Chapter 40: Encountered a Groper
The next day, early morning.
Hiratsuka Shizuka rolled over and released a comfortable moan from her throat. This sleep felt like she'd regressed to infancy.
No alarm clock, no morning self-study, no headache-inducing student reflection essays. Even the marriage pressure that usually suffocated her had dissipated in her dreams.
"Mm... so soft..."
She nuzzled the pillow. The texture felt unfamiliar but high-quality.
However, even the most beautiful dreams must end eventually.
When she groggily opened her eyes—still crusted with sleep—and saw the minimalist pendant lamp overhead that clearly didn't belong to her messy bachelor apartment, her brain's CPU instantly overloaded.
"Where is this?"
Before those three words could escape her lips, another more horrifying sensation transmitted through her nerve endings across her entire body.
Hiratsuka Shizuka's head snapped down.
The professional suit she'd worn out last night—stained with alcohol and wrinkled—had vanished without a trace. In its place was an excessively loose men's white dress shirt.
The fabric hung loosely on her body. While comfortable, this clearly wasn't her size.
In an instant, countless social news headlines flashed through Hiratsuka Shizuka's mind like a film reel.
"Late-Night Drinking Female Teacher Brutally..." "Kamimizu City Park Shocking Discovery..."
"AAAAH!!!"
Just as she was about to release a scream capable of shattering glass, the bedroom door was pushed open from outside.
Kazama Chiba walked in carrying a cup of steaming hot water, his expression perfectly calm.
He wore a pink apron, looking excessively domestic—if one ignored the "you're an idiot" expression on his face.
"Good morning, adorable Shizuka-sensei. Given your lung capacity, I think you could teach music instead of student counseling."
"Ka-Ka-Ka-Ka-Kazama?!"
Seeing this face, the scream Hiratsuka had prepared instantly stuck in her throat, transforming into a string of meaningless syllables.
Like a startled hamster, she grabbed the blanket and wrapped herself tightly, leaving only her terrified eyes staring fixedly at her student while reflexively grabbing the pillow as a defensive weapon and hurling it over.
"Wh-wh-what did you do to me?! What's with these clothes?! Why am I here?! What happened last night?!"
Faced with this rapid-fire interrogation, Kazama simply shifted his body slightly. The pillow grazed past his nose and smashed into the wall behind him.
"Calm down, Shizuka-sensei."
He walked into the room, placed the water glass on the nightstand, then pulled out a chair and sat down, his eyes so clear they made one want to feel ashamed.
"First, you changed into those clothes yourself last night. You said your clothes smelled like alcohol and grilled meat and you couldn't stand it, crying and screaming that you had to strip off that professional outfit. When I tried to stop you, you almost gave me a shoulder throw."
"I... I did?"
Hiratsuka Shizuka froze.
Though her alcohol tolerance was decent, she did tend to black out when she drank too much. And this particular bad habit of wanting to strip when she found her clothes dirty did have precedent.
"As for the underwear."
Facing Hiratsuka Shizuka's increasingly dangerous gaze, Kazama continued weaving his lies without changing expression. He had no choice.
Last night he didn't know her home address and couldn't leave her in the park to feed mosquitoes, so he could only bring her home.
As for changing clothes—given her body reeked of alcohol and her tight uniform would create serious biochemical hazards if left on the sofa or bed, Kazama had The Mirror card in loli form handle it.
But explaining that truth would get him labeled as mentally ill, so Kazama fabricated an outrageous lie.
"I called the auntie next door to help change you. Did you expect me, a hot-blooded high school boy, to do it myself? I have zero sexual interest in women over thirty."
"Who are you calling over thirty?!!!"
Hiratsuka Shizuka bristled like a cat whose tail was stepped on, but the heavy stone in her heart strangely settled.
Thank god. Thank god nothing irreversible happened.
And if she'd been the one having a drunken meltdown insisting on stripping, then this kid's handling—though his mouth was poisonous—was actually quite considerate.
But what exactly happened last night?
Hiratsuka Shizuka rubbed her throbbing temples, trying to dig something out from that paste-like memory.
Yesterday... she'd been drinking with Teacher Kaguya at the izakaya... then got drunk... then got in a car... then...
A scene suddenly popped up from the depths of her mind.
Massive, blue, monster-like thing spewing lightning.
And a boy with a somewhat thin but abnormally reliable silhouette blocking the front of the car.
"I remember! There was a monster! And lightning! You..."
Hiratsuka Shizuka's head snapped up, wanting to say something, but that scene was too absurd—so absurd even she couldn't believe it was real.
