“Pspspsps…”

Silence lingered in the air as I pspsps’d the catkin girl.

Did this not work? Maybe a normal pspsps was not good enough for her since she was royalty? I must put some emotion into the pspsps. Servitude, Was that it?

Though I had met quite a few catkins on the battlefield, all of them were soldiers, not feral rouges.

The catkin girl’s eyes widened as an incredulous expression filled her face. If the demon-king were a cat girl, he would look like this.

Anyway—regardless of the situation, a student was a student. It was my responsibility to teach her and communicate with her.

“Pspsps!” I said again, this time with more emotion, more servitude.

“Y-you…” The catkin spoke! In human tongue! “Are you mocking me?”

“Psps?”

Oh, wait. She can speak human.

“Not at all!” I said. “You are the only student in the academy right now, and as luck would have it, I am going to be your professor.”

The girl’s incredulous expression shifted to one of confusion. She loosened the tight fist she had made, and an amulet with the symbol of the beast nation of Aegean glinted in her hands.

The conversation was working! It was also highly entertaining—ahem, educating. I waved the cat-nip cookie and urged her to take a nibble or two.

“You!” The girl slapped the cookie out of my hand. It performed a clean slide and fell straight to the ground.

“My, thank god the floors are spotless!”

The girl was only annoyed more. I didn’t know how to communicate with kids.

“Get lost, you bastard!”

The girl screamed and dived at me. I tried to pull my hand back, but she opened her mouth and crunched it down! Her teeth sank into my skin as a jolt of pain rushed up my head.

“Ack!” I yelped from the pain as her teeth sunk right into my skin.

I yanked my hand up and down, but the brat just wouldn’t let go. She stuck to me like chewing gum stuck to someone’s precious hair!

“Fine!” I said. “I’ll leave! I’ll leave right now!”

“Grrr!”

The girl finally let go of my hand when I surrendered. Her stares and her hisses didn’t stop.

I had no other choice. I raised my hands high and dashed out of the store room.

That was my first meeting with my first student.

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“Pspsps…”

The cat-girl echoed the words of the annoying bastard. She thought that the end of her life was her—that her stealth had fallen apart and her fate had come knocking, but it was something completely different.

Let alone a murderer, the man seemed more like an idiot.

The cat-kin girl pulled her knees to her chest as she stared at the spot where the man stood.

“Professor…?” Her words were laced with venom. “Who is hiring idiots? I should file a complaint…”

The girl’s eyes caught a glimpse of the amulet in her hands, and her words trailed off.

The amulet held the symbol of the Royal Family—the first royal family of Aegean that had united all the cat tribes and let them stand toe-to-toe with the grand Freedom Alliance.

A scoff left the girl.

From the princess of a grand kingdom… to someone who couldn’t even leave the storeroom, let alone file a complaint.

The girl’s eyes widened as she heard a loud rumble. She snapped her head around in surprise.

“Enemy!?”

No matter where she looked, her keen senses did not pick any presence beside herself. The girl looked down at her stomach… the culprit behind the sound.

She sighed. How long had it been since she had been running around inside this academy? She hadn’t seen a bed in days and hadn’t eaten for longer. The girl’s eyes darted to the cookie dropped on the floor.

Another scoff left her. It seemed there was no choice but to eat something from the ground. That professor bastard held the gall to act like eating from the ground was no big deal. She was sure he would apologize if he had to pick food from the ground.

So far, she had been hungry. It was dangerous to let go of her stealth just for food.

“Better than not eating.” The girl justified it with those words and pushed herself off the ground. She grabbed the fallen cookie when she noticed a paper bag near the door.

It was the same bag that ‘professor’ from before had with him, the same one he pulled the cookie from.

The girl pounced ahead and snatched the bag from the ground. She pulled it open and dived her nose in to take a whiff—she could smell any poison out. There was nothing wrong with the cookies except for the cat nip.

“Hm…”

The girl did not know what to say.

She ate the cookies left for her.

***

Night fell. It was time for the ghosts and spirits to take over the world… not.

It was time to go to sleep. The dorms for the facility were the first place the academy had prepared, and I had a place to sleep in.

I was guided to the dorms for the class of hostages, the Black Rose Facility. The building made for the teachers was erected close to the students’ dorm in a square grid around the Black Rose grounds. They made passages that went to the students from the teacher’s dorm and a device that would alert me of intruders.

Me, because there is no other teacher here.

Look at this, look at modern work ethic! I am from a different world, and even I am diligent enough to come to work a month earlier! Where are the teachers who have nothing else to do?!

I let out all my anger with a sigh and entered my room with the renewed patience of a Zen monk. It was ok. So what if other teachers weren’t here yet? I was enough.

I flipped the switches and turned the lights on. My luggage was already placed inside by the staff. I was grateful.

I stretched my hands and looked around. An expansive room, a wide bed, a side table, and a desk. It looked like a suite room in a top-end hotel. The bathroom was just as big as the room and had a bathtub fitted inside.

I would be living in a good place for the next few years. I decided to unpack first and pulled my clothes out of my bag and into the closet. Next, I set all the letters I received from my friends on the desk alongside my stationery.

Lastly, I pulled out a spatial pouch from my attaché case. A spatial pouch inside a spatially enhanced case may be overkill, but the item was that important.

A gramophone.

Or a turntable or record player, whatever one wanted to call it.

I had stored the gramophone in a special pouch alongside two disks to go with it. This was a gift from someone high up in the clergy of the Sun God.

I took the gramophone to the side table, put in a record, and let it play. Loud music hummed through the air and earned a smile left me. This was perfect.

I closed the windows and drew the curtains before moving to the last bit of the gift—A stone with a magical rune etched on it. The healer gave me this device to block sound outside my room. If I didn’t use it, the students might wake up from the sound.

With all of it in place, it was time to go to sleep.

The music continued ringing in my ears. I was sure anyone would fall asleep like this.

A student, crying in the storeroom, with the symbol of the Aegean Kingdom in her hands—who was also a diplomatic issue.

Things were interesting. Extremely so.

I’ll go there again tomorrow.