The Exchange Teacher - Welcome to Dyntril Academy

"Come on, don't be shy," Loushee said. "Take a seat."

The fifth-year mage still had that golden-rose color aura. Reianna shifted her eyes to the offered chair and back to Loushee. After swallowing, Reianna slid along the edge of the chair and slipped into it.

"Would you like any wine?"

Reianna narrowed her eyes. "I'm still thirteen."

"Tea then?"

"I'm fine, thank you."

The empty cup sitting on her side of the table started to steam. Reianna looked inside, and it was filled with a brown liquid. She didn't reach for the cup.

Loushee clapped her hands together as she leaned forward. "So. At the tournament, I gave you two tasks. How are you progressing on them?"

"At the tournament? You mean yesterday? Twenty-four hours ago?"

"Yes!"

"Ummm…"

"Hmmm?"

"I've not…"

Loushee's aura shifted. The gold became stronger, and as the rose faded out, it shifted to an orange. "My little girl, did you take the warnings I gave you lightly?"

"No! I've not had time."

"'Not had time'? So, you're saying you're prioritizing things over my advice?"

The yellow from the orange aura vanished, and it became a vibrant red. Loushee snatched the wine glass off the table. It went sailing over Reianna's head, who ducked as the glass and its contents exploded against the wall behind her.

"I told you, Loushee!" The mage stood and raged at the ceiling. "I told you she'd be of no use! A first-year commoner?!"

Royal blue took over. "Shush!"

Reianna's knuckles were white as she squeezed the armrests of her chair.

Loushee's eyes lost focus, and a smile appeared on her face. "But she's so adorable!" The green-aura Loushee walked over to Reianna. Soft hands brushed against her face. They were soft as a baby's—not those of someone who would have trained at Dyntril with weapons for five years.

"You're still so young, but when you grow, you're going to break the hearts of countless men. Hold on a second."

Green Loushee took a clump of hair on the left side of Reianna's head. As she ran her hand down it, Reianna's scalp tingled. Even though Loushee smiled and the tingling was pleasant, Reianna didn't dare move.

"Enough!" Loushee stood up with a look of frustration. Surrounded by the golden-rose aura again, Loushee walked back over to the sofa and didn't sit, but rather melted into it; she moved so gracefully.

Reianna touched her hair where Loushee had held it; it was braided with a silver band that blended in with her hair, keeping it tied. There was no way Loushee could have made such a tight braid in such a short time and tied it. All she'd done was rub her hand down the length of Reianna's hair.

The green aura again flared to life, and Loushee stood. "No! I wasn't done!" Loushee stomped her foot. She held her arms stiff by her sides; her hands were balled into fists and stuck out.

Loushee's gaze returned to Reianna. "Here. One more present from me to you."

A flutter ran down Reianna's body from head to toe, like a breeze passing between her school uniform and her skin. When she looked down, she wore a gown identical to the one Loushee wore, only in silver.

It was horrendous.

Reianna gasped and clasped her arms over her chest and the loose-fitting top, hugging her shoulders.

Green Loushee frowned. "You don't like it?"

Wind blew up from beneath Loushee and Loushee only, making her long topaz hair and topaz dress flutter, but not disturbing anything else in the room. Her aura flared red. "Loushee told you all. She appreciates nothing!"

The wind died, and Loushee's hair and dress settled into place. Along with it, her aura calmed to orange. "Morons. Changing things on her without asking. What else did you expect? I'm sorry, dear. Let me fix that for you."

Once more, the wind rushed across her skin, and the dress transformed back into her school gym clothes. Dropping her arms, Reianna grasped the chair again. The corners of her eyes felt heavy. She squeezed them once to stop the tears from coming. The fact that Loushee would graduate and be gone after this year was the only thought holding Reianna together.

Pushing her skirt forward, Orange Loushee sat on the edge of the sofa with her knees pressed together and her legs angled to the side. She placed her hands on her knees and smiled at Reianna.

In a second, the proper posture collapsed as Green Loushee flared back. "Oh, fine! She's got to have it, though, 'cause I know I'll be jealous when she fills it out in five years."

The untouched teacup on the table transformed into the dress Reianna had just been wearing, folded neatly into an easy-to-carry square. Loushee pushed it forward. "Take it with you when you leave."

Reaching out, Reianna took the offered dress and set it in her lap. She didn't want the thing but was too terrified that the red Loushee might come back if she didn't take it. "Thanks."

Loushee leaned back into the sofa in the provocative pose she'd been sitting in when Reianna had first come in. Her aura was back to that golden rose. "Sorry about the outbursts," Loushee said. "Let's get back to the topic at hand. You don't have much time left."

Reianna nodded. She didn't understand.

"They're going to test you tomorrow."

"Test me?"

