Ethereal Guardians

The gates of the Kansei Enclave stood tall and mighty before the former student-turned-new-graduate. She'd told herself she wouldn't give in to Kaoru Tenmei's whims of satiating his loneliness. "What the hell am I doing?" she muttered, squinting against the sun as she wiped the sweat from her brow. She really had no valid excuse to be back on-campus, not anymore. But here she was anyway, because Kaoru freakin' Tenmei had said the magic words.

"Come see me."

Why couldn't she just say no? Why couldn't she ever say no? It wasn't like she owed him anything, but the moment he suggested it, she was already down the street. As she made her way toward the main building, she rehearsed an excuse in her head:

I just wanted to check in. See how everyone's doing. Totally normal. Casual.

Her sneakers clacked against the pavement as she began to pick up the pace. Her face had become increasingly flushed, and it wasn't because of the temperature. Before she could even step inside, the universe threw a wrench in her already terrible plan.

"Uehara?"

Mizuki's heart leapt to her throat, beating a rhythm like the hooves of an enraged bull. Slowly, she turned, coming face to face with her former principal.

"Principal Saionji!" Her voice sounded surprisingly squeaky. Why, oh why, did her brain have to betray her when she needed it the most? "Uh…hey! Fancy meeting you here, haha, well, okay bye—!"

He held her in place with his unflinching, stern expression. And why wouldn't he? He had no reason to expect his former student back at the premises after her graduation ceremony.

"Not so fast, young lady. What are you doing here? You haven't been tasked with any missions, and Minatsuki isn't in the clinic right now. So tell me, why exactly are you back on-site?"

"Oh, well, you see…" Mizuki trailed off, her brain scrambling for something—anything—that didn't sound completely ridiculous. "I was in the area and thought I'd stop by!" So much for her totally believable excuse.

Saionji eyed the former student suspiciously. "In the area?"

"Yeah!" A forced laugh slipped out. It wasn't too late to bail out, she rationalized. Surely this conversation could only go downhill from here. "I, uh, wanted to visit Kaoru!" The fact that she didn't use the honorific and called him by his first name instead made her wince inside. "I mean, Tenmei-sensei."

Saionji stared, long and hard. After a few seconds, he uttered, "Uh huh." Mizuki was pretty sure even Principal Saionji could see right through the pitiful attempt to lie. And of all the people she had hoped she could keep secrets from, her ex-principal was most definitely near the top of that list. The hole she was digging herself into was only getting bigger and bigger, and now was the time for her to find some way to climb out of it.

"Saionji!"

And then, her sunglasses-wearing knight in shining armor swaggered to the rescue. Mizuki's body went cold with relief. She had been saved at the literal last moment. Kaoru casually tossed an arm around Mizuki's shoulders.

"Sorry I kept you waiting," Kaoru continued with a huge grin, despite the fact he was in no way, shape, or form even close to sorry. He turned his attention to Saionji. "I asked her to come by. Wanted to run a few ideas by her for some new training methods. You know, keep things fresh for the kiddos."

"Couldn't you run that by me? She's not part of the staff. There's no reason to involve her in administrative tasks like this," Saionji chided.

Kaoru shrugged dismissively. Of course, if he was going to come up with some creative excuse to invite his former pupil over, it wouldn't actually have to make any sense. If that meant lying through his teeth to an authority figure, then so be it.

"Who better to talk to about how to be an awesome teacher than my favorite student?" Mizuki nearly choked on her own breath. But sure, yeah. There was definitely no romantic connotation at all. Absolutely not.

Saionji's lips formed a thin line as his eyebrows furrowed in what Mizuki recognized as his classic resting disappointment face. The face of someone who expected better from you but shouldn't have in the first place.

"Right. Just don't make a habit out of this, then."

"You got it." Kaoru dragged Mizuki out the doors with his arm still resting heavily on her shoulders. He could feel her fidgeting as he continued to hold onto her once they were completely alone.

