throat, making her beautiful neck rise and fall, and then...

A glug-glug sound...

Kirishima Ai froze.

What the gray-haired woman had just gulped down did not seem to be sobering-up drink, did it?

It looked like...

An alcohol lamp bottle.

There was a label on it. It was 95% alcohol.

Wouldn't drinking that kill someone?

Then she watched the woman drain the entire bottle of alcohol in one go, followed by a "burp."

"Mm... I feel a little more awake now."

Kirishima Ai almost felt like she was dreaming.

She walked over as well and confirmed that the bottle really was from an alcohol lamp, with a strong smell of alcohol still lingering inside.

Fortunately, there was another one beside it that had not been drunk yet.

She carefully moved this alcohol lamp away first, in case the drunkard did something else strange.

She had experienced more than enough strange things lately. One more would not make much difference.

Once she got the alcohol lamp, she should leave quickly.

She gently held the alcohol lamp in both hands, ready to leave just like that.

Just then, the strange woman looked at her and suddenly said.

"You look unhappy. Is something bothering you?"

Although the other woman said it rather coldly, Kirishima Ai still stopped.

For some reason, she remained where she was.

Since she usually lived alone and no one else lived with her, Kirishima Ai did not need to worry about getting home early or late.

The sky had gradually darkened into night. Kirishima Ai sat directly on the floor beside the drunken woman, and the woman likewise crouched down beside her.

This woman was strange, but Kirishima Ai had already encountered plenty of Monsters lately.

Besides, even if she said something strange to a drunk person, it probably would not matter.

At first, she did not know where to begin, but after talking for a while, Kirishima Ai was able to open up. Though she did not know whether the woman had truly listened.

The gray-haired woman was very patient. She sat quietly the whole time and listened to her talk, replying occasionally, though somewhat coldly.

She did not know if it was just her imagination, but that cold tone inexplicably reminded Kirishima Ai of Teacher Haihara.

The gray-haired woman turned her head and looked calmly at Kirishima Ai.

"You don't like your teacher?"

There was no emotional fluctuation in her voice. She merely asked the question flatly.

The gray-haired woman was probably referring to Teacher Haihara.

Kirishima Ai did not know whether she should say such things to another teacher. She lowered her head and looked at her clasped hands, her fingertips lightly pressed together.

She said softly.

"...I don't know either, but Teacher Haihara is a little different from what I imagined."

Teacher Haihara was a somewhat irresponsible, lousy teacher, exactly the kind of person she disliked most.

Yet for some reason, she did not actually hate this teacher as much as she had imagined she would.

The woman had no particular reaction. She merely propped her cheek up with one hand.

"If you hate being criticized by teachers, then why become a Magical Girl?"

The drunken woman easily accepted the fact that she was a Magical Girl.

The question sounded a little strange to Kirishima Ai.

One was being criticized by a teacher, and the other was saving the world as a Magical Girl. Compared to those two things, anyone would choose the latter, wouldn't they?

Just like how she felt wronged whenever Teacher Haihara criticized her.

Kirishima Ai lowered her head and buried it in her knees. With a somewhat dim expression, she said.

"I'm obviously helping other people... I'm fighting so hard, but I still have to be spoken to like that by my teacher. Isn't that just too strange...?"

Whenever a Monster appeared, she was usually the first to rush to the scene. If she arrived any later, someone might get hurt.

Although she did all of this willingly, and everyone thanked Magical Girl Silver Feather, in reality, she could not help sometimes feeling sad and wronged.

The gray-haired woman said nothing. She merely held the half-empty wine bottle as her long gray curls fell from beside her forehead all the way to the floor, hiding her expression from view.

She gulped down a few mouthfuls, wiped her lips, then held the wine bottle out toward Kirishima Ai.

"Life often has awful things like that. At times like this, if you drink a little, you'll forget all those awful things..."