"Yes, to see if you are a mage."

"I'm not."

Loushee narrowed her eyes as if to say stop denying it. "Show me your interface."

"What? No!"

Loushee frowned, but her golden rose aura held.

"Gerenet-Shr told us never to show it to anyone."

"That's great advice, but they're going to make you show it tomorrow."

Reianna sank back in her seat. "So? Does that matter?"

"To me? No." She shook her head. "To you…" Loushee leaned forward and stared into Reianna's eyes. "I've been here for five years. I've talked to Natt plenty. She's a chatty drunk."

"Miss Cormick's a drunk?"

Loushee covered her mouth with the back of her hand and laughed like a songbird.

Tingles ran through Reianna.

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"Your teacher is something else. I would have gone after him myself if I thought the Hianbruns would be useful."

Clenching her teeth, Reianna tried to keep calm. She didn't like the way Loushee was so confident that she could have seduced Gerenet-Shr, on top of calling him useless.

"Oh, sweetie, don't get so upset."

"Don't call him useless."

"Ha! What else would you call him? He's supposed to be an ambassador. You've seen the way he's treated here. That's not how ambassadors are treated."

"Then why are they treating him like that?"

Loushee shrugged. "I don't know. All I know is if Kruami and Hianbru had any real interest in a long-term relationship, there would be no way Krill could get away with half the Yani-shit he's been pulling."

She waved her hand like she was flicking away a fly. "I neither know nor care about what each country is trying to get out of this sham of negotiations."

"Then what do you care about?"

Loushee smiled, and her aura vanished. "You, my dear."

Reianna's hands became clammy. Without an aura, she couldn't determine the intent behind Loushee's words. "Why?"

The golden rose aura returned, and raising her index finger, Loushee tutted as she wagged it back and forth. "We're getting sidetracked. We were talking about Natt. For a good while, Natt was a barely functioning drunk, if she functioned at all. Then your superhero of a teacher brought back the Duchess that the archdukes and the king himself feared and conspired to bring down."

Loushee's eyes sparkled, and her aura took on a solid golden color, surprising Reianna. It was the first time Reianna got a read that she understood; Loushee was filled with respect and love for Miss Cormick.

"How do you know all this?" Reianna asked.

The rose returned to Loushee's aura. "You don't need to worry yourself about that. What you need to concern yourself with is that story she has about the commoner mage she knew."

Reianna swallowed a lump.

"Exactly," Loushee continued. "The upper nobility want their offspring to be mages. If they plucked out noble-born mages like Daymein or myself and experimented on us, there would be a full-out civil war. Commoner-born…" She smiled while tilting her head and turning her palms up.

"I don't know what your mage ability is, and Daymein's seems to be psychopathy, but let me show you my interface."

A default-blue interface popped up between them. The first options were the same as Gerenet-Shr's. However, above <inventory>, where Reianna's said <identify>, Loushee's had a bunch of scribbles.

"Of course, I'm not going to show you the name of my ability, but you have something there, don't you?"

Reianna nodded.

The default-blue interface flickered, and the scrambled line vanished, making Loushee's interface identical to Gerenet-Shr's.

"How did you do that?"

"It's related to my ability. You can't do it the same way, but there has to be a way for you to do it. You have till tomorrow morning to figure it out." Loushee squeezed her eyes closed as she pressed her temples. "You need to leave."

"What?"

"Go now!"

Reianna stood to leave, then a malevolent purple aura so powerful that it knocked Reianna back into her chair, exploded from Loushee. It flickered, radiated, and burned like the flames of a bonfire, making Reianna gasp for air.

The beautiful mage opened her eyes—they were no longer teal, but the same flickering purple of her aura. Blood drained from Reianna's body, and a cold sweat shot out from every pore. She'd never been so terrified in her life.

Inside the purple aura, Loushee's dress shimmered, and the teal silk became a black leather bodice. Loushee stood and stalked over to Reianna. The pressure from her aura took the air out of Reianna's lungs; she gasped for air.

A cold heat burned Reianna's chin as Loushee grabbed it, forcing Reianna to look into her deep purple eyes. "So you're the one she's betting on?"

Reianna didn't answer. Her chin hurt from Loushee's grasp. For seconds that felt like hours, they stared at each other. No thoughts came to Reianna's mind. Her heart raced at a thousand beats per second.

"Daymein wants you, doesn't he? Let me guess, she's already told you she would kill you if you joined him. I'll give you a counteroffer, and you can decide which you want. Join him, and I'll let you live. You don't have to decide now."

Letting go of Reianna's chin, Loushee walked back to the sofa. "Leave," she said and flicked her hand twice. "Talk to her again, and I'll kill you."

Reianna set the teacup-turned-dress down on the table and stood.

"Take the dress! Don't be ungrateful."