"You can relax. I saved your ass, didn't I?"

He watched as she dipped her head down in relief. He knew she wouldn't look at him. Never one to lose face when it came to his teasing. Admittedly, it was part of why he found her so damn interesting. He hummed and decided to prod further, lifting her chin until she had no choice but to look at him.

"…What was that, anyway? We both looked suspicious," she finally spoke.

"What's suspicious about a teacher meeting with a former student?" he countered with a playful lift of his eyebrow. That wasn't wrong per se, to be fair, but the two of them knew full well it wasn't just a friendly encounter. And with his hand on her face and her hand resting against his chest, there was no mistaking that particular vibe either.

"You're not my teacher anymore," she whispered, trying to break eye contact. Her hands slid around his waist, arms holding his firm torso closer. His lean body held such strength, both in physical terms and otherwise.

"Oh, yeah? You called me 'Kaoru-sensei' a little earlier, didn't you?" Mizuki huffed in frustration, pushing her face into his jacket. There wasn't an ounce of give with the hard chest she felt. She mumbled into him, a sentence consisting of a string of slurred, indecipherable words that Kaoru could only chuckle at. Groaning, she finally lifted her head and yelled, "I was panicking! Sue me."

Suddenly realizing they were completely out in the open as he groped her backside, she whipped her head around the secluded hallway, searching for prying eyes. Kaoru didn't let it affect him, though. It wasn't like this was the most public they could get with these displays of affection. There had been one time, a few months before her graduation, where he had cornered Mizuki into his office to practice Ethereal Manifest exercises, one-on-one. It wasn't the kind of exercise someone normally would have thought of. Just thinking about it made him want to lose himself in the soft curves of her body.

When he hiked her into the wall, his large hands holding the back of her thighs securely, Mizuki was quick to shut it down. "Can't you see we're out in the open? What if someone passes?"

Kaoru, with a not-so-innocent smile, removed his sunglasses. His crystal blue eyes glimmered like sunlight over an azure lake. "I have the fuckin' Ecliptic Sight. Believe me when I say, you don't need to worry about that." Steering her attention with a thumb and forefinger beneath her chin, Mizuki didn't even have a second to protest before those lush lips were pressing hard against her own.

The tip of his tongue brushed at the corner of her mouth, teasing her with his flavor. It was more tempting than candy that lured a child and left her begging for another taste, so much so her tongue sought his and tasted it like it was made of sin. He groaned in pleasure, and she shuddered with anticipation when she felt her body come back to the wall, her shirt hiked up.

With the thick material of her sweater and jacket in the way, Kaoru pulled away to scowl at the hindrance to bare skin. "Fucking clothes. Always getting in the way," he mumbled in a huff, yanking the zipper down with lightning speed. Mizuki zipped herself right back up, the stubborn woman shaking her head and holding her shirt tight. "Seriously?" he deadpanned with raised brows.

"I'm not ready and you know that." Her rejection was as quick as her teeth digging into the cushion of her plump bottom lip. Though her refusal was absolute, he didn't push her; they had talked about it countless times. While he wanted to be the first to do unspeakable things to her, he refused to ever push the limits. He may have pushed everyone else, but never Mizuki. She was, after all, a special exception and she knew just why she was. "What happened to just wanting to talk, anyway?"

He blew a breath. "Fine," he relented, pulling himself back, which resulted in Mizuki sighing her relief. He watched as she fixed her sweater, while she remained in a death grip at the waist. "You didn't come all this way just to talk either, you know," he said. To that, she stilled, her mouth opening, and a look of disbelief crossed her features.

Defensively, Mizuki squared her shoulders. "Maybe I did."

"Bullshit," was his easy rebuttal as he turned to head in the direction of his office. Not even waiting, and confident that she would follow, his long stride ate the distance. Of course, she did follow. When they stepped inside his office, she immediately noticed how much of a mess it was. Papers were strewn across his desk, a half-empty coffee cup perched precariously on top of a stack of folders, and his chair was pushed back like he'd left in a hurry.

