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

Chapter 64: 64. She Said She Was a Coward. I Said I Know Exactly What That Decision Costs.

William carefully noted the information, genuinely interested, as he began to imagine how these formal structures could fit into the redirect techniques that Lia had been having trouble understanding.

He could almost see it: the way a properly braced stance would stabilize her center of gravity during a high-velocity mana discharge. Beside him, Selena watched the gears turn behind his eyes with the hungry satisfaction of a cat watching a particularly interesting bird.

She looked entirely too pleased with herself for having provided something useful, as if she had just handed him the keys to a kingdom rather than a simple suggestion about combat theory.

"See?" she purred, leaning in just enough that he could catch the faintest trace of citrus on her breath. "I told you I know what I’m talking about."

"I’m not all flash and no substance, Instructor Wade."

William didn’t miss the way her fingers lingered near his arm before she finally pulled back.

"You’re weirdly good at this," he replied, his tone dripping with his usual dry sarcasm. "The whole... assessing people and throwing bait around."

"Is that part of the combat theory curriculum, or just a personal hobby?"

"I contain multitudes, Instructor Wade." She winked, a gesture so shameless it felt like a physical provocation. "Some days I’m a scholar; some days I’m a menace."

"But today? I’m feeling particularly educational."

Behind William’s shoulder, the atmosphere didn’t just tense; it curdled. Catherine made a small, strangled sound.

It was a noise caught somewhere between a scoff of pure exasperation and something considerably less composed—a sound of raw, suppressed irritation that seemed to vibrate in the narrow space between them.

’What... that’s my thing!’ William thought, a flash of bewildered amusement crossing his mind. ’I’m supposed to be the one making people uncomfortable with my presence, not the other way around.’

He could practically feel the heat radiating off Catherine, a silent aura of disapproval that could have melted steel.

"I do occasionally know what I’m talking about, believe it or not," Selena continued, her smile turning sly as she caught the silent war brewing behind William’s back.

She seemed to be feeding off Catherine’s discomfort like a vampire off blood. "If you ever want a deeper breakdown of something more... intimate than a dusty book, I teach an advanced theory course on exactly this."

She paused, letting the implication hang in the air like smoke. "Small class size. Very hands on."

"I bet it is," Catherine muttered.

The words were barely audible, a venomous whisper that barely escaped her clenched teeth.

The silence that followed was deafening. Selena’s head snapped toward Catherine with alarming speed, her eyes bright with predatory delight. The corner of her mouth twitched upward.

"Did you say something, Vice Headmaster?"

"I thought I heard something about the quality of my instruction."

Catherine’s jaw tightened so hard William feared he might actually hear her teeth crack. Her hands were balled into fists at her sides, her knuckles white against the dark fabric of her uniform.

For a moment, William genuinely wondered if she was going to draw her sword right here in the middle of the reference section and challenge the new instructor to a duel to the death. The tension was so thick it felt like walking through waist-deep water.

"Nothing at all," Catherine said finally, her voice flat, brittle, and utterly devoid of any inflection. "We came here for information, not entertainment."

Selena’s grin widened, clearly delighted by whatever reaction she’d successfully provoked, and she reached past William to scribble something quickly on a spare scrap of parchment before pressing it into his hand with a final, deliberate touch.

"In case you ever want to discuss stances further. Or anything else, really..." Selena winked. "My door’s always open, Instructor Wade."

"I’ll keep that in mind," William said, folding the parchment and tucking it away without looking at it too closely, aware of the way Catherine’s posture had gone almost military in its stiffness beside him.

"Please do." Selena finally stepped back, returning to her step stool with the easy, unbothered air of someone who considered the entire interaction a complete success regardless of how it had ended. "Lovely meeting you properly, Instructor Wade."

"Vice Headmaster." A final, knowing glance toward Catherine. "Do take care of him."

"He seems like the kind of man worth taking care of."

Catherine didn’t dignify that with a response. She simply took William by the sleeve, with considerably more force than the situation strictly required, and steered him toward the library exit with the fixed, determined focus of a woman who had reached the absolute limit of her patience for one morning.

