Esper Harem in the Apocalypse

Chapter 1129: SRLE (29) | Going to School

Jessica pulled the oversized t-shirt down past her hips and marched straight down the wooden staircase. The living room remained cast in morning shadows as Rebecca stirred on the sofa, pushing the woven blanket off her shoulders. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, sitting up as the floorboards creaked.

”You sleep through everything,” Jessica stated, dropping onto the cushion next to her. ”Rudy has been up for hours.”

Rebecca yawned, tying her messy hair into a loose knot. ”He has a lot of responsibilities now. The world changed. We need to support him.”

”He needs a very specific kind of support,” Jessica purred, crossing her bare legs. ”Have you looked at him lately? He is a grown man, Rebecca. A ruling god in this new world. He possesses massive, demanding needs, and he looks at us differently now.”

Rebecca stopped adjusting her hair, her jaw tightening as she shot a sharp, reprimanding glare at the woman sitting beside her. ”Stop talking like that. We raised him.”

”We changed his diapers twenty years ago,” Jessica fired back, leaning closer. ”We share zero biology. The old rules burned down with the rest of the world. If we want to secure our place in his new empire, we need to offer him exactly what he wants.”

Standing up abruptly, Rebecca grabbed the blanket and folded it with rigid, aggressive motions. ”I am going to make breakfast. Keep those degenerate thoughts to yourself, Jessica. He is family.”

Rudy leaned against the wooden railing at the top of the stairs, observing the exchange in total silence. Jessica’s psychological campaign crashed violently against Rebecca’s deeply ingrained maternal code, just as he expected.

Rebecca clutched the folded blanket tightly against her chest, her knuckles turning white. Breaking that specific psychological barrier required absolute precision, and Rudy knew the conditioning would take a few days to fully gestate. He possessed zero interest in sitting around the house waiting for the inevitable surrender.

He turned away from the staircase and walked down the upstairs hallway. Materializing a fresh black jacket over his shirt, he left the house, leaving the two women to their domestic battlefield.

The morning sun illuminated the standard brick facade of the local high school. Rudy walked casually through the main gates, completely ignoring the whispering students gathered in the courtyard.

His mind drifted to the five HWSD officials who had dared to barge into the academy a few weeks ago. Manuel Bailey had pushed Rize off the stage and choked her. In return, Rudy had tracked their car and incinerated them all in a massive gas station explosion.

Nobody touched what belonged to him.

In the previous worldline, Rize had met a tragic, unavoidable end. Rudy had promised himself that history would not repeat itself. Now, she was alive, thriving, and fully aware of her feelings for him. Their last private conversation in her office had ended with a mutual confession, though she remained hesitant to cross the professional boundaries of a student-teacher relationship. Rudy decided today was the perfect day to permanently erase those boundaries.

He navigated the bustling hallways and stepped into the faculty wing, stopping outside Rize’s designated office.

Looking through the glass, he found her sitting behind a cluttered metal desk. As an intern teacher juggling the highest number of lectures in the entire school, she looked beautifully exhausted. She rubbed her temples, staring down at a massive stack of ungraded math tests. Her crisp white blouse and tight pencil skirt projected her usual strict authority, perfectly accented by the red-framed glasses perched on the bridge of her nose.

Rudy pushed the door open, stepped inside, and smoothly locked the deadbolt behind him.

The sharp click echoed in the quiet room. Rize’s head snapped up, her eyes widening behind her glasses as she recognized the intruder. She immediately straightened her posture, attempting to summon her authoritative teacher persona.

”Rudy?” Rize asked, glancing at the locked door before looking back at him. ”Class doesn’t start for another twenty minutes. You are supposed to be in homeroom.”

”Good morning, Rize,” Rudy replied, dropping her formal title. He walked slowly around the desk, invading her personal space. ”You look stressed. I thought you might need some extra credit.”

”Mr. Rudy,” she warned, though her voice lacked its usual commanding bite. ”Unlock the door. If another faculty member walks by and sees us...”

Rudy ignored the reprimand entirely. He stepped into the narrow space between her swivel chair and the wall, placing his hands flat on the polished wood to trap her in place. The proximity forced her to look up at him, her cheeks immediately dusting with a warm pink hue.

”They won’t notice a thing,” Rudy assured her in a low, confident register. He manifested a subtle, sound-dampening mana barrier over the room, ensuring absolute privacy from the bustling hallways outside. ”You work too hard, Rize. I came here to make sure you were taking care of yourself.”

He reached out, gently removing the red-framed glasses from her face and setting them atop the stack of ungraded papers. Without the lenses acting as a shield, her dark eyes revealed a storm of conflicting emotions of her fear of breaking professional rules battling against her undeniable desire for him.

”Rudy, we talked about this,” Rize whispered, her hands gripping the armrests of her chair so tightly her knuckles turned white. ”I am an intern here. You are a student. The school board would fire me immediately.”

”The school board doesn’t matter,” Rudy interrupted, leaning closer until he could feel the warmth of her breath against his jaw. ”The old rules do not apply to us anymore. You admitted exactly how you felt during our last meeting, and I am entirely done pretending we are just teacher and student.”

He slid his hands from the desk to her shoulders, his thumbs slowly massaging the tense, stressed muscles hidden beneath her crisp white blouse. Rize let out a soft sigh, the strict teacher persona melting away under his deliberate touch.

She closed her eyes and tilted her head into his palm, leaning into the comfort she desperately craved after weeks of administrative exhaustion.

”You are so stubborn,” she murmured, finally letting her hands fall from the armrests to rest tentatively against his waist.

”I prefer the term devoted,” Rudy corrected, tilting her chin up.