'Wait, is it just me or…'
Squinting his eyes a bit, Theo took a closer look at Tesh's drowsy face.
Something just wasn't right. But for the moment, he couldn't quite figure out what.
The silence stretched for as long as a few seconds, with Theo staring down with baffled curiosity at Tesh while she slowly tried to gather her thoughts and chase her sleepiness away.
'Wait.'
For the second time, Theo's senses tingled.
There was something weirdly wrong with this whole situation.
According to all his senses, Tesh stood now before him, failing to explain in any way just what she was doing at the door of his room so late at night.
Theo's hive, though, continued to stay on full alert.
This hesitation lasted for a really short moment, for all Theo had to do was allow the AI to display the analysis result on top of his vision.
'So that's it.'
"Just how long…"
Tesh gritted her teeth and clenched her fists, her whole demeanor changing in a single, random instant.
"Just how long were you planning to make me wait?!" Tesh cried out with unrestrained anger in her voice.
Theo's eyes, however, momentarily focused on the girl's clenched hand.
He then blinked his eyes before taking a step forward and… simply moved past the girl without a single word of response on his end.
Theo stepped into his quarters only to then silently close the doors behind himself, leaving the girl alone and loud…
In the middle of the night.
At the Teacher's dormitory.
"Now then," Theo moved first to his study, unloading all the notes and papers he scribbled during his small adventure at the library. Yet, as soon as he dropped all the added weight, he then turned towards his alchemy stand.
"You've really picked the worst time of the day to annoy me."
Up until this point, Theo opted to play it on the low, regardless of the mistakes and oversights he already allowed.
But now that a certain bottom line was tested, he had to change his tactics up a bit.
And even without the hive's alert, he could tell.
'How could that damn bitch be so brazen as to take one of the vials!'
Still, no reply.
Theo raised his eyes before leaning his head slightly over his shoulder, his stare pinned down to the right of the brewing stand.
He didn't have to dismantle Tesh's illusion.
Theo, thanks in part to his nanites, could easily see through it.
'With that said, I would really love not to waste any more of the hive.'
Thankfully, the silver-haired girl opted to just spare him the effort necessary to break her magic.
The illusion suddenly dispersed. The reality itself appeared to break, as if Theo's entire room was but a box that faked the scale of the world around him. In this way, an entire chunk of physical dimension could be seemingly erased — not by breaking the dimension but by masking and overlapping its presence.
A trick in line with the famous mirror illusions.
Now that the walls of Theo's room returned to their usual size and scale, he could see the silver-haired girl pressed against the stand with a tense look on her face.
'It's one thing to camp at my door at night, but to actually intrude?'
Theo got his first hint when the feeling of the girl's aura changed a bit.
It appeared a little less steady… only to be matched with a perfect replica of all Tesh's facial quirks.
Later, the hive only confirmed Theo's guess, proving the fake left stranded behind the door wasn't Tesh at all!
All of which made it easy for him to sense a strange energy flash for but a split of a second as she aggressively spoke up to him.
An energy that then shot straight through Theo's doors to a corner of his room.
And now, with the illusion gone, Tesh stood up in his face with a look of confident defiance.
'I can almost hear your thoughts, stupid.'
For a moment, Theo's face softened as this rebellious look was just so heartwarmingly adorable, it nearly made him melt.
Like an arrogant, palm-sized puppy challenging its owner for primacy in the pack.
"Bothering me out in the open I could understand," he said as he shook his head, finally allowing his exasperation to show on his face. "But raiding my place and even stealing?"
Theo shook his head again while Tesh's face froze.
'You really thought I wouldn't call you out on it?'
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Before he could say anything else, the girl clapped back. "Aren't you the…"
"Trash teacher?" Theo chuckled. "Oh, I sure am. So, how about this."
There was no need for Theo to even confront the girl at this point.
He just… turned away, moving over to his study from where he picked several pieces of parchment.
"These are the signed forms for the hazardous materials I'm handling," he announced as he waved a small stack of papers. "As it turns out, those are strictly controlled. Meaning, if I gave you just a little push…"
Theo gently smiled.
But there was no sign on Tesh's face that would hint at her willingness to stand down.
"Ha!"
Instead, she laughed cheekily, leaning forward before raising her left eyebrow.
"Do you really think someone like you…"
*Peng!*
The vial of the concentrated happiness juice floated up, moving through the air after exploding its container.
Within half of a second, this undiluted drug, from merely a necessary material for a different recipe, turned into a floating bubble of lethal poison.
Already mildly addictive in its diluted form and small doses, with nothing but its essence just a single whiff or even a drop…
The floating liquid didn't block Tesh's airways, though.
'There's no way I could take responsibility for doing her like this,' Theo thought, a dozen dark scenarios of how the future down this line could look like easily scaring him off course.
Still…
"With those forms, with how you are in my room at night…" Theo shook his head. "What's there to stop me from claiming you raided my room, found a restricted substance, and overdosed?"
There was a limit to what Theo was willing to allow.
Even if he already made several plans for when he gets out of this place, he wasn't going to let some damned brat walk all over him!
That's why, while not really interested in actually harming her, giving her a scare simply appeared as the easiest way to stop any further annoyances in the future.
After a moment, though…
Tesh's defiant face, already mixed with an undertone of terror, started to break down.
And before Theo could say anything, tears of terror started to squeeze out of her eyes.
'Whoops,' Theo gulped his saliva down, stunned for a second as the girl started to break down in tears. 'I've overdone it a bit…'
With a wave of his hand, Theo dismissed the great majority of the cloud, gathering it up into another container.
It was one hell of a lucky break — a literal coin toss over how Theo could play this situation out.
Were she to pick the other vial, with the happiness drug extract made without the nanites, Theo couldn't move it at all.
But with the residue of the nanites still present in the other vial, he pretty much had full control over it!
Still, even such a gentle push, after a day of hard work and effort, was enough to make Theo hungry again.
And this was the line he really, REALLY didn't want to cross.