Succubi Chapter 215. Face to Face
Succubi Chapter 215. Face to Face
Adrian noticed me stopping and turned back. “You okay?”
I didn’t answer immediately.
Callahan looked… solemn.
Not teacher solemn.
Not dangerous solemn.
Hurt.
Actually hurt.
And yeah, earlier I joked. We all joked. Because the man had turned shadow-element theory into a mourning poem and kept glancing at me like I had stolen his sunlight. But now that the class was over, the comedy faded slightly.
Something really was wrong.
I exhaled through my nose. “I guess I’ll talk to him.”
Adrian blinked. “Why?”
“I need to know what this is about.”
Felix adjusted his bag strap. “That is either brave or socially reckless.”
“Those are the same thing.”
Kyra looked at me with mild concern. “Evan…”
“I’ll be fine.”
Probably.
Maybe.
I walked back toward the podium while the others hovered near the door like cowards pretending they were not listening. I could feel Adrian’s curiosity from behind me like heat. Kyra’s concern was softer. Felix’s judgment was expensive and polished.
Professor Callahan lifted his eyes as I approached.
“Evan,” he said evenly. “Do you need something?”
“Yes.”
I stopped in front of him.
Face to face.
Student to professor.
“What happened to you today?”
His expression didn’t change.
But his fingers tightened slightly against the book.
I pointed vaguely at the classroom. “You kept glancing at me like I stole your treasure.”
Silence.
Callahan stared at me.
I stared back.
A cold draft moved through the classroom, brushing across the desks. Dramatic. Unnecessary. Very him.
Then he said one word.
“Lilith.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course.
I huffed quietly and opened them again. “So it’s about Lilith.”
He nodded once.
Slowly.
His eyes glazed slightly.
Oh no.
No no no.
That was not a professor look.
That was a man staring at the ruins of his own romantic delusion.
“She refused my lunch invitation,” he said.
I blinked.
Then waited.
Because surely there was more.
Assassination? Political betrayal? A curse? Some old pact? A tragic memory from twenty years ago?
No.
He just stood there.
I stared at him.
“…You’re kidding, right?”
His head lifted sharply.
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
I winced.
Yeah.
No.
He did not.
He looked like a man who had watched his childhood dream get married to his rival under falling cherry blossoms while violin music played in the distance.
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Professor… it’s lunch.”
“It was not merely lunch,” he said darkly.
I paused.
“…Was it dinner disguised as lunch?”
His eyes narrowed.
Okay. Bad joke. Wrong battlefield.
He looked away, jaw tightening. “Not to mention Vesperine rejected me too.”
I blinked again.
“Vesperine?”
“Yes.”
“The hot mentor from the last duel?”
His gaze snapped back to me.
I lifted both hands immediately.
Callahan’s face darkened with the kind of noble suffering usually reserved for cursed princes. “Yes. Her.”
I stared.
Processing.
“So Lilith refused lunch. Vesperine rejected you. And that’s why you kept looking at me?”
His lips pressed into a thin line.
Then he said, voice low and broken, “You…”
I leaned back slightly.
“You…”
Please don’t say something dramatic.
“How could you be so lucky?”
I froze.
The classroom froze.
Even the dust probably stopped moving.
“…What?”
Callahan’s expression twisted into something dangerously close to envy, despair, and professor-level dignity collapsing in real time.
“You come to this academy as a first semester student. Barely settled. Constantly surrounded by beautiful women. Lilith feeds you. Protects you. Smiles at you.”
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
He continued, voice cracking just enough to make me deeply uncomfortable.
“And I also want to be hugged by Lilith’s boobs.”
Silence.
Absolute silence.
I stared at Professor Nyx Callahan, the Cradlestorm, the genius underground duelist and realized something very important.
This man was a lost cause.
I had worried for nothing.
He was just maidenless.
Powerfully maidenless.
I slowly dragged one hand down my face.
“Professor.”
“Yes?”
“You made us take notes about shadows and sacrifice because Lilith refused lunch?”
His eyes sharpened. “The lesson was academically valid.”
“It was also emotionally wet.”
“That was relevant.”
“To arcana?”
“To life.”
I stared at him.
He stared back with full seriousness.
I had nothing.
No counter.
No defense.
This was beyond me.
Then Callahan sighed, and the entire classroom somehow got colder.
“You wouldn’t understand,” he murmured.
There it was.
The opening line of trauma dumping.
My survival instincts screamed.
Leave.
Leave now.
But my feet stayed.
Because apparently I loved danger.
Callahan turned toward the window, looking out across the academy grounds like a man standing at the edge of a lonely cliff. “Single life becomes boring after enough years. At first, one tells himself it is peaceful. That solitude allows focus. Discipline. Mastery.”
He lifted one hand slightly, shadow curling around his fingers.
“But then one returns to an empty room. Eats alone. Reads alone. Sleeps alone. And the silence…”
He paused.
I braced myself.
“The silence becomes louder than any battlefield.”
Damn.
Okay.
That one was actually kind of good.
Unfortunately, he immediately ruined it by adding, “And nobody presses your face into warmth and tells you you did well.”
I coughed.
Violently.
“I only want a decent woman,” he continued.
I narrowed my eyes slightly.
“A decent woman?”
“Yes.”
“One who sees me as I am.”
“Uh-huh.”
“One who understands the weight of shadow, the burden of duty, the sacrifice of—”
“You mean you want to date a sexy and hot woman.”
He stopped.
Slowly turned his head.
His expression was offended.
Deeply offended.
For three seconds.
Then his eyes shifted away.
“…That is included.”
I pointed at him. “That’s the point.”
“It is not the only point.”
“But it is a big point.”
He said nothing.
I nodded. “Exactly.”
Callahan looked wounded again, but this time because I had exposed the core of his tragedy in one sentence.
I almost respected the honesty.
Almost.
But I could feel it now. The emotional drain. The negativity. The gravitational pull of a lonely professor about to trap me in a one-hour confession about failed dates, misunderstood elegance, and why women preferred dangerous first semester demons over emotionally complex shadow instructors.
No.
Absolutely not.
I had class.
I had enough emotional problems already.