the death of a bachelor

fifteen | hubris

Reiju Tenjin was cursed.

Maybe she had pissed off a Tatarigami or even Susanoo himself. Heaven knows how many times she had vandalized shrines during her childhood. This must be her punishment.

Otherwise, how could she keep meeting someone who reeked of danger?

Professor Shah had ordered the three of them to come to his office during lunch break. The campus had loose rules about fighting but classrooms are different. The rules were founded around the professor's likes and dislikes. And everyone knew that Professor Shah loathed unnecessary noises.

Reiju squirmed in her seat in the center of the sofa while Dion and Gio stuck to both ends. She met the professor's glare. "What do you want?"

"You're still talking like that?" he scoffed. "Do you even know what position you're in?"

"Yeah. A sitting position," she answered.

Dion looked away while Gio disguised his laugh with a loud cough. Reiju frowned. These boys were great fighters. And yet, they cowered in front of the devil professor. It wasn't just her that noticed the sinister air around him.

Professor Shah grabbed three books from the shelves. He dropped them in front of the students before snatching a yellow pad and a pen holder from his desk. "Choose a book and summarize it within an hour. I'll give out points for great papers."

He yanked his sleeve up to reveal his watch. "And start... now."

Dion reached for one of the books and snatched several pages from the pad. He glanced at the title and wrote his report straightaway.

Reiju blinked. "You haven't even read it yet!"

"I already did."

And she realized that Dion had anticipated this. He had known what type of punishments the professor was most likely to give. She gritted her teeth in annoyance. The fact that she was nothing but a naive child hit her in the face again.

Dion was better than her.

But she dared challenge the professor.

Ridiculous.

Despite the dent in her confidence, Reiju vowed to move forward. She had a lot to do than wallow in her self-pity and confidence issues. She had to get much better than Dion and a hundred times better than Professor Shah.

She read the book titled 'After Assassination'. Her neurons fired faster than normal as she drowned in the information.

But Gio yawned.

"What the fuck?" she muttered. The boy was on the verge of falling asleep, disregarding the task in front of him. She smacked his face. "Gio! Baka!"

"What?" he muttered, sounding annoyed that she slapped him again. "Aw, what the hell, man?"

Reiju clenched her teeth. This was the result of her short-sightedness. If she had prodded Dion further, she would've known that Giovanni was an idiot. His dumbness must be a side effect of his remarkable power. "You will owe me for this."

Gio frowned as she seized the book assigned to him. It was about the factors that affect a long-distance assassination.

"Cara... you don't mean to...?" Dion asked beside her.

"Shut up," she hissed. Reiju took a deep breath and skimmed Gio's book. She sorted all of the information into three topics. Weapon type, location, and ballistics. The last one would include the subtopic of gravity, drag, and wind. She explained each topic before setting up a scenario with a 99% success rate of the bullet hitting the target from 2, 200 yards.