Kirisu Mafuyu was drowning in regret.
She had wanted—needed—to salvage something. He'd already witnessed her apartment in its natural state: the empty convenience store containers, the untouched exercise equipment gathering dust, the general disorder of a woman who functioned brilliantly in a classroom and barely at all within her own walls. Cooking was supposed to be redemption. Proof that she wasn't completely hopeless. That some core competency existed beyond lecturing teenagers about their futures.
Instead, she'd nearly set her kitchen on fire, and the boy who'd shielded her from the oil splatter now stood in her living room with his back blistering.
This is a disaster.
"Come." She grabbed his wrist before she could second-guess herself, pulling him toward her bedroom. Her pulse hammered against her throat. "Lie down. Quickly. Take off your clothes so I can see the wound."
Hozuki Nozomi's expression shifted—something theatrical flickering across his features. "Isn't that inappropriate?"
"What time is it, and you're still worrying about these things?" Her voice cracked, eyes stinging with moisture she refused to let fall. "Hurry up and take them off. I need to see how bad it is to find the right medicine."
She had a first-aid kit.
Somewhere.
Under the bathroom sink, maybe, or shoved into the closet behind boxes she hadn't unpacked since moving in three years ago.
"Alright."
His acquiescence came easily—too easily—and Kirisu Mafuyu watched with mounting heat in her cheeks as he unbuttoned his school uniform collar. The blazer slid off broad shoulders, folded once, set aside on her desk chair. Then the white dress shirt, each button slipping free with deliberate slowness.
Don't stare. Don't stare. You are a professional educator and this is a medical emergency and you absolutely should not be—
She stared.
The fabric parted, revealing skin stretched taut over defined musculature. Eight distinct ridges carved into his abdomen, the kind of physique that belonged on athletes or models, not seventeen-year-old students who supposedly spent their days gallivanting. His arms weren't bulky but dense, the sort of functional strength that came from actual use rather than vanity lifting. A faint trail of dark hair descended from his navel, disappearing beneath his waistband.
Kirisu Mafuyu's mouth went dry.
He's your student. He has a girlfriend. Multiple girlfriends, if the rumors hold any truth. Stop looking at him like he's—
She shook her head violently, scattering the thought before it could fully form.
"On your stomach," she managed, voice pitched higher than intended. "The bed. Now."
He complied without argument, settling onto her mattress with an ease that made her irrationally annoyed. The quilt—lavender, soft from years of washing—bunched beneath his chest as he adjusted position. She caught him inhaling, just slightly, nose pressed into the fabric where she'd slept the night before.
Did he just smell my bedding?
Her face ignited.
Then she saw his back, and the embarrassment evaporated into something far worse.
Small red welts dotted the skin between his shoulder blades, scattered down toward his lower spine—some already blistering, others merely angry pink against the pale canvas. The oil had splattered in a constellation pattern, concentrated near his right shoulder where he'd turned to shield her.
She reached out without thinking, fingernail grazing one of the raised spots.
"Hiss—"
"Sorry!" She yanked her hand back. "It must hurt so much. This is—it's all because of me. I'm so sorry."
Her lip trembled. She bit down hard enough to taste copper.
"It's nothing." Hozuki Nozomi's voice came muffled against her pillow—her pillow, the one she drooled on and clutched during restless nights. "As long as you're not hurt, Ms. Mafuyu."
The words should have been reassuring. Instead they made her chest ache with something she couldn't name.
"But you would even pour water on an oil fire," he continued, and she could hear the smile in his voice even without seeing his face. "Actually, Mafuyu, you're not good at cooking, are you? Ow!"
She'd jabbed one of the blisters before the conscious thought to do so had finished forming.
"Shut up!" Heat flooded her cheeks, mortification and indignation warring for dominance. "What's seen is seen, but not said! We're still good friends!"
"Mafuyu, you'll lose me like this!"
He craned his neck to look at her, and the expression he wore—wounded, betrayed, utterly theatrical—shouldn't have been charming. It shouldn't have made her stomach flip like a schoolgirl confronted with her crush.
She glared, rolling her eyes with practiced dismissiveness.
"You should call me Sensei. Who allowed you to use my given name?"
"But didn't we agree we were friends?" He had the audacity to pout. Actually pout, lips pressed together, brow furrowed. "If I can't even call you by name, what kind of friends are we?"
"Before being friends, we are first and foremost teacher and student." She drew herself up, channeling every ounce of professional authority she possessed. "In short, please address me seriously as Kirisu-sensei!"
"No." The pout transformed into a grin, sharp and teasing. "I'm going to call you Mafuyu. Mafuyu-chan."
She jabbed his burn again.
"Ow!"
His head dropped against her pillow in defeat, and Kirisu Mafuyu felt simultaneously victorious and terrible. Her cheeks burned. Her pulse raced. And beneath her professional outrage, a treacherous warmth was spreading through her abdomen—one that had nothing to do with anger and everything to do with the half-naked man lying face-down on her bed.
Get the first-aid kit. Focus on the task. Stop thinking about his shoulders.
"Ahem." She cleared her throat, stepping back. "Well. Nozomi. Just... lie still. I'll retrieve the medical supplies."
Something in his gaze felt off. Too intent. Too aware of how flustered she'd become. Their conversation had strayed so far from appropriate teacher-student interaction that she couldn't see the boundary line anymore.
She fled to the bathroom.
