The Atelier of the Magic Pen: A Secret Contract with My Teacher
Coco, who just turned 18, has a talent for the 'Magic Pen' that can draw spells. She's now living alone with the great mage, Teacher Kieffrey. He's so kind, and he teaches her so many things. But when night falls, his demeanor changes completely.
'Coco, let's have a special lesson tonight.'
Whenever Teacher touches her, her body gets incredibly hot and her mind goes blank. It's so embarrassing, but she can't help wanting more. As their secret, lewd lessons continue, Coco finds herself falling
The Atelier of the Magic Pen: A Secret Contract with My Teacher - The Day I Was Called a Tool — The Lying Teacher and the Cold Inspector
Morning light filtered thinly through the workshop windows.
The air was still cold, and the scent of ink clung to her nose more sharply than usual. Coco sat alone at the workbench. Feeling the cool touch of the Silver Star Pen against her fingertips, she traced a magic circle onto the parchment. When she concentrated, her tongue peeked out just a little.
*(Those words... from last night.)*
Kiefer's voice echoed round and round inside her head.
*—Your special power.*
For words of love, they had carried a strangely cold ring. Like he was observing her. Appraising her. But Coco shook her head. She was overthinking it. Teacher loved her.
"Let's see, a triple circle here..."
She murmured as if telling herself, and let the pen race across the page.
That was when it happened.
*—Clack. Clack.*
From behind her, deliberately slow footsteps approached. The scent of expensive perfume blotted out the workshop's aroma of ink. She didn't need to turn around to know.
"Oh my, studying so early? How admirable."
Jet-black hair that reached her waist caught the light with every step. Narrowed amethyst eyes looked down at Coco's parchment. But today, their usual shade of mockery was different. Softer—and for that very reason, the smile was all the more terrifying.
"Good morning, Miss Elise..."
"Say, little girl. Why don't we have a little chat?"
Elise stood beside Coco and smoothly bent at the waist. Her black hair slipped from her shoulder and spread across Coco's workbench. Those amethyst eyes peered into Coco's from up close.
"How much do you know about Kiefer?"
Coco's fingers stopped dead.
"Huh...?"
"His past. What he researched back in his academy days. Why he was banished to this frontier."
Elise's voice was terribly gentle. That was precisely why a chill slithered down Coco's spine.
"I... nothing. Teacher doesn't like to talk about the old days."
"I'm sure he doesn't."
Elise twisted her lips. She was smiling, but her eyes alone weren't laughing.
"It was fifteen years ago. At the Royal Academy of Magic, Kiefer was researching a forbidden inscription magic called Root Interference Art."
Root Interference Art—a term she'd never even heard before. But the word "forbidden" squeezed Coco's chest tight.
"An art that interferes with the very root of magic itself, fundamentally rewriting the caster's mana conductivity rate. If it succeeded, it would overturn all common sense about magic—that kind of research."
Elise's finger traced across Coco's parchment.
"But, you see, it was taboo. The Guild found out, and his laboratory was destroyed. Every one of his co-researchers was stripped of their qualifications and taken away."
Coco had lost her words.
Teacher had... done something like that.
"And so, here's the interesting part."
Elise brought her face close to Coco's ear. Close enough for her breath to brush against it, she spoke in a whisper.
"The one who tipped off the Guild about that research—was me."
*—Thump.*
Her heart made a horrible sound.
"Wh... what?"
"You see, I loved Kiefer. I loved him so much. But he was obsessed with his research and never even looked at me. So I informed on him. That way, his research would stop. That way, he might finally look at me—or so I thought."
Elise's voice was calm, as if she were telling an old story. But those amethyst eyes burned cold.
"But I was wrong. He was exiled, and he went even further away. To this frontier, where he picked up a child like you."
From Coco's hand, the Silver Star Pen slowly rolled and fell.
*—Clatter.*
The small sound echoed unnervingly loud.
"Hey, little girl."
Elise picked up the fallen pen and placed it gently back on Coco's workbench. She looked down at Coco with pitying eyes.
"That night, Teacher said it, didn't he? 'You have a special power.'"
The blood drained from Coco's face.
(*How... does she know that?*)
"Those aren't words of love, you know."
Elise's voice pierced her ears, cold as ice.
"He's still continuing his research, even now. You're a tool for that. A convenient catalyst with an abnormally high mana conductivity rate."
*—Tool.*
That word echoed inside her head.
"What he's been teaching you for six years wasn't to raise a disciple. It was to raise his own research subject. Training—to raise your mana conductivity rate even higher."
"That's... not..."
Her voice trembled. She wanted to say it wasn't true, but the words wouldn't come.
Special power, best disciple, I love you—every word Teacher had ever given her was being overwritten with a different meaning.
(*Was it all... a lie?*)
"Heh heh. What a lovely face."
Elise twisted her lips in satisfaction, then turned on her heel. Her jet-black hair gleamed in the morning sun.
"Well then, little girl. Be a good child and watch the house."
The footsteps receded.
Coco was left alone in the workshop.
Her hands were trembling. A burning heat welled up behind her eyes, and the magic circle on the parchment blurred with tears.
"A tool... I'm... a tool...?"
A voice that couldn't become a voice leaked from the back of her throat.
—Acceptance—
Afternoon came.
The sky was covered in thick clouds, leaving the workshop dim. Coco remained seated before the workbench, unable to move. Elise's words repeated over and over in her head.
(*Tool. Catalyst. Research subject.*)
She stared at the Silver Star Pen.
The precious pen Teacher had given her. But this too—might have been a tool prepared for his research.