In this twenty-first century that valued science, in this Kamimizu City with no pressure except housing prices and college admission rates, how could there be tokusatsu film plots?
That was a dream, right? It must be because she'd been grading papers too much lately that she dreamed of such tokusatsu-like scenarios.
"Looks like you blacked out."
Watching Hiratsuka Shizuka's fluctuating expressions, Kazama mentally gave Kaguya a thumbs up.
Though he roughly guessed that woman's methods, he still needed to confirm how much residual memory this uncertain factor retained.
Now it seemed that woman's cleanup work was extremely thorough. This level of memory blurring was perfect cover.
He shrugged and casually spoke the truth.
"Then forget about it. It's not a pleasant memory anyway."
Kazama muttered quietly and stood up to leave.
"What do you mean 'just forget it'?"
Hearing this in Hiratsuka Shizuka's ears, the meaning completely changed.
Forget about it?
What kind of typical scumbag line was that?
"Kazama-kun..."
Hiratsuka Shizuka's gaze gradually became dangerous, even carrying a hint of killing intent.
"Why does that sound like a scumbag's 'hit it and quit it' line?"
"Pfft—"
Kazama, who'd been drinking water, nearly spat it out.
He looked helplessly at this woman with overly rich imagination.
"Sensei, while I don't mind student-teacher relationships, I do have some psychological barriers regarding women more than ten years older than me."
He looked Hiratsuka Shizuka up and down.
"You can completely rest assured—I have zero interest in flat terrain."
"Who are you calling flat?!"
Hiratsuka Shizuka's shame and rage values instantly maxed out. She grabbed another pillow to throw, but looking down at her current appearance, she could only angrily retreat back under the blanket.
"Alright, the water's here, hangover medicine's beside it. I'm giving you ten minutes to get ready, or you'll be late for work."
Kazama pointed at the clothes rack where a freshly washed and dried outfit hung.
With that, he very tactfully exited the room and considerately closed the door.
...
Half an hour later, when Hiratsuka Shizuka finally made herself presentable and came downstairs to the apartment entrance with a dark expression, another critical hit awaited her.
That red Aston Martin she'd spent three years' salary on a loan to buy was quietly sitting by the roadside.
The car body seemed fine, but no matter how many times she pressed that ignition button, nothing came from under the hood except deathly silence.
"What's going on? It was fine last night!"
Unwilling to accept this, she tried several more times and even got out to kick the tires twice, but the luxury car lay there like a red piece of scrap metal, completely motionless.
Standing beside her, Kazama silently looked away, pretending to admire the scenery.
He of course knew what was wrong.
Though last night's lightning had been blocked, the overflow electromagnetic pulse was enough to burn all the precision electronic components in this car into a pile of scrap copper and iron.
Being able to get this hunk of junk from the park back here was already The Windy card's overworked limit.
"Maybe... the battery's dead?"
He offered an extremely half-hearted explanation.
"AAAH! My little Aston! I saved three years' salary for this!"
Hiratsuka Shizuka frantically scratched her hair and glanced at her watch.
"I'm dead! I'm going to be late! If I'm late for morning assembly, that bald teaching director will nag me to death!"
"Then let's go."
Kazama pointed at the nearby subway station entrance.
"Though I hate to break it to you, at this time, the subway is definitely faster than your two feet."
Thus, ten minutes later, reality proved that Kamimizu City's rush hour subway was a more terrifying existence than Clow Cards.
The train car was packed like a sardine can, people pressed against people, even breathing felt difficult.
Various smells mixed together—breakfast meat bun smell, men's body odor, women's perfume—forming a suffocating biochemical weapon.
Kazama Chiba and Hiratsuka Shizuka were squeezed into a corner.
Due to their height difference, Kazama was just slightly taller than Hiratsuka Shizuka. He had no choice but to use one hand to brace against the overhead bar, barely creating a tiny survival space for this pitiful female teacher.
"So unlucky... why did my car have to break down..."
Hiratsuka Shizuka kept her head lowered, muttering complaints. Her face—usually so dignified—was currently flushed red. Because of the car's swaying, her body occasionally bumped into Kazama's chest. Though separated by clothing, that kind of warmth unique to teenage boys made this eternal singleton panic slightly.
"Sensei, if you keep moving around, I can't guarantee my patience will last until the next station."
Kazama looked down at her, his brow furrowing.
At this moment, a greasy, restless hand carrying disgusting intentions was secretly reaching toward the target's backside under cover of the crowd.
"Um..."
