Chapter 27
MIRA WAS IN THE GIRLS’ changing room of Gymnasium One. In order to get inside the gym, she had no choice but to change into gym clothes.
Beginning to change her clothes as soon as she’d arrived, Luminaria was murmuring salacious comments such as, “Smells like young chicks,” with a deadpan expression.
Mira, meanwhile, was in the process of getting gym clothes from Emilia.
“Um, here you are,” Emilia said, discreetly giving them the sniff check before handing her the gym clothes that were in her right hand.
“H-hrmm. Sorry for all the trouble.” As Mira took the clothes, she finally comprehended exactly what it was that she was about to grab.
She’d been so wrapped up in the whole graffiti incident. But standing with an actual set of used girls’ gym clothes, she realized something… She realized how unbelievable it was that she was in a situation where she was being lent such things—something which was previously utterly unthinkable.
But now she was a girl…
Forcing herself to keep this fact in mind and trying not to let even the slightest hint of nervousness betray her face, Mira took the used gym clothes.
The top was a simple white shirt with a green stripe on the collar and sleeves. The bottoms were a pair of green shorts.
Having given Mira the gym clothes, Emilia then began getting changed.
Briefly catching sight of Emilia in her underwear, Mira looked away.
Under normal circumstances, she would’ve treated herself to an eyeful…but this was Emilia. She looked up to Mira as a teacher.
There was no way Mira could look at her in that way.
And so, she made her way to the corner of the changing room and took off her clothes with her back turned.
But jeez… This is kinda…
Now in her underwear, Mira froze with the gym clothes in her hands.
She was going to put on used girls’ gym clothes and was now faced with the wrongness of such a thing.
If she didn’t change into them, she wouldn’t be able to go into the gym. She didn’t have any choice. Or at least this was the excuse she told herself to justify what she was doing as she slipped her arms through the sleeves of the used gym clothes.
Oh ho… They’ve kinda got a faint feminine smell…
Thinking they smelled quite good, Mira finished changing clothes.
Garbed in the borrowed gym clothes, she felt a shiver run down her spine at how improper such a thing was…even more so than when she’d put on the schoolgirl uniform.
“How does it feel, Mira? To wear be wearing an actual set of girls’ gym clothes,” Luminaria softly whispered, just as Mira was struggling to come to grips with the indescribable sensation.
Looking at her, Mira caught a mischievous look in her eyes that seemed to be saying, “Mission accomplished.” Now that she thought of it, it had been Luminaria who’d suggested that Emilia lend Mira her gym clothes.
“It’s so fun watching you be at a loss.”
She knew everything. She knew about the feeling of guilt and the indescribable thrill that Mira felt deep down. Having been played by Luminaria like a violin, Mira turned with a glare and murmured resentfully, “I’ll remember this…”
Now that they’d all changed into their gym clothes, the three at last stepped into Gymnasium One to question Sven.
Hrmm, looks like it worked.
The enchantments in the gym and the gym clothes reacted, and a protective membrane stretched across her skin. Feeling it, Mira appreciated how far they’d gone to ensure the safety of the students.
Having made their way into the gym, they found that it was bustling with activity.
For being entirely indoors, the gym was quite large, about a hundred feet wide and one hundred thirty feet long. Inside, they caught sight of not only the badminton club but also the basketball club, ping pong club, and several others.
Being filled with all these clubs and overflowing with youthful vitality, Mira felt herself out of place. Especially considering she’d already graduated. In fact, the scene she saw before her had so much youthful vitality that it was almost too much for her eyes to handle.
“They’re still pretty young, but that’s not always a bad thing,” Luminaria said. She seemed to be enjoying their current scenery, despite being in the same position as Mira.
Emilia was scouting the gym as if she were some kind of hunter.
At any rate, having successfully gotten themselves into the gym, they went off toward the badminton club.
“There he is. That’s him!” Emilia cried out in a hushed voice. She was pointing to a boy who was warming up in an area a bit removed from where the badminton club was gathered. He had a buzz cut and a strong physique that neither Mira nor Emilia could hope to compete with.
“Hrmm…I was thinking he’d just be some scrawny perv…”
“Oh…so that’s him.”
After hearing about him looking up girls’ skirts from beneath stairs, Mira and Luminaria had expected him to be the gloomy, sullen type. But the two were visibly shocked to see what he really looked like.
Perhaps due to him being a sage, he seemed to have trained quite a bit. They could tell just from looking at him that he was shredded and was quite flexible from the warm-up exercises he was doing. He followed this up with a back bridge using his head instead of his arms, which gave off an intimidating impression.
And yet, Emilia had walloped him.
Mira glanced over at Emilia and felt a shiver run down her spine about how terrifying women could be.
“All right, let’s go ask him.”
There was no way they could best him in a contest of pure physical strength. And despite this huge difference in physique, Emilia fearlessly marched straight toward Sven.
“Despite how he might look, it seems like the stories were true.”
Sven continued to do the arms-crossed back bridge. While it seemed like his neck was quite powerful, Mira deduced what his true intentions were.
Checking where it was that his face was pointing, it was clear that Sven was merely feigning a warm-up and was trying to look up a female club member’s skirt from an extremely low angle.
Mira and her companions approached him. He must’ve caught sight of them from the corner of his eye as he turned his head to look at them while still stretching.
He must’ve immediately noticed they were women because he practically began drooling. Starting with their feet, his gaze lasciviously moved upward.
He then noticed that Emilia was among them.
No sooner had Sven’s eyes popped open in surprise than he sprang to his feet and immediately ran off in an unbelievable display of physical prowess.
“Ah, hold on!”
