4

Noel

Noel massaged his shoulders as he heaved a long, tired sigh. After amassing a great effort to attend the lecture in the morning, Noel successfully reached the lecture hall early, meaning that he could rest for a bit before the lecture session began.

"Wow... I’ve never even imagined that bathing an adult male could be so challenging..."

About a few hours ago, after Noel brought that douche upstairs to the second floor—where there are a spare bedroom with attached bathroom in case of emergency, he stripped him naked and disposed all of his clothing and then threw him into the bathtub.

"Whew..."

Just by stripping him and throwing him into the bathtub, Noel already felt tired. That douche is heavy, not to mention huge as well.

Noel took a short wooden stool and put it beside the bathtub. He then pulled the sleepy douche's arm to clean it when he saw his armpit hair that were very long like a living seaweed.

"Geh!?"

He was startled and disgusted at the same time. He sighed slowly and massaged his temple, exasperation gradually welled up inside him.

"…Gremlin, call two more of your kin to come here and bring some shaving tools and some scented therapy candles. We need a lot of help here."

The gremlin—a creature who understands emotions from words— apparently sensed discomfort in Noel's words and was alarmed by it before quickly called in more than two gremlins with tools more than what he asked. The gremlins then immediately lit up the scented candles and prepared the necessary ingredients for an aromatherapy bath without being asked.

"What?...."

Noel was speechless by the gremlin's voluntary action, even so, their willingness to help him earned a chuckle from him.

"Thank you. Let me do the work while all of you assist me, okay?"

The gremlins nodded enthusiastically.

What normally took just about 15 minutes turned out to be longer than 2 hours, when Noel also needed to exfoliate the douche's dead skin and trimmed his nails while also taking care of his smelly and oily hair. His inner perfectionist is screaming every time he saw how slovenly that douche was.

When he dragged the douche’s titan body onto the bed, he was pulled by the force, and unwillingly laid on the bed beside where the douche fell down. Luckily his scent is bearable now, after gotten dressed with a new and clean clothes. He's rather impressed that the douche didn't wake up even the slightest bit from what were done to him.

Alcohol sure is scary...

The gremlins—after assisting Noel and cleaning up the grimy bathtub— were also sitting on the floor, expressing their heartfelt complains among each other after. They chatted about how hard it was to bathe the douche and would rather bathe an ox than bathing a human who didn't even know what a personal hygiene is.

Noel chuckled when he understood the gremlin's monster tongue conversation. The gremlins who realized that they've been found out, quickly stood out and excuse themselves out of embarrassment.

Then room fell silent after the chatterboxes left. Only the smooth whooshing sound from the new vintage ceiling fan filled the tranquil air.

Noel sighed and turned his head to the side to face that douche. After bathing him, he doesn't look that half bad and his actual body odor smells nice, like a morning forest. The douche breathes softly, his fingers twitched occasionally from his sleep. Just what kind of dream he's having there?

Suddenly, his hands moved on it’s own, when he touched the douche’s twitching fingers. An immediate zap invaded his mind, rendering him to flinch and pulled away.

He gasped and looked at his hand as his face twitched in conflict.

What was that…?

That zap definitely felt like an electric rush, that surged the Mana inside him into a state of haywire. He creased his eyebrows, trying to calm down his Mana Circulation.

Noel took a few minutes calming his Mana Circulation down—all of them seemed to strongly attracted to this douche beside him. He paced his breathing when his Mana Flow returned normal. After that, he shot the douche a strange look, in his mind, the question about the surge floated about, yet he didn’t have the answer for it. He shook the thoughts away and got up from the bed. Turning around to the douche, he muttered.

"Now then..."

Noel narrowed his eyelids and glanced at the douche’s firm figure.

"Where should I send you back to....?"

***

After changing the library’s bedroom door into the douche’s bedroom door, Noel dragged that oaf to the bed, again throwing him there while this time, he’s careful enough not to get dragged by the inertia. Noel’s nose immediately twitched.

            “Ugh…” His face twisted into a grimace as the smell of dirty and unwashed clothes that were scattered on the floor greeted his nose, not in a kind way.

            He mouthed an EW and stared judgingly at the douche for a bit, before slowly inching back into the interdimension door. All of a sudden, his steps halted when he felt a throbbing pain at the right side of his neck, from his Mana vessels that were used to transport Mana throughout his body.

He grunted—mostly feeling uncomfortable with the throbbing sensation and some of it feeling a slight pain. Again, he felt like his Mana is attracted to this unknown person in front of him, who was snoring carelessly on the bed that God Knows when it was last washed.

Noel pondered for a bit, his eyes went down from the douche’s face to his features, and down to his body. He’s just like your average Joe, blonde hair and blue eyes. His body is muscular but also a little flabby, indicating the effect of eating fast foods. However, Noel felt like there’s more in him than just a normal douche who’s raring to bully others.

He slowly lifted his right hand to his front. A white gleaming veins started appearing on his hand as he brought his wrist closer to his mouth, before gently blowing the space above his palm. A few moments after that, a small orb started to appear, gradually shaping into a humanoid shape with wings. Upon the completion of it’s formation, Noel weaved a smile at the floating figure hovering above his palm.

“I need your assistance…”

***

Back to the present, Noel sighed again. Recently, he realized that he sighed a lot. Well, might be because living in this world is quite tiring. Although this world has modern technology, the fact that magic had already dispersed from their life energy put a burden on Noel, especially since he’s an avid magic user. All of his folks were also magic users back in his world.

Noel pondered for a bit. Melancholy rang the bell of his consciousness. 

"I wonder what happened to my subjects? I hope they're fine."

Noel mumbled as he stared at the lecture hall’s high ceiling.

He snapped back to reality when the lecturer had entered the lecture hall, and just like other students, took out his notebook to jot down the lecture.