XXX
Story: [Tohsaka Rin of Mahora]
Summary: Rin replaces Takahata as the new English-teacher at Mahora. And her personal-life is... weird.
Genre: Slice of life, humor
XXX
Asuna tried not to glare too obviously at their new English-teacher. Yes, she was replacing Takahata-sensei, but it wasn't really the young woman's fault that Asuna had a crush on him.
Long black hair, blue eyes, white blouse, black skirt, and red coat. She was beautiful, even if Asuna kept getting this weird feeling that the pretty smile on her lips could be thrown by the wayside at a moment's notice.
"Sensei, sensei!" Asakura leaned forward over her desk, eyes sparkling at the prospect of something new to write about. "Do you have a boyfriend?"
On the one hand, Asuna felt a little bad for the woman, but she really had nobody except herself to blame. She'd after all been the one to promise to 'answer all questions truthfully' to her new students.
Any teacher worth their salt should've expected an Asakura in their class before making a statement like that.
However, rather than being flustered, Tohsaka-sensei simply nodded. "Yes. I do."
Asakura, desperate for blood as she always was, pushed onward. "What is he like?"
Tohsaka-sensei tilted her head, frowning to herself in thought, before sighing. "You're going to have to be more specific, Asakura-kun."
"Is he handsome?" Fuka piped up from her seat.
Tohsaka-sensei's lips twitched, her eyes twinkling in amusement. "Yes. But don't tell him I said that."
"Is he nice?" Fumika asked.
Tohsaka-sensei's face softened into something in between exasperated and fond. "Yes. He's very nice."
"Have you done it yet?" Asakura butted in, glee written all over her face.
Asuna nearly choked on her tongue, and was halfway into giving the reporter a piece of her mind, when Tohsaka-sensei answered.
"Yes." She didn't look embarrassed at all, and actually seemed to be hiding a grin with her hand at their reactions.
"Did you do it this morning?" Asakura pressed on, not allowing herself to be hindered by the way that Ayaka was desperately motioning for her to shut up.
Tohsaka-sensei was definitely grinning now, the hand in front of her face barely putting up a token effort of hiding it. "No. Our girlfriend disapproves of everything that delays breakfast."
There was a long pause as everyone tried to make sense of that sentence.
"Ah! Nodoka-chan has fainted!"
Then there was pandemonium.
XXX
Tohsaka-sensei was very different from Takahata-sensei.
Ignoring the visual aspect of their differences, Tohsaka-sensei was a very different kind of strict. Takahata-sensei received the title 'Death Glasses' because of how he broke up fights, but was otherwise a very kind and patient man, despite his handsomely rough appearance. Tohsaka-sensei on the other hand was an awful lot more mercurial in her mood.
One day she was perfectly content to lean back and watch the chaos of 2-A, another day she smiled politely in a way that made every single one of them flinch, and another day still she'd spend the whole day grumbling silently to herself about being 'ganged up on' and more or less force-feed them the material with a glare.
She wasn't a bad teacher, for all that she wasn't Takahata-sensei. She probably actually knew the material better than Takahata-sensei had, and definitely knew more languages in general than he did. She was Japanese, a highly competent English-teacher, was fluent in German, and knew at least a few phrases in Mandarin. She'd also mentioned something about Welsh when they'd asked about it, but there was no way that was an actual language, so Asuna was simply going to ignore that.
However, no matter how intimidating she could be at the drop of a hat, their class couldn't ever quite manage to let go of what they'd learnt that first day of classes with her. After all, it was hard to forget that the beautiful young woman in front of them was involved in some kind of dating-threesome.
As of yet, all attempts to shed light on this knowledge had failed, as Tohsaka-sensei was very good at losing a tail. Asuna wasn't entirely sure if it was actually something she was aware of doing, or if it was just a coincidence that she kept slipping away from them at the end of the day.
Regardless, life continued on like it usually did.
It wasn't like there was really anything amazing about the competent young woman.
XXX
"I am Saber, and I shall be your substitute teacher for today." The blonde woman let her eyes sweep across the room.
"What happened to Tohsaka-sensei?" Asakura piped up, eyes gleaming for anything new and interesting.
Saber turned towards the girl. "She is indisposed due to a cold." Then she opened the book she'd been carrying. "Let us begin."
Asuna doubted that she was the only one to be feeling a little bit awkward about the level of formality in how the woman spoke. It felt a little bit like being at one of those period-dramas where everyone said weird things like 'have at thee, knave'. Still, the woman certainly looked foreign enough, and her English was equally as good as Tohsaka-sensei's. Even if it did still feel like her accent and word-choice was a bit... off.
