Chapter 4: Explicit Jewel
With every passing week, Instructor Trepe finds some thoughtful way to make a noticeable impact on the Disciplinary Committee.
She proofreads our bylaws and points out some logical inconsistencies. The revision is loads better than the original.
She rearranges our quarterly budget so that we have more money left over.
She helps Raijin study more effectively, and his test scores improve in no time. If he keeps up his grades, he might even pass the SeeD written exam by the end of the spring term.
She teaches Fujin origami. The two team up for a side project, and our closet is soon swimming with paper cranes. They're aiming to fold one thousand; apparently they get to make a wish once they hit that milestone.
Notice how she's doing more than she's asked or expected to as a club Supervisor?
How she's essentially becoming one of us in the process?
Before she joined the DC, my interactions with her had usually been marked by tension and frustration: familiar feelings with familiar reactions that I could deal with on any given day, regardless of what mood I was in.
This new version of her is at once inviting and infuriating.
Except that none of this is new—not really.
I've come to understand that she's been like this all along: gracious, indulgent, and concerned with your business. Someone who knows when to be serious and when to joke, and she's quite the comedian, to my utter delight.
Instructor Trepe is insufferably perfect.
She supervises us with zero complaints and total enjoyment.
She gets along well with Fujin and Raijin because she knows how to find common ground with them.
In life, she thaws me with her inner beauty.
In dreams, her body is an explicit jewel, always there, just out of reach.
When will it end? (Will it ever end?)
One day, I just can't take it anymore.
After Fujin and Raijin take off for class, I corner Instructor Trepe in the new room that she's managed to rent for us. It's technically still a closet but considerably larger than the old DC Room. It even boasts the luxuries of air conditioning, a mini fridge, and a small desk for each person.
"Instructor."
"Yes?"
I place both of my hands on her desk and lean in with an uncompromising gaze. The SeeD in her doesn't draw back, not even a centimeter.
I have a simmering need to imbibe her right now.
I want to shatter the serenity of this moment, savor the rude tangle of her hands in my clothes, feel the pulse of my lips on all of her sensitive spots.
"Don't you try to take this from me!" I growl.
She looks genuinely confused. "Take what, Seifer?"
"What else?" I impatiently wave a hand around the room. "My club. My people. My glory."
She responds with a good-natured smile and says, "I'm not trying to take anything from you—especially not your glory."
I won't back down from my personal mission. There's something going on here and it's high time that I uncovered it.
"I promise," she adds.
I point an accusing finger at her. "Then why did you rig the club bingo!?"
Instructor Trepe's face flushes red in mortification. "Y-you know about that!?"
"Damn right I do."
She looks like she wants to melt into a puddle and disappear. "I've been caught red-handed."
A twisted part of me is enjoying this interrogation tremendously. "You know what comes next."
"I…"
"Go on."
"I had no desire to supervise the other clubs," she confesses in a cautious tone. "I didn't want to be stuck in a role that I wouldn't be interested in."
"And you're interested in the Disciplinary Committee?" I ask incredulously. "Yeah, right. What's your real motive, Instructor?"
She tiptoes around my question entirely. "I admit that it was a selfish move. It was wrong of me to deceive the student body. I could have just told everyone that I was too busy for extracurricular activities…"
Too busy my ass.
"Rule 58, Sub-Rule 2. The honesty and integrity mandate, meaning don't lie to me, Instructor!"
"Rule 12, Sub-Rule 9. Always treat your comrades with respect. Don't speak in threatening language."
I take a seat on the edge of her desk, wondering what kind of game we're playing. "Rule 100, Sub-Rule 1."
"That doesn't exist!" she squeaks in protest. "The rules only go up to 80."
"It exists now. Rule 100, Sub-Rule 1. Courage in the face of uncertainty. If you have feelings for someone, you should tell them before it's too late."
I'm not sure why I added the part about 'too late.' It's extremely cheesy but it seems to catch her attention, and this is all that really matters.
Instructor Trepe's eyes widen in comprehension. She hesitates for the longest time before answering. "Rule 24, Sub-Rule 4. Sexual promiscuity."
It's my turn to be flustered, because she's jumped straight to the topic of sex in a reversal of gender expectations.
The implications are making my head spin.
Is it possible that she actually likes me in that way?
But it sounds as if she's pegged me as an immoral skirt chaser.
"Rule 24, Sub-Rule 4, Paragraph 2. Sexual promiscuity refers to multiple partners and/or indiscriminate selection of partners," I point out in an attempt to defend my honor. "As the Head of the DC, I've made a personal vow to follow the same guidelines that I so rigorously enforce."
(I haven't actually made a vow. She doesn't have to know about that.)
However, it's true that I don't sleep around. Being immersed in Instructor Trepe has a way of making me want to throw myself into lifelong monogamy on the off chance that someday she'll be my Ride or Die.
"Rule 24, Sub-Rule 7. Faculty and Instructors are prohibited from having romantic relations with students."
I throw up my hands in irritation. "So you're shutting me out no matter what?"
I've made a leap of faith in assuming that she even wants to go out with me.
Instructor Trepe shakes her head stubbornly. "I'm not shutting you out!"
"Then what exactly are you trying to say…?" I cross my arms and scowl. "You sure know how to send a guy mixed signals."
Something fundamentally changes in her expression. She almost looks like she's going to cry.
"Are you attracted to me?" she asks quietly.
A crazed laugh escapes from my mouth. "Is this a trick question?"
"No."
"Oh."
In a moment of insanity, I slope in for a kiss.
It's short and pure, the kind of peck you might give to your spouse as you're headed off to work in the morning.
She flutters her eyelashes in surprise. "I've always wondered what that would feel like…"
"Instructor…" I smirk with confidence. So far, so good. Any scenario that doesn't end with my face smashed against the ground is practically an approval from her. "Surely this is an admission that you fantasize about me."