"How do you even work like this?" Mizuki asked, her fingers lightly grazing over the mahogany surface, careful to not knock anything to the floor. She was surprised by the lack of organization but expected his office to show signs of clutter. Kaoru didn't have the easiest job in the world, and considering it seemed like he rarely took a break, having some disorder wasn't entirely shocking.

"Have you forgotten what I do for a living? Besides, I know exactly where everything is, so," Kaoru answered her before dropping his form in the worn-in, black leather chair with a heavy thud. He lazily lifted his legs, long and languid, to the edge of his desk and crossed them at the ankles. An arm swept out to one side, his long fingers outstretched, the heavy cuff of his uniform shirt drooping around his wrist. "Talk to me," he instructed her. "Go on. I'm all ears."

He would've preferred to be diving into the sweet depths of her neck, taking a taste of that fresh and clean skin and moaning his delight, but if Kaoru knew Mizuki—and he thought he did—that wasn't likely to happen. If it wasn't for her face, the rosy pout to her lips as she spoke, and the fact that their history together made this feel somewhat different from the standard issue one-on-one, then he would've sent her on her way.

Mizuki hadn't been paying attention, just playing around with his absurdly expensive Louis Vuitton sunglasses that he just had to have. He stifled a laugh as he watched her nearly bump right into the edge of his mahogany desk. "Can you even see where you're going?" he asked, knowing full well that she couldn't. "Be careful with those," he mock-scolded her, "They're limited edition."

Growing up filthy rich left Kaoru with the worst vices of the moneyed classes, and he would definitely count shopping high on that list. The thought that limited edition, highly sought-after items had a certain panache to them, and the idea of someone wanting to wear them once and toss them away was immensely satisfying to him.

That was a level up from covetousness—his ego demanded people either admired or envied his belongings, not took them for granted. "Or what? You're just going to replace them with another pair? Seems kind of wasteful if you ask me," Mizuki told him, turning the sleek shades over in her hand like a test tube. "Your family made a mistake by spoiling you rotten."

"Well, maybe if you had a kid who was born with the Ecliptic Sight and Infinity Weave, you'd make an exception and let them get away with breaking a few rules too," he said, reaching a long, slim finger out and pushing the shades up onto the bridge of her nose. "Huh. They look better on you than they do me."

With that one touch, one tiny caress, she lost the ability to think straight. "Nope!" she quickly uttered. Talking is what he proposed in the first place, so it's talking that would damn well happen whether she liked it or not. Clumsily, Mizuki blindly attempted to grope her way over to the couch. Unsurprisingly, she tripped on her own feet along the way. "Ow…"

Kaoru stood from his chair to tower over the fallen maiden at his feet, amused, but just as equally worried about how much harm might come to his latest pair of Vuitton frames. Reaching down, he carefully plucked them from Mizuki's nose and returned them to their proper perch above his eyes. "Come on," he urged her, reaching down once again and offering her his hand. "Up you go."

She grasped his wrist and allowed herself to be hoisted up. Standing on her feet again, Mizuki walked over to the couch of her own volition before dramatically sprawling back with a long, drawn-out sigh. Once seated, her head fell back to stare at the ceiling, hands folded across her stomach. "You were right, I didn't come here just to talk," she said softly. "But what good is it if we fulfill our basest needs when we know very well those types of relations wouldn't amount to anything more meaningful than a one-night stand."

He knew what she was getting at. The whole "you keep pushing me away" routine never ceased to put his hackles up. That much he couldn't deny, although this particular situation was different. He understood where Mizuki was coming from, and, if their ages didn't play a part, he might've just asked her to forget about her silly infatuation and taken her home with him, provided she wanted to, of course. The real issue, however, was the vast gap between his twenty-eight years of age and her eighteen years. To add fuel to the proverbial fire, he had been her instructor the entire time she attended Kansei Enclave.

