Shared secret with the headmistress

Tenji stood in front of a wooden door and stared at the silver tag that read–headmistress.

He was about to take a knock when it flung open.

"Tenji! Do come in." The headmistress's melodious voice welcomed him with a broad smile.

'There's no going back.' He reminded himself as he stepped over the threshold.

The door slammed shut immediately after he was in, causing him to jerk in response to the loud noise.

His attention was set on the lady who was surprisingly a year younger than him. Her name was Maiyu Ren.

Brown, straight hair with the right side tucked behind her ear and the other falling over the left side of her cheek to reveal an oval, cheerful face. Bright lemon eyes, set far within their sockets, stared at the wrapped journal in Tenji's hand.

Tenji pulled out a chair and sat lazily with a slouch. He couldn't care less about maintaining his composure when he was around her.

There was something inexplicable about her, perhaps it was her composure, or perhaps it was simply her gentleness. Nonetheless, the male students tend to shower her with gifts.

This was another reason he was despised by those hormonal teenagers. He had stolen the attention of almost all their female counterparts and teachers alike, yet the one person they were interested in showed them nothing more than a pleasant smile and did not spare another look at them.

Instead, Maiyu was drawn to Tenji's ingenuity, unlike the other females, she didn't display such possessive traits and was quite open-minded.

She was the only sane person that he felt free with and had made his stay in the academy a bit bearable.

"I heard you were offered yet another spellbook." She said with a little giggle, wiggling her brows at him.

Tenji rolled his eyes at her goading, he wasn't going to engage in such a discussion. He had come with a purpose and he was going to fulfill that.

"Could we skip all of this and discuss the real subject?" He commented and threw his leg onto her table.

Picking up a ruler, she smacked his leg with it.

Tenji hissed and dropped them immediately.

"You seem to forget I am the headmistress of this academy, have some manners." She scolded while changing her tone with a heavy accent, trying her best to be as strict as she can be with him.

"As you say, Mai." He gave a slight bow with his voice laced in mockery.

While everyone referred to her as either 'headmistress' or 'headmistress Maiyu' he went with his simpler version–Mai.

"Jerk." She harrumphed and slapped the ruler to make her point.

In turn, Tenji dropped the journal onto the table causing a slight tremble in it.

Maiyu snapped her fingers and in an instant, the curtains closed in on the left-out light that illuminated the room.

The journal glowed in the dark giving off a dimly lit environment.

Tenji pulled off the brown wrapping paper and shielded his eyes from the rays that beamed upwards.

He had remembered the first time he was handed over this complex treasure by Maiyu after a year of his arrival. It turned out she was the one who had requested his assistance in the academy from the sorcerer supreme.

Some of the citizens had thought he and his grandfather were crazy when the latter proposed he had found an ancient text written on a piece of paper and could understand its strange words.

That piece of paper was a replica of the first page of the journal which had been in the possession of Maiyu's clan.

He had been chosen after she secretly ran a background check on his proficiency in reading the foreign language on that particular page–it had been the same as the routine story her father used to read to her when she was little.

In hopes of preventing it from falling into the wrong hands, she knew it was the most important task to recruit him.

"Could you jog my memory on why I had accepted this task again?" Tenji said with a chuckle.

"Lots of money for the trouble that comes from juggling academy work with this and a chance to broaden your intellect." She replied with a smirk.

Tenji let out a laugh at her response and looked down and back at the journal. Until they could decipher each page, there was no way of flipping through its leaves.

"How far have you gone with it?" Maiyu questioned with curiosity after the glow had reduced drastically, allowing them to be able to directly look in on its pages, but she was reluctant to touch it.

After the indestructible journal bonds with a host, it is detrimental for anyone to touch as it would cause a burning sensation and half the stored up mana in its defense against the intruder. At the moment, the current host of this ancient book of a great sorcerer was Tenji.

Although he could read a bit of the foreign language due to his grandfather's involvement in teaching him at a young age, after his demise 13 years ago, he realized there were still some others that were far more complex than some context he knew by heart and that involved a lot of research which could take days, weeks or months.

Instead of telling how far he had gone, he flipped through 10 pages of the journal and that was it.

Her face lit up and she pulled him in for a hug. "We are one step closer to finding out the truth, thank you Tenji!"

Tenji was lost in his thoughts and caught unawares in her hug, he froze as he felt her bust press in on his chest.

When she let go after she realized what she had done, she pulled away and cleared her throat to suppress the awkward tension.

She had been so glad that she would find out why she was the only one sent away by her father from her clan with the journal, changed her last name, and lived in Meiji, only to get word of the demise of her entire clan–there was definitely something worth knowing in this ancient book.

"So... I guess it's time I narrate the current pages 9 and 10." Tenji offered, breaking the silence and avoiding making eye contact with her.

*****

A/N

I would really appreciate your comments and support of this novel with your power stones. Your active comments would motivate me to write more chapters.

Should I delve into the content of the journal or keep it vague for now? Comment 'yes' if interested in this.

Or

Would you want to see some student interaction? Comment 'yeah' if interested in this.