Harem Training System: Every Girl I Train Makes Me Stronger!

Chapter 56: 56. The Coat Was an Excuse. The Plan forming in My Head Is Not.

Morning came in soft and grey, the kind of overcast light that made the whole city look like it was still deciding whether to wake up properly, and William found himself once again standing at Catherine’s front door for what was becoming, embarrassingly, something of a routine.

"You forgot your coat, William..." Catherine said, holding it out to him the moment she opened the door, like she’d been standing there waiting for him to remember.

"I noticed... Eventually." William took it from her, pulling it on over one shoulder. "Sorry, I got distracted last night."

"Distracted by what?"

The question landed a little too close to the truth for comfort, and William, who had spent most of the walk home the night before turning over what he’d seen through that gap in the curtains, decided that now was not the moment to bring it up.

Not on her doorstep, not with the memory of her hand hovering beneath that white-hilted sword still fresh enough to sting.

"Probably just feeling tired, you know..." he said. "Yesterday was a long day for me."

Catherine studied him for a beat longer than felt entirely comfortable, some flicker of suspicion crossing her face before she apparently decided not to pursue it, her own exhaustion from the previous evening probably making her less inclined to dig at anything too closely this early in the morning.

"Well," she said, "try to remember your belongings more reliably in the future..."

"I’m not running a lost and found out of my house," Catherine sighed.

"Noted."

They might have left it there, the exchange settling into something comfortably mundane, if a voice hadn’t called out from the direction of the garden gate at that exact moment.

"Is this becoming a regular thing?"

Both of them turned to find Kaela leaning against the gatepost with her arms crossed, and beside her, looking considerably less amused about being there, Lia stood with a stack of borrowed training manuals tucked under one arm.

"What are you two doing here?" Catherine said, in the tone of a woman who already suspected the answer wasn’t going to satisfy her.

"We came to find our instructor who loves to roam around picking girls," Kaela said, as though this explained literally everything about why she was standing outside the vice headmaster’s private residence at this hour. "He wasn’t in his room... and yes... I figured he’d be here again."

"Again..." Catherine repeated, flat.

"You two have been spending a lot of time together lately," Kaela said, entirely too pleased with herself. "I’m just saying... As an observation. A completely neutral observation."

"There is nothing neutral about the way you said that."

"I got here first, for the record," Lia cut in, apparently more interested in litigating her dispute with Kaela than in whatever implications Kaela was busy dropping about William and Catherine. "She only beat me because she cut through the training yard instead of using the actual road like a normal person."

"The road takes four extra minutes."

"The road exists for a reason."

"The reason is people who aren’t fast enough to justify skipping it."

Catherine pressed two fingers to her temple with the specific, weary gesture of someone who was mentally recalculating exactly how many years of her life she was willing to sacrifice to the endless, grinding gears of academy bureaucracy before she simply walked into the forest and never came back.

The morning sun today was hot to the point it beat down on them, but it couldn’t match the heat of her simmering irritation.

"My home," she began, her voice dangerously calm, "is not a designated meeting point for students."

"It is not a lounge, it is not a tactical briefing room, and it is certainly not a convenient place for you to scheme about whatever nonsense you’ve been up to."

She straightened, her eyes narrowing as she swept them across the group. "I would like that to be understood, clearly and unequivocally... by everyone standing in front of me right now."

"Understood," Kaela said.

The word was delivered in a tone so breezy and utterly lacking in genuine remorse that it was practically an insult. Her shoulders were relaxed, her stance casual, as if she were hearing a weather report rather than a reprimand from the vice headmaster.

"I mean it, Kaela," Catherine snapped, the corner of her eye twitching. "This isn’t a game."

"I heard you the first time, Madam," Kaela replied with a playful salute that was dangerously close to mockery.

Catherine turned her gaze toward William, her expression shifting from anger to a silent, desperate plea for backup. Her eyes seemed to scream: ’Please, for the love of everything sacred, tell them they’re being insufferable.’

William, however, found the entire spectacle far more entertaining than he was willing to admit. He watched the way Catherine’s jaw remained tight despite her attempt at composure, noting the fine lines of exhaustion that even her authority couldn’t mask.