Also, Saber didn't really feel like a teacher. It was hard to describe, but the closest Asuna could get to it was that she felt a bit more like a military commander of some sort than someone who was used to dealing with teenagers – let alone the craziness of 2-A.
Very much a no-nonsense kind of presence, even if her face simply remained neutrally blank throughout the lesson. Asuna wondered if she was suppressing her desire to bolt from the hills or something, considering how often her eyes seemed to catalog the various entrances and exits into the classroom.
Then again, maybe she was secretly one of those serious military-types? Though Asuna would've assumed that she'd need to be a great deal older than she looked for that to be true, considering what little she knew about the military.
It was an oddly tense experience, having Saber as a substitute English-teacher, and Asuna found herself honestly wishing Tohsaka-sensei to hurry up and get better as soon as possible.
Saber was far too intense for anyone's peace of mind.
Still, apparently that didn't intimidate Asakura nearly as much as it probably ought to, because by the end of the lesson, she opened her mouth again.
"Sensei, shouldn't you be nursing Tohsaka-sensei back to health?"
The class paused, a great many eyes widened in realization to what Asakura was insinuating, and Asuna felt her jaw drop open a little because-...
"No." Saber shook her head. "Shirou is much better at such things than I."
Asuna felt her world tilt on its axis, because surely Tohsaka-sensei had only been kidding when she'd said that on the first day of classes? And yet, here was a beautiful woman of the same age as her, hinting towards a very similar kind of relationship.
Thankfully for Asuna's dignity, she wasn't the only one who stared at the blonde woman in stunned disbelief.
Saber raised an eyebrow at them as the silence stretched onward. "Is something the matter?"
"Are you three dating?" Asakura blurted out.
Saber blinked at her, looking a bit confused. "You are referring to courtship?" She paused, frowning slightly to herself. "We have not arranged for anything as formal as that. Though I suppose Taiga-san might refer to it as such."
That... hadn't been the kind of response that Asuna had been even remotely expecting, and she wasn't alone in that.
"Ah, Yue-chan fainted!"
Once again, pandemonium erupted.
XXX
Everyone was very grateful for Tohsaka-sensei's quick recovery.
No matter how competent Saber appeared to be, or how pretty she was to look at, the tenseness that'd lingered in the classroom hadn't been worth it.
Still, Tohsaka-sensei's return brought its own kind of tenseness with it. Namely, nobody knew if they ought to mention the rather blatant bruise on the woman's neck.
"Sensei, do you know you have a hickey?" Konoka finally piped up, causing most of the class to wince.
Tohsaka-sensei stared blankly at her for a long moment, before sighing. "I knew I'd forgotten something."
Asakura, proving once again that she had no shame whatsoever, gleefully joined the conversation. "Was it your boyfriend or your girlfriend who did it?"
"Girlfriend." Tohsaka-sensei answered absently, before muttering darkly to herself about 'being unfairly ganged up on'.
Considering that Asuna's sharp ears had managed to catch something along the lines of her having 'only teased them a little', Asuna was very certain that they shouldn't be pursuing this line of conversation unless they wanted a far too vivid image of Tohsaka-sensei's sex-life.
And, seeing as Asakura-the-completely-shameless was in their class, the only logical response was to leap to her feet and hurl her book at said girl's head.
Thankfully, Tohsaka-sensei allowed the incident to slide without landing her with a detention. Even if Asakura still glared mutinously at Asuna from her seat. It wasn't like it was Asuna's fault that Asakura couldn't dodge a simple book being hurled her way with enough force to bruise.
If she didn't want to take a flying book straight to the nose, then she should train more.
XXX
The first time anyone in the class saw of Tohsaka-sensei's boyfriend was a couple of weeks later.
Short red hair, heavily tanned skin, obvious muscles halfheartedly hidden under a worn shirt, eyes that were a pale enough brown that they almost gleamed yellow, and the warmest smile they'd ever seen – excepting maybe Satsuki's.
"You're the same as always, huh?" He teased, smile widening as Tohsaka-sensei started to blush.
"I don't want to hear that from you of all people." She muttered rebelliously, accepting the offered bento with a pout.
The man huffed a laugh. "Fair enough."
"Sensei, sensei! Is this your boyfriend?!" Asakura leapt at the opportunity to investigate the relationship further once it didn't seem like either of them were going to talk about anything actually interesting.