The first-aid kit was exactly where she'd forgotten it: crammed behind a box of unopened bath salts and a hair dryer she'd used exactly twice. She grabbed it with shaking hands, pausing at the sink to splash cold water on her face.
Kirisu Mafuyu. You are twenty-seven years old. You have a master's degree. You counsel students about their romantic entanglements on a weekly basis. You will not become flustered by a teenager's abdominal muscles, no matter how defined they are.
Her reflection looked unconvinced.
When she returned, he was still prone, silent but frowning. The furrow between his brows looked genuine now—actually pained rather than performatively so—and guilt curdled fresh in her stomach.
I poked his wounds. Out of embarrassment. What kind of person does that?
She knelt beside the bed without speaking. The kit opened with a click: cotton swabs, alcohol, gauze pads, burn ointment with an expiration date that was—she checked—still three months out.
Good enough.
The first swab came away tinged faintly pink. She worked methodically, dabbing antiseptic around each welt, acutely aware of every flinch and intake of breath beneath her hands. His skin was warm. Smooth, except where the burns had raised the surface. When she reached his lower back, just above the waistband of his trousers, her fingers trembled.
Professional. This is professional. Doctors do this every day.
The ointment went on next—thick and cool, slightly medicinal in scent. She spread it with her fingertips, tracing careful circles over damaged skin, and tried very hard not to notice how the muscles beneath shifted at her touch.
"There." She sat back, wiping her hands on a spare gauze pad. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "That should help with the blistering."
Then, before her composure could crack entirely, she bowed—deep and formal, forehead nearly touching her knees.
"I'm sorry,Nozomi. Truly. It's entirely my fault you were injured."
"It's okay." His response came gently. Then, with audible hope: "It's just... can I still eat Ms. Mafuyu's cooking today?"
She looked up.
He was watching her with those expectant eyes—dark and earnest, framed by lashes that had no business being so long—and her breath caught somewhere between her lungs and her throat.
He's charming, she thought, almost resentfully. Ridiculously, unfairly charming.
She understood now, suddenly and completely, why the rumors about succubi had spread. Why half the female student body seemed to orbit him like planets trapped in gravitational pull. It wasn't just his face, or his physique, or even his competence. It was this—this earnest attention, this way of making her feel like the only person in the room.
Kirisu Mafuyu. You cannot be swayed.
He is your student.
He already has girlfriends. Plural.
She exhaled sharply, cheeks flushed with color she couldn't control.
"Ahem. Well." She straightened, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear with deliberate casualness. "Since you've already witnessed the truth, I suppose there's no point hiding it. As you can see, I'm actually terrible at cooking. At home, my younger sister always did it."
She closed her eyes, steeling herself.
"If you want to mock me, go ahead."
Silence.
Then: "Why would I mock you?"
She opened her eyes. He'd rolled onto his side, propping his head on one hand, regarding her with what seemed like genuine confusion.
"Not being good at cooking isn't shameful, is it?" He spoke casually, as if discussing the weather. "Where I live, there's a girl who can't even dress herself or wash up properly. She needs everyone to take care of her, like a princess from a fairy tale—and she's proud of it."
"...You're lying." Kirisu Mafuyu squinted at him. "How could someone not know how to put on clothes? Is she disabled?"
"No. Perfectly healthy. Fighting all night is no problem for her."
"Fighting?"
"Playing games." His expression remained utterly neutral. "If she loses, she has to drink milk."
...
At Sakurasou, Shiina Mashiro stirred beneath tangled sheets that smelled of him.
She'd claimed his bed hours ago, burrowing into the warmth he'd left behind, and now drifted somewhere between sleep and waking. The afternoon light slanted through curtains she hadn't bothered closing, pooling gold across her bare shoulders.
A sneeze shook her—sudden, delicate—and she blinked slowly at the ceiling.
Nozomi.
Her tongue slipped out, tracing the curve of her lower lip. The taste memory surfaced unbidden: salt-sweet and thick, coating her throat after another "game" she'd deliberately lost. His fingers threading through her hair. The way his breath caught when she swallowed.
She wanted him to come home.
...
Kirisu Mafuyu fixed Hozuki Nozomi with her sternest expression.
"You can't keep a girl up all night playing games. It will ruin her vision—drop it straight to 0.4."
"Ah, but she's the one who insists on playing. How could I refuse?"
"You just don't open the door!"
"Alright." He nodded seriously. "I'll definitely do that next time."
Satisfaction bloomed warm in her chest at his compliance. Good. At least he listens to reason about—
Then reality reasserted itself, and her expression shifted to something more hesitant.
"Um. Nozomi." She fidgeted with the hem of her blouse. "It seems I can't cook for you after all, so... perhaps we should order takeout?"
"No." The rejection came immediately.
"No? But I—I'm not good at cooking. I've just established this."
"It's okay." He swung his legs off the bed, sitting up with an ease that suggested his burns bothered him far less than his earlier grimaces had implied. "I'll do it."
He smiled—warm and confident—and something in her chest fluttered traitorously.
"Mafuyu-sensei, you've already bought the ingredients. Wouldn't it be a waste not to cook them?"
"You?" She tilted her head, skepticism plain on her features.
"You don't believe in my cooking skills?" The smile sharpened into something almost challenging. "Then I'll have to prove myself."
****
a/n
Seriously, people! Do you want the advanced chapters or not?
I've already caught up and went past the last chapter I uploaded on Patr3on before it got banned.