He simply offered a nonchalant shrug.

"Well, to be honest, they’re not wrong that I keep ending up here," he said, his voice carrying that infuriatingly smooth cadence. "It’s become a bit of a habit."

"You are not helping, William," Catherine hissed, though the bite in her words had lost some of its venom, replaced by a genuine sense of defeat.

"I wasn’t trying to be a liar anyway," he countered with a maddeningly innocent smile. "I’m just stating the obvious."

Catherine exhaled a long, put-upon sigh, the kind of sound that carried the cumulative weight of managing six extremely capable, extremely stubborn young women, on top of an entire academy’s worth of administrative chaos, political maneuvering, and student disciplinary hearings. It was the sound of a woman who was one minor inconvenience away from a complete breakdown.

Finally, she waved the two of them off at the gate with a gesture that was equal parts irritation and reluctant affection. "Chop-chop... Both of you."

She pointed toward the academy grounds, her finger steady despite her frustration. "Training starts at the usual time."

"It does not start whenever you decide to show up unannounced at my front step like you own the place."

"Fine, fine, we’re going, we’re going~!" Kaela pushed off from the gatepost, already turning to leave with that characteristic bounce in her step.

But halfway down the path, she paused, pivoting on one heel to throw one last, devastating grin over her shoulder.

"For what it’s worth, Vice Headmaster," Kaela called out, her eyes dancing with mischief, "you seem a lot less stressed when Instructor Wade’s around."

"Just an observation!" she added with a wink before breaking into a run, leaving William and a suddenly very quiet Catherine standing in the wake of the challenge.

Before Catherine could formulate a retort—something sharp, something authoritative, something that would reestablish the boundary Kaela had so carelessly trampled—Lia trailed past them. The younger woman wore a small, knowing smirk, one that spoke volumes without uttering a single syllable.

She wisely chose not to voice her amusement, leaving Catherine standing frozen in her doorway, her cheeks flushed with a faint, predictable pink that betrayed her composure.

"Ahh jeez..." Catherine muttered to the empty air, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes as if trying to push the embarrassment physically back into her skull. "They’re going to be the death of me, aren’t they?"

"Eventually, they’ll actually succeed."

William couldn’t help it; a genuine, light chuckle escaped him. "They mean well, Catherine. Mostly. No harm done."

"They mean chaos, William... pure, unadulterated chaos," she corrected, shaking her head as she drew a steadying breath.

She straightened her shoulders, forcing the Vice Headmaster persona to slide back over her like a familiar suit of armor, though the residual heat in her cheeks remained. "Though I suppose in this academy, the two aren’t exactly mutually exclusive."

She took one last look at the path where Kaela had disappeared before turning back to the reality of her responsibilities. "I should get to the office."

"The paperwork from this morning’s incident alone is enough to drown a lesser woman."

"There’s still the cleanup from the dungeon incident to finalize. And Headmaster Albert mentioned he wants an updated casualty and damage report on his desk by late afternoon."

William chuckled. "Of course he does..."

"The man has an insatiable appetite for documentation." He offered her a genuine smile. "I’ll see you later, then."

"Later," Catherine agreed.

William stood there for a moment, watching her retreat into the sanctuary of her home. The door clicked shut behind her with a finality that seemed to quiet the morning air.

For a heartbeat, there was only the distant sound of training shouts from the grounds and the rustle of wind through the trees.

Then, William turned.

As he began his own trek toward the training grounds, his mind began to drift. The pleasant banter with Catherine faded, replaced by something colder and more focused.

The training grounds would provide the physical release he needed, but they wouldn’t satisfy the deeper restlessness gnawing at his gut. His thoughts kept circling back to the room full of swords, the smell of oiled steel, and most persistently the name that had been sitting like a lead weight in his chest since the night before.

A plan began to solidify in his mind. It wasn’t a subtle plan; it lacked the finesse of a surgeon or the discretion of a spy.

It was blunt, direct, and carried the inevitability of an incoming storm. But subtlety had never been his strongest suit, and as he walked, he realized he didn’t particularly care to be subtle.

He suspected that any attempt at finesse would be wasted anyway, given exactly who he intended to visit.