How things had developed between them and eventually turned to him had not been part of his master plan either. Then, as a means of rebuttal and reasoning, a desperate act of passion born out of loneliness on both parts occurred: a kiss. A short, chaste little kiss that set off a chain reaction of sorts, something of an ouroboros for them, really—the very thing that was both keeping them together and pushing them apart.

"Well," Kaoru mused as he seated himself on his sofa opposite the way Mizuki sat upon hers. "We're both adults." With a brief shrug, the Ethereal Guardian threw a dismissive hand into the air. "We know the risks," he explained. "The two of us also know the pros," he went on. "As for the cons…"

In the beginning, both Mizuki and Kaoru readily disregarded such things as age difference and professional relationships. There was the occasional exclaim that their association was "supposed to be prohibited" and a few other variations, but it all led back to one point: nothing had changed.

Kaoru and Mizuki, with time, discovered that their mutual attraction would not subside as easily as their convictions would dictate, and they both settled into the idea, with increasing acceptance, that it likely would not ever subside. Even now that there was nothing barring them from pursuing their desires in a lawful manner—even now that they both felt their feelings were largely requited—still, neither moved, and Kaoru, especially, grew increasingly aggravated by it, though that sentiment had waned in recent months as he instead busied himself with other affairs.

"Right. The cons…" he murmured under his breath after several passing moments had ebbed. As far as either party could come up with, there wasn't a great deal of true cons. But what would happen when everyone else inevitably found out about their burgeoning and often-sorely veiled romance?

They had agreed long ago that not even Haruto, who likely would object, nor any of the two students, Sakura excluded, Mizuki now called closest friends should know the truth about her relationship with her former professor. "You know, just because I might…push you away doesn't mean I'll just toss you aside and leave you to rot," he remarked pointedly after a few lingering seconds of silence that made Mizuki raise an eyebrow and turn to stare curiously at him.

"Of course," she began, a tinge of confusion in her tone. "I didn't mean to suggest that I… It's just how you make me feel, I guess." His blue eyes danced in a sidelong glance to watch the corner of her lips curve downward for just the briefest fraction of a second, causing a tiny surge of remorse to plume inside his chest.

"Ah, shit," he sighed. Kaoru took off his very expensive, very dark sunglasses and threw them aside with a muted thunk. The only thing he could think of to lighten her suddenly waning mood was to do what he did best: take charge. So, without hesitation and maybe a little too enthusiastically, his hands landed heavily on Mizuki's hips. She was taken by surprise and made a small noise somewhere between a gasp and an involuntary laugh.

"Hey, what are you—"

A smooch on the lips cut Mizuki off, followed by one on her nose before his expression of glee landed upon the forehead that was smooth save the thin strands that had become rebelliously loose from her ponytail, courtesy of the sudden pull that had tilted her head up for his kiss. "I have a suggestion."

"Kaoru, no. No, no, no. I don't wanna hear it," she quickly retorted, holding up one palm in his direction. He tightened his arms around her just a little more for emphasis as her protest resulted in him planting his mouth back on hers, this time more intently, until she finally broke apart from the kiss and cast him an annoyed glance.

"Just hear me out?" He flashed a smile before she was able to speak again, which she returned with an eyeroll instead.

"Fine…"

"This," he blurted, his right hand beginning to work its way between the thin layer of her leggings, then the stretchy elastic material of her underwear. She didn't stop him, although, admittedly, he hadn't really given her time or a chance to. A gasp left her open mouth as she felt his hand, slightly chilled, move below her beltline. "Yeah?"

She swallowed back another soft whine as she felt him move his fingers over her mound, down to press at her entrance. Kaoru drank in the soft groan that slipped through Mizuki's parted lips and quirked his lip. From there, it was over, and she couldn't hold back anymore as his name became a sound that rang through his ears as she clasped onto him tighter than ever before.