"Hm?" Tohsaka-sensei blinked at them. "Ah, yes. This would be Emiya Shirou." Her pout transformed into a slightly smug smile at the way some of the girls were blatantly checking him out.
Not that Shirou seemed to notice that part of it. "You girls are Rin's students?" He smiled sympathetically at them when they nodded. "Have patience with her, she's actually really nice-..."
He was interrupted with an elbow into his stomach. "Shirou-kun." Tohsaka-sensei's smile was perfectly polite, and yet somehow infinitely more terrifying because of it. "Are you criticizing my teaching-methods?"
Shirou grinned at her, reckless amusement dancing in his eyes. "Well, I can remember your attempts to tutor me."
Tohsaka-sensei's eyebrows twitched, even as the eerie smile remained fixed on her face. "I see, I see. And did it perhaps occur to you that you're an absolute idiot?"
Shirou didn't seem affected at all, even as her smile turned into a frigid glare, just kept on smiling. "I believe your exact words as you tossed a physics-book at my head were 'goddammit Shirou, it's just math'."
Tohsaka-sensei twitched guiltily, face contorting. "I was nineteen. And you're an idiot."
Shirou hummed in vague agreement, eyes sparkling with amusement. "Your cellphone-..."
"That's different!" Tohsaka-sensei interrupted him, blushing red. "They just keep adding useless features!"
Shirou shook his head with a soft sigh. "My my, such a troublesome master."
Tohsaka-sensei did a weird full-body twitch, eyes suddenly sharpening dangerously. "You-!"
"Hmm?" Shirou raised an eyebrow, face filled with innocent and perfectly polite curiosity. "Is something the matter, Rin?"
Tohsaka-sensei nearly seemed to vibrate with all the things she didn't say in response. Which was a shame, because the entire class was listening very eagerly at this point.
It wasn't every day your teacher's boyfriend referred to said teacher as 'master'. Obviously there was a lot of material for blackmail involved there.
Finally Tohsaka-sensei gave an aggravated sigh. "Even if you're still technically my apprentice, please stop riling up my students with your word-choices, Shirou." She shook her head, a twitch of her lips and a satisfied gleam in her eye. "It'd be a shame if Taiga-san heard something that convinced her to play her hand early."
Shirou's amusement faded into a blatant wince. "Ah. Fair enough."
"Sensei sensei, what are you two talking about?" Asakura waved her hand in the air, easily catching their attention.
"My future sister-in-law." Tohsaka-sensei answered promptly, causing another wince from Shirou. "Who's still rooting for another girl."
"She's gotten better about that." Shirou put up a halfhearted defense.
Tohsaka-sensei raised an eyebrow at him. "She tried to exorcise you from being possessed by 'evil female spirits', last time we visited."
Shirou, looking more than a little defeated, didn't relent. "But she didn't spend two hours tossing prayer-beads at you whilst chanting sutras, did she?"
Tohsaka-sensei opened her mouth, frowned, closed it again, and then sighed. "It really is impressive that she managed to set the bar that low in the first place."
Shirou coughed, though it sounded an awful lot like he said something like 'cassette-tapes'. And there was clearly something to that, because Tohsaka-sensei started to blush again.
Chuckling at her reaction, Shirou leaned in and pressed a quick kiss on her cheek, before turning on his heel and disappearing out the door.
All in all, class 2-A's impression of their teacher's boyfriend was that he was nice. Perfectly willing to tease, exasperated with his sister's antics, and very fond of their teacher. Also hot, in that boy-next-door kind of way.
They were maybe a little bit jealous.
XXX
A/n: One of the things I'm most frustrated with in regards to this fic was the realization that I built a a full page worth of backstory for the magic-crossover part of this setting, but because of my chosen PoV, I couldn't really show any of it. (At least until Chao's plans for the Mahora Festival, which is kind of a can of worms that I don't even actually want to touch, what with Negi not being around and stuff.)
Basically, instead of showcasing the interesting political balancing-act of mages and magi interacting in one world, I got to show Rin being a teacher who was in an openly polyromantic relationship. Which wasn't bad, don't get me wrong, just kind of... too 'slice of life' for me to feel like there was a plot driving me forward.
List of events that didn't end up getting written:
Dinner from the Chao Bao Zi (Rin and Shirou bickering about replicating the recipes, Saber sparkling about future meals in the background)
Trip to Kyoto (Shirou making a super-bento for the trip, stirring Rin's competitive spirit when she opens it on the train, and making the students pay close attention)