...

They walked in silence for a while once they were outside, Catherine’s pace brisk enough that William had to lengthen his stride slightly to keep up, and it wasn’t until they’d put a fair bit of distance between themselves and the library that her shoulders finally began to loosen.

"She’s insufferable," Catherine said abruptly.

"She seemed friendly."

"She seemed like she wanted to devour you whole in the middle of the reference section."

"I mean... that’s one way to describe overly enthusiastic professional networking."

Catherine shot him a look that suggested she found absolutely nothing amusing about the comparison, and William, watching the faint flush still lingering in her cheeks, decided that whatever was underneath that irritation probably deserved a gentler touch than more teasing.

"Catherine," he said, more seriously. "There’s something I need to tell you."

"And I think it’s better if it comes from me directly instead of you finding out some other way."

Something in his tone must have carried more weight than his usual conversational register, because Catherine slowed her pace immediately, studying his face with sharp, focused attention. "What is it?"

William took a breath, choosing his words with the same care he’d have given to defusing an actual explosive. "Look... I know about the Silverline Vanguard."

"About what happened eight years ago... in the dungeon."

"I talked to Grock yesterday and then Headmaster Albert."

Catherine went very still.

For a long moment she said nothing at all, her expression cycling rapidly through something that started as shock and hardened, almost immediately, into something sharper, more defensive. "You went... behind my back."

"I went to people who already knew, because I didn’t want to keep guessing blindly about something that was clearly hurting you, and I wasn’t going to force it out of you directly after you already told me it wasn’t something you wanted to discuss."

"That’s not better, William... That’s worse!" Catherine countered. "You went digging through my past without my consent, talking to people about the worst thing that ever happened to me, like it was some puzzle you were entitled to solve."

Her voice had climbed, sharp and brittle, years of careful composure fraying rapidly at the edges. "That wasn’t yours to uncover."

"You’re right," William said steadily, refusing to raise his own voice to match hers. "It wasn’t mine to uncover, and I’m not going to pretend that going around you instead of waiting for you to be ready was some perfectly justified decision..."

"But I need you to understand something... I’m not telling anyone else, and I never will."

"I’m not asking you to talk about it right now, or ever, if that’s what you need."

"I told you because I’d rather you know exactly what I know than have this sitting between us as something I’m hiding while pretending I don’t already understand."

Catherine’s jaw tightened, anger and something rawer and more painful warring visibly across her face, and for a moment William genuinely thought she was going to walk away from him entirely, the distance between them widening into something that might not close again easily.

"They... ordered me to run," she said instead, her voice suddenly very quiet, all the earlier sharpness draining out of it into something hollow and exhausted. "Every single one of them..."

"In the middle of that collapse, with monsters pouring out of rifts that shouldn’t have existed, they looked at me, and they told me to run, because I was the only one who could actually make it and because I was the only one carrying information that mattered more than any of our lives individually."

"Catherine—"

"I ran," she said, the words coming faster now, like a dam finally giving way after eight years of holding steady. "I left them there!"

"I ran because they told me to, because it was the tactically correct decision, and because staying would have meant the information died with all of us instead of just them, and I have spent eight years telling myself that made it acceptable, and it has never once actually felt acceptable!"

"I am a coward, William!"

"I ran while people who loved me stayed behind to die, and I have built an entire life around administrative paperwork and polite meetings specifically so I would never again have to be in a position where someone’s life depended on my sword arm."

"You’re not a coward."

"You don’t know that!"

"I know exactly what that decision costs," William said, and something in his voice must have carried enough weight to actually stop her, because she finally looked at him properly, eyes bright and unguarded in a way he hadn’t seen from her before. "I’ve made that decision myself, Catherine..."

"Different circumstances, different world, but the same math."

"Ordering someone to survive when survival means leaving people behind..."

"It’s not the easy choice."

"It’s the hardest choice, and it doesn’t get easier just because you lived instead of giving the order."