"I can't," she tells me sadly. "It's wrong."
My mind is bitterly distorting her response. It's like she's saying that I'm wrong, as in the wrong man for her.
"Why?" I sneer. "'Cause your One True Love is Leonhart?"
"Squall…?" She looks perplexed, panicked. "I don't have any feelings for Squall! What would make you think that?"
"C'mon, Instructor! I've seen you getting all googly-eyed around him."
"I don't mean to do that! He's just…well, he's very attractive, by any girl's standards." She rushes through her explanation, embarrassed but candid. "If you were a girl, you would probably act the same way around him."
"Now that's just traumatizing." I scrunch up my face in disgust. "So you don't wanna kiss him?"
"No," she answers firmly. "The idea actually sounds rather nauseating. Just because he's good-looking doesn't mean I want to kiss him. There's more to…to all of this than just the physical."
"But you won't kiss me either, so…"
"As I said before…" Instructor Trepe gives me a heavy-hearted look. "I can't do this, Seifer. It's completely against the Code of Conduct."
I slide off of her desk. "No arguments there," I acknowledge tonelessly. "Guess this'll never work out between us, eh?"
And I start walking away, my heart lacerated beyond repair.
My hand's hovering on the doorknob when she calls out, "Wait!"
I don't know how she caught up to me so quickly, but I turn around and she's right there, right behind me.
Her brow is furrowed and her breathing is amplified. It seems like she's angry at me because of something I said.
But then I notice a tiny detail that proves me wrong.
Holy shit.
She's not angry.
She's turned on.
Instructor Trepe's jeans of the day are light-wash jeggings, and right at the convergence of her legs is a small patch of denim darker than its surroundings—and not by original design.
My brain stops functioning and my carnal side takes over.
The only thing I can think about is whether she's wearing any panties underneath (I highly doubt it).
I can feel my own arousal in response to hers.
The air becomes charged with the temptation of sex.
We're standing breaths apart from each other, wondering how to deal with the telltale signs of our two-way attraction, a couple of well-meaning but inexperienced teenagers struggling to contain ferocious libidos. Where did my earlier confidence go? Maybe my ego has been bluffing this entire time.
Instructor Trepe looks needlessly tortured. I'm afraid that she's going to pass out.
So I decide to help her forget about the rules.
I pull her into a full-bodied kiss and find that she doesn't hold back with those generous lips of hers.
I'm trying to keep things somewhat chaste. It's a noble intention that goes out the window as soon as she walks us into the wall.
My hands become possessed by a devil. My hands maneuver her jeggings down to her thighs. My hands find her lake of desire, and it's flowing with sweet, warm life.
She mewls in resonant delight, grasping onto my neck as my hands administer gentle—extremely gentle—strokes. I want to engage her, not scare her away.
I turn my gaze down to take in the structural details of her suite of pleasure: a ripe field of golden wheat, vivid and malleable, marvelous and terrifying in its beauty.
Her hips dissolve into my skin with hushed concentration. Her tender exhalations billow into my ears.
My hands begin to toy with the pressure scale. My hands crackle with an exhilarating rhythm. My hands cannot contain the bounty of her liquid flow.
Even with her movements restricted from the partially-down jeggings, she finds a way to stay connected to my hands, a percussive exploration that creates starbursts in my eyes and multiplies every lustful thought that I've ever had about her in my life.
…Until suddenly, we hear distant footsteps in the hallway.
She gasps and stiffens.
Thankfully it's a very long and echo-prone hallway, so we have a bit of time to cover up the physical evidence of our (mutually unfinished) companionship.
I hurriedly grab a towel to wipe away the dewiness from her slender thighs and my own drenched hands.
As she pulls up her jeggings, I hand her one of my spare jackets that I've left lying around. She fluffs it out, zips it up, and twirls around for me to inspect her.
She is still breathless, chest heaving. "Does it cover everything…?"
I nod, just as breathless.
"I'll return this to you washed."
"You might wanna look away for a sec."
"Why?"
I point at my crotch. "I need to get rid of this."
"Oh!" She blushes and turns away in an exaggerated motion. "Right."
It doesn't take long for me to release the tension.
"Okay, you're good now."
"Okay."
"You don't have to keep whispering, you know."
"I have to," she insists.
I give her a smug grin and decide to whisper with her. "Feeling shy…?"
"Of course I'm feeling shy!" Instructor Trepe regards me with ruddy cheeks. "But more than that, there's a sacredness to human touch and I feel that I have to honor it in some way."
I'll never forget her words because I feel the sacredness, too.
The door swings open and Raijin clomps inside with a drawn-out yawn.
"This is a comfy room for naps, ya know?"
Cockblocking son of a bitch.
But I love my boy so I'll temper my annoyance.
Instructor Trepe politely greets him and excuses herself.
I stand there blindsided for a few seconds before I follow her outside.
Instead of turning the corner to return to the girls' dormitories, she walks strategically to the dead end in the hallway and positions herself flush against the wall. She looks alluring there with her slightly disordered hair and my too-big-on-her jacket.
I approach her with amused and questioning eyes. When I'm close enough, Instructor Trepe smiles and says:
"CCTV blind spot."
She gives me a light peck on the lips.
Baby is sweet.
To Be Continued
Author's Notes: I must admit that I became rather emotional as I wrote this chapter. I hope that you were able to feel the depth of longing between Seifer and Quistis as I did!
I'm excited to develop more of the Love Aesthetic that you got a taste of in this chapter: a style that's paradoxically rough-but-tender and dirty-but-elegant in a way that I hope tells a good story while celebrating the rich history of the Seiftis ship.
Please stay tuned for Part II, which I'll be posting as a new ficlet. :)