Hiratsuka Shizuka also sensed something.
She raised her head and met Kazama's eyes, which had suddenly turned ice cold.
"Don't move."
Kazama suddenly barked quietly.
In that instant, the same words surfaced in both their minds.
Subway groper!
The next second, just as that perverted hand was about to breach the defense line and make intimate contact with a buttock—
"SMACK!"
Hiratsuka Shizuka exploded.
This former martial arts club captain's defensive instincts moved faster than her brain the moment she saw that perverted hand act.
She whipped around violently. Without needing to see the target clearly, a standard straight punch launched out.
"You scum need to know when to stop!!!"
"GUOH!"
The sleazy middle-aged man who'd been preparing to enjoy the sensation only saw blackness before his eyes. His nose felt like it had been hit with an iron hammer. His entire body flew backward, crashed into the human wall behind him, then slid down like a pile of mud.
The entire car instantly fell silent.
Everyone stared dumbfounded at this female teacher in professional attire who was currently radiating murderous intent.
"You dare... you dare touch my student—you pervert, do you have a death wish?! I'm sending you to the station!"
Hiratsuka Shizuka pulled back her fist, her chest heaving violently. Her aura at that moment was more terrifying than Godzilla.
"Eh?"
The surrounding onlookers finally caught on.
Everyone looked at the middle-aged man covering his nose and wailing, then at Kazama Chiba standing beside Hiratsuka Shizuka, currently helplessly rubbing his own butt.
So... the groper just now... was touching this boy's butt?
"Pfft."
Someone laughed first.
Amidst the murmurs, Kazama sighed and pulled back Hiratsuka Shizuka who was about to deliver a follow-up attack.
"Sensei, calm down. While I appreciate your justice enforcement, if you keep beating him, we'll both end up at the station for excessive defense."
He looked at the groper who'd been pinned down by several helpful men and shook his head helplessly.
"These days, even boys have to protect themselves when going out."
Finally, this farce ended with the subway making an emergency stop and police intervention to take away the suspect. As the "victim's guardian" and "good Samaritan," Hiratsuka Shizuka still had to sign some paperwork.
After all that hassle, by the time the two of them finished giving statements at the police station and rushed to school, morning assembly had long ended.
Hiratsuka Shizuka walked ahead with a defeated expression, still muttering things like "my perfect attendance bonus is gone" and "have to write another reflection."
Kazama followed behind, holding a form he'd just lifted from the academic affairs office.
"Um, Kazama."
At the office door, Hiratsuka Shizuka suddenly stopped and turned to look at him.
She'd already recovered her usual capable appearance, though her eyes were still a bit unfocused.
"About today... and yesterday... though it was chaotic, thank you."
She paused, as if organizing her thoughts.
"As a teacher, showing you such an unseemly side is really disgraceful. But... if you have any difficulties, come find me anytime. Whether it's academics or... those strange things."
She was clearly still dwelling on that so-called nightmare.
"Got it."
Kazama waved the paper in his hand.
"Since you put it that way, you can help with this little favor, right?"
"What?"
Hiratsuka Shizuka took the paper and looked at it.
"Club Formation Application Form."
Club Name: Paranormal Research Society.
President: Kazama Chiba.
Faculty Advisor: Hiratsuka Shizuka (Provisional).
Activities: Research inexplicable phenomena.
"What kind of ridiculous club is this?!"
Hiratsuka Shizuka felt her temples throbbing again.
"Paranormal Research? Are you serious? This kind of club has been outdated at school forever! And if you can't recruit five members, it'll be forcibly disbanded within a month!"
"I know."
Kazama smiled like a fox.
"Just apply for a new one after it gets disbanded. Like 'Supernatural Phenomena Appreciation Society' or 'Ghost Story Verification Department.' As long as the name's different, the school system won't flag it."
He took back the application form and spun it between his fingertips.
"As long as I'm perpetually in 'pending application' or 'about to be disbanded' status, I don't have to join those boring sports clubs or serve as background decoration for the popular kids. This is what's called—Schrodinger's club activities."
Watching this student who explained loophole exploitation so righteously, Hiratsuka Shizuka could only helplessly hold her forehead.
"You... are you too smart for your own good or just plain lazy..."
"This is called survival wisdom, sensei."
Kazama waved his hand and turned toward the classroom.
"So please sign the faculty advisor line as thanks for that punch last night."
Watching that gradually departing silhouette, Hiratsuka Shizuka froze for a moment, then showed a helpless yet slightly indulgent smile.
"What an... unlovable little brat."