Picking it back up, Reianna scurried out of the room and leaned against the door once she was in the hallway. She gasped for air as if she'd been holding her breath for the last five minutes.

"What the Yani was that?" she panted.

Her whole body shook. She wanted to flee, to get further away from Loushee and never see the woman again, but her legs refused to function. Closing her eyes, she rested against the door until her breathing evened out.

"I'd stay out of that room if I were you," a deep voice called out to her.

Opening her eyes, she looked up at the large fifth-year man with pink hair walking past. "Yeah, thanks."

His words gave her the strength she needed to push away from the door, and she started down the hallway.

"Hey, wait!" he called after her. "Where do I know you from?"

Reianna paused but didn't turn to look back at him. "Umm…you're probably mistaking me for someone else."

"No…" His eyes lit up. "Oh! You're that first-year!"

"No, that was someone else," she said and ran out of the dorm hall.

Clutching the dress Loushee gave her to her chest, Reianna wandered the halls back to her dorm. She didn't know why she didn't put the dress in her storage; her thoughts weren't working. The only thing she could think of was to get back to her room, to get back to safety.

Eyes followed her in the corridors, and whispers chased after her.

"It's that commoner girl."

"Do you think she's a mage?"

"Why is that first-year in the upperclassman dorms?"

Reianna picked up her pace and kept her head down. She'd brought the notoriety on herself, but she didn't want it right now. A wonder as to why she'd not received such attention going to Loushe's room shot across her mind, but it just joined the head full of confusion that she needed to process. None of which was her top priority. That fell to figuring out how to do what Loushee had commanded. The girl might have been insane, but that didn't mean she wasn't right. Reianna needed to find a way to edit her interface.

Ignoring the gawkers and their comments, Reianna ran through the dorm halls and corridors. After more twists and turns than she cared to count, she made it back to the familiar first-year section. Rushing to the third floor, she ducked into Class E's dorm hall and leaned against the door. She let out a sigh, and a faint smile flickered on her lips. Safe at last.

Still cradling the dress, Reianna went into her room. Fawna's head shot up from reading the well-worn book Reianna had brought with her. "Rei! You're back! I thought you weren't coming back until after dinner? What's with the braid? It's super cute!"

Reianna ran a hand down the braid Loushee had given her. Tossing the dress aside, Reianna ran over to her blonde roommate and threw her arms around her. Fawna's eyes were wide as she patted Reianna on the back.

"Reianna? What is it?"

"I'm not crazy, am I?"

"What?"

"Am I insane? A psychopath of some sort?"

"No!" Fawna pushed Reianna away so they could look each other in the eyes. "You're not crazy, Reianna."

"But I was going to crush Banca, maybe even kill her!"

"But you didn't!"

"Only because Gerenet-Shr wouldn't let me!"

Fawna ran her hands up and down the outside of Reianna's arms. "I didn't see him in that arena with you. He might have told you something that changed what you planned, but it was still you who didn't kill Banca."

Giving Reianna's shoulders a squeeze, Fawna smiled. "You controlled yourself. Not Gerenet-Shr, not anyone else."

Reianna wasn't crying, but her eyes were red-rimmed as she nodded with Fawna.

"You aren't a psychopath. You aren't crazy." Fawna stared into her eyes.

Reianna swept away the tears that hadn't come and looked at the back of her dry hand like she still expected tears to be there. "I went and saw Loushee."

"Loushee?" Fawna's eyes narrowed, then shot wide. "Miss Loushee, the fifth-year mage?!"

Reianna nodded.

"Is that what this is about?"

Another nod. Reianna told Fawna everything that happened with Loushee. As she listened, the book fell out of Fawna's hand and landed on the floor with a thud. When Reianna finished talking, Fawna got up and picked up the discarded dress.

It sparkled and shimmered as Fawna held it up for inspection. It was sized for someone four years older than them. "It's breathtaking."

"I feel naked in it. It's way too thin and loose."

"I bet when you're Loushee's age, it will fit you perfectly. I can't wait to see it! You'll be so beautiful!"

Reianna held out her hand, and Fawna passed the garment to her. Hugging it to her chest, Reianna shook her head. "What does she want from me?"

Fawna shrugged. "I don't think we can know that now. Let's just worry about what we can control."

"Okay," Reianna said with a smile. She was grateful Fawna was in her life. "I need to get to my extra lessons with Gerenet-Shr. I'll be back after dinner."

"Are you going to take that with you?"

Reianna paused with her hand on the door and looked down at the dress. "Oh." It vanished as Reianna put it in her storage. "I don't want to leave it sitting in my room."

"Chin up, Rei. I know you and Gerenet-Shr will figure something out."

Giving her roommate a genuine smile, Reianna nodded. "Thanks, Fawna," she said and left.