*—Clang, clang.*
The bell at the front door rang.
It was a heavy, low sound.
Coco flinched and looked up. Kiefer emerged from the study, and she watched his back as he headed for the entrance. His figure, with its silver hair tied back, looked terribly rigid.
The door opened.
"Routine inspection. Kiefer."
A voice she had never heard before.
A flat, mechanical voice, utterly devoid of anything resembling emotion.
Kiefer stepped back, and a tall man entered from the doorway. Close-cropped platinum blond hair. Gray eyes like polished steel. A body easily 190 centimeters tall cast a shadow through the dim hallway.
"Guild Inspector, Lucas."
The man who identified himself as Lucas surveyed the atelier with an expressionless face. His right hand never strayed far from the special magic pen holstered at his hip.
The air grew taut.
It was a pressure from a completely different vector than Elise's. Coco shrank back involuntarily.
"...Please. This way."
Kiefer's voice was calm. But Coco didn't miss the faint tremor in his fingertips.
Lucas took a general look around the first-floor workshop. His gray eyes mechanically scanned the magic pens lined up on the wall and the magic books crammed into the shelves. As if he were photographing and recording everything.
"The key to the basement."
Without changing his expression, Kiefer removed the key from the key holder at his waist. But at the moment his fingertips offered the key, they went slightly white.
Lucas accepted the key wordlessly and descended the stairs to the basement.
The sound of footsteps receded.
A heavy silence fell over the workshop.
On the sofa in the corner of the room, Elise tilted a wine glass, watching the entire scene with satisfaction. The corner of her lips was lifted just a little.
—How much time had passed?
Lucas returned from the basement.
"The seal hasn't been broken, I see."
Just that one statement, directed at Kiefer.
It wasn't a conclusion. It was a confirmation.
But behind those words, Coco heard it.
*—I'll overlook it for now, up to this point.*
Such a warning seeped from the depths of his cold voice. It was a suffocating pressure. Kiefer nodded silently. The expression had, as expected, vanished from his face.
—Turn—
That was when it happened.
Lucas's gray eyes stopped on the workbench.
Coco's Silver Star Pen.
"...What's this?"
Lucas picked up the pen without a word. His long fingers slowly rotated the night-sky-blue shaft.
"Ah, that's my—"
The moment she tried to protest, Kiefer gave a slight shake of his head. A signal to stop. Coco shut her mouth.
Lucas toyed with the pen in his fingertips and muttered lowly.
"An abnormal mana conductivity rate. This pen itself has been modified."
*—Modified.*
Coco couldn't immediately grasp the meaning of that word.
But the sheer weight of the fact that the pen Teacher had gifted her was not normal pressed heavily onto her chest.
(*This pen too... was a tool after all?*)
Lucas turned his gaze toward Coco.
Gray eyes. Machine-like eyes that reflected no emotion whatsoever. But—deep within them, something stirred.
"You're his disciple."
"Y-yes..."
"...I see."
He said nothing more than that.
But in that single "I see," there was a shade of appraisal, of observation. Coco felt a breathlessness she couldn't put into words. As if the inside of her body were being examined down to every last corner by cold fingers.
Lucas returned the pen to the workbench, then picked up the old documents stacked at the edge of the desk. He flipped through the pages. Only the monotonous sound of paper echoed in the quiet workshop.
*—Stop.*
His fingers halted on a certain page.
For an instant.
Truly, just an instant.
Something flickered through Lucas's gray eyes. It wasn't something large enough to be called an emotion. The first crack in a perfectly blank expression.
"...Vexler's Hidden Village."
Only in the moment he murmured those words did the flatness vanish from his voice.
Kiefer's face went pale.
He averted his gaze immediately, but it was too late. Coco had seen it. Teacher was afraid.
(*Vexler's Hidden Village...? What is that?*)
It was a place she had never even heard of. But something that could make Kiefer flinch existed there.
Lucas closed the documents and placed them back on the workbench as if nothing had happened.
Then, heading for the exit, he stopped in front of Coco.
"You're his disciple."
The same question as before.
"Y-yes."
"Understood."
Saying just that, Lucas left through the front door.
The door closed.
—Conclusion—
A heavy silence fell inside the atelier.
Elise remained seated on the sofa, taking a sip of wine. On her face, as she surveyed the room with satisfaction, floated a triumphant smile.
Kiefer stared out the study window, motionless.
He wouldn't even glance at Coco.
(*Teacher...*)
Coco stood rooted before the workbench.
In just one day, she had been hit with two bombshells.
*—You're a tool.*
*—This pen has been modified.*
Both pointed to the fact that Teacher was hiding something from her.
The light of dusk streamed in through the window. The Silver Star Pen on the workbench was dyed red. Coco could do nothing but stare at it.
Her hand wouldn't reach out.
If this pen had been made for the sake of a tool, then what was she, who had accepted it so happily?
Six years. This atelier where she had spent them with Teacher looked, for the first time, like an unfamiliar place.
A single tear fell from Coco's eye.
On the workbench, beside the Silver Star Pen, it made a small stain.
(*I have to ask Teacher.*)
(*The truth.*)
When night came, Teacher might come to her room. She had to confront him then—her head understood that.
But she was afraid to hear the answer.
If the words "You are a tool" came from Teacher's mouth—she might not be able to go on living.
That fear was squeezing Coco's chest to the breaking point.
Outside the window, the frontier town of Hasenval sank into the twilight. The lights of small houses began to flicker on, one by one.
But inside Coco's heart, it remained dark.
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