Gabrielle’s POV
After finally wrapping up my work for the day, I trudged toward the parking lot. It was already late into the night, the result of being swamped with paperwork. This was the stuff Professor Sesillian and I had gone over in the Student Council’s Office. Master had ordered me to do that since he was busy with something involving Charlotte Sierra.
After that, I had to tackle some paperwork assigned by the Administration to all faculty and staff at the academy. We were expected to handle it right after school hours.
One faculty member had been conspicuously absent during the last hours of our discussion and paperwork.
I sighed as I arrived at the parking lot. There were still plenty of cars, including mine. But someone was there before me. It was a woman I wasn’t outright hostile with, unlike that other woman, but there was still some tension between us. We didn’t talk much, but we did exchange words occasionally, unlike with that other woman.
Seeing her here meant I had to acknowledge her presence and say something, if only out of courtesy.
“Hello, Rose.”
“Oh? Yeah…” she said, her voice heavy with fatigue. “Sometimes, being a professor really gets to you, doesn’t it?”
I remained silent, only nodding as I reached for my car door. “I’m heading home now,” I said, opening it and slipping inside. “What about you?”
“I’m stuck waiting for Irene,” she replied, a deep sigh escaping her lips. “She skipped out on all the work the administrators piled on us and hasn’t even bothered to answer my calls. She said she’d meet me and we’d head out together after the paperwork, but she’s nowhere to be found.”
“Sounds like she’s a real hassle,” I commented, starting to settle into my car.
“You know what, Gabrielle,” Rose said, her voice taking on a more serious tone, “I think this might be the perfect chance for us to, you know, clear the air about something.”
“I don’t really have time to stick around,” I said, my voice clipped.
“I know I can’t avoid this forever, and I’m sure you understand that too,” she responded, frustration evident in her tone. “Do you really want to keep this up? Ignoring each other even though we’re in the same field and constantly crossing paths? It’s stifling, isn’t it? Because I’m suffocating from it all. I mean, do you really need to be so hostile now, considering you’re no longer a magic knight and are just like the rest of us?”
Back then, before I was with Master, I was working as a magic knight and excelling at my job. I was frequently honored and became somewhat of a local celebrity. But behind the accolades, I saw the corruption and the rot within the organization. I didn’t quit because of that, though. I thought I could just swallow it all because becoming a magic knight was my dream—a chance to serve justice.
But then Master came along, and the rest is history.
Even after leaving that profession, the betrayal still happened. Rose, that other woman, and I had once been in the gold class together. We all dreamed of becoming magic knights as a trio. Back then, it seemed like they were just going along with it because they were daughters of high-ranking officials, but we still enjoyed each other’s company.
As graduation neared, their classes shifted because they couldn’t keep up with the rigorous demands. While they didn’t plummet to the very bottom, their rankings fell to the top ten of the silver class. I urged them to persist, hoping they could regain their place in the gold class, but when graduation arrived, none of them succeeded. The four years we’d spent together disintegrated in that moment. I realized then that they hadn’t taken my words seriously because they had their own agendas. Rose was lost in romance novels, while that woman had her head buried in botany.
The fallout struck right at graduation, severing what little remained of our bond.
“Don’t worry, Rose. I’ve already let bygones be bygones,” I said.
“Are you really? Then why do you keep avoiding us?” she asked.
“I don’t mean to avoid you,” I replied, my tone flat. “But there’s no point in stopping to talk when things have changed so much. We’re not the same as we were back then.”
Rose let out a heavy sigh. “Well, suit yourself.”
After she said that, I started my car, but then I overheard a conversation.
“Leon really is an idiot for falling asleep in class earlier,” one voice said. “And because of that, Professor Irene finally lost it and called him to her office. I bet he got punished hard.”
“I kind of feel sorry for him, though,” another voice chimed in. “Out of everyone who dozed off, he’s the only one who got caught.”
The two boys heading through the academy gates were what my Master called his “friends.”
“Hey, you two! It’s already curfew hours! What are you still doing out here?”
The two boys flinched when they spotted Rose. Sure, being out past curfew was against the rules, but that wasn’t my main concern right now. I darted from my car, charging straight toward that woman’s office.
“Gabrielle? Hey, wait up! Where the hell are you going?” Rose’s voice cut through the night, her shout growing fainter as I sprinted away.
I didn’t bother responding.
“Damn it! You two, get your asses back to your dorms now, or I swear, if I catch you again, I’ll put you both in detention!” Rose yelled at the boys before sprinting after me.
Rose and I were evenly matched in stamina and strength, though I had a slight advantage, thanks to my background as a former magic knight.
After a while, I finally reached my destination. Without a second thought, I yanked open the door. The sharp scent of sex filled the air, thick and overwhelming. In the barely lit office, the scene was laid bare: a woman, roughly my age, was on her knees, her face inches from the man standing before her. She was attending to his private area, and the man—well, I knew him all too well. It was my Master.
Rose arrived beside me, her mouth falling open in shock. She clamped a hand over her mouth, eyes widening in disbelief.
“I-Irene?” she gasped, then her eyes grew even wider as she recognized the man. “L-Leon?”
