From her suit and glasses to her stockings, Oyafune Suama was covered in brand-name clothing. She was a woman that knew the advantages that being beautiful gave.
She primarily knew this because she used to be the person who was at the disadvantage for not being beautiful.
But anyone could reach a certain level of beauty if they tried. Suama's theory was that you may not be able to be "the best of the best" or even "among the best" through hard work alone, but you could at least be "better than most". And as "better than most", you could get a taste of the blessings of beauty.
It was advantageous to be beautiful.
The students listened to her during class, the other teachers didn't look down on her, and people gave up their seat for her in the cafeteria. And all of that was the result of refining her body inside and out by taking multiple baths a day, putting lotion on her face before going to bed, eating breakfast every day, keeping her weight down so it didn't affect her skin, spending over an hour in the morning putting makeup on, and spending large amounts of money buying Western clothes from magazines and the internet.
When school came to an end, Oyafune Suama was always very worried that her makeup might have started to come off and especially that her drawn on eyebrows might have started to run from sweat. But one's attitude and mood were an important part of being "beautiful". If she showed outward signs of being worried about her makeup, the "blessings of beauty" would diminish, so she couldn't be constantly checking her hand-mirror or going to the bathroom.
(…)
Suama slowly looked around.
She was in the staff room. By this time, most of the teachers had left to advise club activities, so there usually weren't many people around. She thought about checking on her eyebrows if no one else was there, but…
"Yawn. Making lesson plans is hard work."
Suama's eyes moved to the female teacher sitting almost right next to her who looked like an elementary school student.
It was Tsukuyomi Komoe.
Looking at the mountains of papers around her, it was clear she was working on more than a single teacher's worth of material. This small teacher would always go over the data on each and every student and come up with the best lesson plan for each student, but now she was working on another teacher's class as well.
Quite a bit of Anti-Skill was currently out making war preparations, so they didn't have time to make lesson plans. This meant that the non-Anti-Skill teachers had to help them out.
Suama had been forced to make another teacher's lesson plan as well, but the teacher wearing the inverted triangle glasses couldn't help but be more interested in Komoe-sensei's small size.
"What kind of health system do you use to keep your skin so young? In fact, these numbers don't add up."
"??? What seems to be the problem? I'm quite good at math, if you need any help there."
The 135 cm teacher quickly came walking over after hearing Suama's perplexed voice. Suama knew she should learn from her senior teachers, but this one really looked like she was in elementary school.
Tsukuyomi Komoe took the documents on Suama's desk and nodded as she checked over each of them.
"By the way, Oyafune-sensei. I heard my students caused you some trouble today, so I wanted to apologize."
"No, it was nothing."
"Oh, that reminds me. I wanted to have a word with Kamijou-chan and the others. Do you know where they are? It seems they went off somewhere right after homeroom. Do you think they went home?"
"Uh, oh."
Suama looked over at the clock on the wall.
It was almost 6 PM.
It had been a few hours since she had told them to go weed.
"Crap… I'm sorry, Tsukuyomi-sensei. I'll go get them right away!!"
"Sigh. But where are they?"
Oyafune Suama turned her back on her senior teacher and ran out of the staff room. The club activities would be ending soon and the students not part of a club were long gone, so the dim hallway was almost empty. As she headed for the staff entrance, the emptiness made it feel even later than it was.
(No, delinquents who start fights in school won't have stuck around this long. They're probably not out there weeding; they probably skipped out and left long ago.)
She had been intending to check on them after half an hour and then let them go after scolding them, so she was feeling guilty. However, they were being punished, so she couldn't exactly apologize.
At that point, she reached the staff entrance, put on her fairly high class pumps, and headed quickly behind the gym.
And what that math teacher saw there was…