The way he’d fled upon seeing Emilia could certainly be seen as proof that he’d done something to feel guilty about. Surely, he was the one who had drawn the graffiti in a bid for revenge.
Or so the three companions thought, as they chased after Sven.
Sven nimbly leaped into the gym’s audience bleachers before making a beeline to the aisle toward the back. In addition to his raw physical talents, he also had the kind of maneuverability one might expect of a sage, so he was top-notch when it came to escaping on foot.
And yet, he was still a student. There was nothing he could do when chased by an opponent with incredible mobility like Mira, who had the same knowledge of the Immortal Arts as him.
“Sorry, but this is where this chase ends.”
Sprinting down the aisle, Sven then dashed up and down the steps to throw his pursuers off. It was clear from these tactics that this wasn’t his first rodeo. Easily overtaking him, Mira lightly landed directly in front of him.
Cut off, Sven reacted swiftly. Instinctually sensing that he wouldn’t be able to make it through, he quickly turned on his heels. But he had nowhere to go. There now stood a holy knight back where he’d come from.
“Huh…?!”
Shaken by the sudden appearance of the holy knight, Sven hesitated.
Seizing the opportunity, Mira got close to him and gave him a good shove in the back. Sven fell forward and crashed into the holy knight, who grabbed a firm hold of him.
“So I take it you yield?” Mira said, glaring at Sven, who was being held in a full nelson.
Her eyes were burning with rage toward the person she presumed had drawn graffiti all over the portrait of Danblf.
“You aren’t playing around, huh?” Having finally caught up to them and seeing the situation before her, Luminaria chuckled. It’d be difficult for a first-class adventurer to escape the way he was being held, much less a student.
“Now we can ask him whatever we want.”
Just arriving, Emilia saw the impressive way in which Sven was restrained and shot the boy the same kind of glare that Mira had.
“…What do you want?” Having struggled at first, Sven seemed to have given up after realizing that he couldn’t escape.
But even so, his lascivious spirit wouldn’t be deterred. In spite of the hopeless situation he found himself in, his eyes leaped at the opportunity to get an eyeful of the three girls.
“D’you know about what happened yesterday?” Emilia said, confronting him. Undaunted by his gaze, she drew steadily closer to him while smiling cheerfully.
Faced with Emilia’s smile, Sven tensed up slightly. Perhaps the memories of her beating him to a pulp were still fresh in his memory.
However, acting as if he hadn’t a clue, he answered, “…Nope, no idea.”
And yet, it was clear from the way that he turned his dastardly gaze to a wall with nothing on it that he was hiding something. It appeared that he was rattled about having been caught, that he was now acting completely irrationally.
“I know you can hear me. The incident with Master Danblf’s portrait. That was your doing, wasn’t it? You wanted to get back at me for how I punished you, and so you did that to his portrait!”
Looking at him as one might a nemesis, Emilia maintained her cool, despite the anger creeping into her voice. She amped up the pressure by telling him that scribbling graffiti on Danblf’s portrait was a grievous crime.
The moment he heard this, Sven’s eyes bulged slightly. He began waving his hands, as if to say enough was enough. “That wasn’t me.” Smiling slightly, he stated that he was innocent.
“Then why did you run the moment you saw me?” Emilia followed up.
Sven answered that it had to do with what’d happened previously. “Your friend came and stopped you that day, didn’t she? But it didn’t seem like you were satisfied. I thought you came to finish what you started.”
He seemed to think that she’d come to settle accounts. Imagining such a thing happening, he saw Emilia coming toward him and instinctually ran away. That, he claimed, was a rational reason to flee.
What’s more, after confessing all of this, he sincerely apologized for what’d happened that day and bowed his head in remorse. That didn’t last long. Soon enough, the puppy dog eyes he’d been making shot behind Emilia and fixed on Luminaria’s bosom. He might’ve felt bad about it, but that didn’t seem to mean he felt like stopping.
They continued to question Sven, but he remained adamant that he hadn’t drawn the graffiti.
“So what do you think?” Luminaria said, returning to the subject.
Having let Sven go, Mira and her companions used the information they’d obtained to analyze the situation in the School of Evocation’s classroom. They had no definitive evidence, so it wouldn’t have been easy to keep Sven detained.
But Mira had noticed that something about his attitude was off.
“Hrmm… I just got the impression that when he first saw Emilia, he really went into full-blown crisis mode.”
He said his reason for running away was that he thought she’d come to beat him again, but was it really? If anything, it looked as if he was trying to hide something. That was Mira’s impression, at least.
“Yeah. I got the same impression.”
With Luminaria in agreement, Emilia also chimed in. “It is suspicious, isn’t it?”
And with that, all three were in agreement.
Then, in the middle of their discussion, Mira got a message.
“Oh my, there have been some sudden developments.”
Having had a hunch that he was hiding something, Mira had quietly put the now-revived First Pupil on standby after leaving the gymnasium. The message she got had come from him. The target had nonchalantly left the gym, hastily changing his clothes before scurrying off somewhere.
Based on the intel they’d gotten from Dielid, there had been several other people besides Sven plotting something in front of the banquet hall. In other words, accomplices.
Sven had said that he didn’t draw any of the graffiti. But even if that were true, it was still possible that he was still involved with the crime. Mira and her companions had intentionally not mentioned Dielid’s testimony, and now Sven had heedlessly gone off to meet his buddies. They’d predicted that if they could shake him up a bit, he’d do something.
And they’d been right on the money.
Mira and Emilia’s plan was to corner those responsible for the graffiti in such a way that they wouldn’t be able to talk their way out of things, then punish them in one fell swoop.
With First Pupil on Sven’s heels, Mira and her companions flew out of the classroom.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login