Raising a Wolf in the Academy

The past few years as a professor have been satisfying.
‘If I can’t enroll as a student, I’ll become a professor!’
It was enough compensation for my head and body that I had pushed to the limit with such thoughts.
They pay well, and there are no stressful superiors.
Compared to my job in my previous life, no, it was so good that comparing would be disrespectful.
However. There was just one thing I wasn’t satisfied with…
That absolutely no incidents or accidents were happening.
Yes. This academy is.
Too peaceful.
Why on earth?!
It’s not just any academy, but the most famous and largest academy in the empire. Why aren’t there any incidents?
Where are the mysterious groups plotting to overthrow the academy?
Despite boasting the best security in the empire, there should be spies planted inside as if it’s natural.
Monsters prepared for practice suddenly going berserk and rampaging.
At the very least, shouldn’t there be delinquent students loitering around, relying on their parents’ positions?
Perhaps my expectations were too high because of the academy stories I saw in my previous life.
Since becoming a professor, there hasn’t been a day when I didn’t fantasize, ‘If this happens, I should respond like this.’
But fantasies remain fantasies because they don’t happen.
The reality is that there are no terrorists in the academy, not even delinquent students.
The salary is considerable, and the benefits are good, but… even so, it’s getting a bit boring at this point.
A void that can’t be filled with money often comes to visit.
—I wish someone would relieve this boredom, even if it means sending the whole academy to another world full of demons.
The fact that I occasionally have such thoughts makes me wonder what will become of me if I leave this boredom unchecked any longer.
Some might say that if I were in a relationship, I wouldn’t have time to be bored.
But they often overlook the fact that if such a thing were possible, I would have done it already.
The women around me are just students, professors, and my assistant.
A relationship with a student? I’d lose my professorship the moment it’s discovered.
The professors? That’s nonsense.
Lastly, my assistant… I didn’t even dare to see her as a potential romantic partner because she was like a daughter to me.
But! All this emotional struggle ends today.
I’ve finally discovered the location of a pet shop that caters only to high-ranking individuals in the empire.
How much trouble I’ve gone through to find out the shop’s location and contact method.
Sneaking out every weekend to give private lessons to the children of high-ranking officials…
Keeping them company…
After months of all sorts of indescribable hardships, grinding away my precious weekends like my own blood, the information I finally obtained says.
‘It should be around here.’
A back alley where human presence is barely felt.
They said the legendary pet shop was here, a bit away from the imperial capital where my workplace is.
‘…It should be, right?’
If I’ve come to the right place, there should be one person somewhere around here.
I had contacted them in advance, so I was told to approach an employee who looks like a vagrant and say the correct password.
At the same time, they also added a warning. As it’s a shop operated in secret, they put considerable effort into security, so I’d only have one chance to say the password.
‘The password was definitely…’

While I was memorizing the contact password one more time to avoid any mistakes, I sensed a presence from far away.
“Spare a coin!”
‘Here he comes!’
A man approaching while begging loudly, wearing ragged clothes that could be called the epitome of a vagrant.
Logically, there’s no reason to beg here where there’s not a single person, so this person must be a shop employee disguised as a vagrant.
‘Alright, I’ve memorized the contact method clearly… let’s go!’
Having finished my thoughts, I approached him for the contact.
And while taking out a gold coin from my pocket, I said,
“Excuse me, if I were to give you this money, what would you buy first?”
“Churu… I’d buy Churu…”
The vagrant recited the password I remembered exactly.
Until then, I had been tense, but after hearing the password from him, I was able to relieve some of that tension.
At least I hadn’t mistaken the person to contact.
But it’s too early to completely let my guard down. There was still more to the password.
“Churu, eh. It doesn’t seem like you intend to eat it yourself… May I ask the reason?”
“I keep a cat…”
“It seems that cat has a good butler. Please add this gold coin to your Churu fund.”
“One gold coin for identity confirmation, received securely. Welcome to our shop, customer.”
The vagrant… no, the shop employee who quickly caught the gold coin I threw, suddenly changed his manner of speech and bowed his head.
I don’t know why they chose such a question and answer as a password, but beggars can’t be choosers.
At least from now on, I’ll be registered as an official customer of the shop, so I won’t have to go through this troublesome process anymore, which is fortunate.
“Now, this way.”
The employee guided me to a secluded corner of the back alley.
Although it was just a dark back alley with no one around, I wondered why he guided me here.
“Please wait a moment.”
—Kuguugung!
As he fumbled the wall a few times, my doubts disappeared instantly as the back alley started to change.
“Now, this way.”
Following the employee’s guidance as I walked in, another man, presumed to be another employee, approached and greeted me.
“Oh my, if it isn’t the professor! When we received the contact, I was half in doubt, but it was true. I didn’t know you were interested in pets, professor.”
“Well, teaching someone is a tough job. The stress is no joke.”
“Haha! Of course, of course. That’s why people have pets, isn’t it?”
He was bigger than the employee disguised as a vagrant. He seemed to be in charge of the physical work inside the shop.
Since this is a pet shop, it’s probably related to animal training.
The small scars on his hands made my guess even more likely.
Training animals is a much tougher and harder job than one might imagine.
The fact that he’s doing a job that’s impossible without truly caring for and loving animals means that he, like me, is sincere about animals.
They say there are no bad people among animal lovers.
The man with the friendly smile guided me, saying that the wolf I wanted was prepared inside.
There were several rooms along the corridor I walked following him.
-Puppy
-Cat
…..
Judging by the animal names written, it seemed to be the pet corner.
There were numerous pet corners, which explained why the shop could be maintained even when catering only to high-ranking individuals.
If I opened those doors, various animals looking for owners would welcome me, but I had a different animal in mind.
Animals like dogs and cats can be easily found anywhere without going through such a complicated process.
However, the animal I wanted was far from ordinary, so no shops dealt with it.
In a way, it’s natural.
Would I be satisfied with ordinary animals that I could easily encounter even in my previous life, when I’ve been in this fantasy world for almost ten years after being possessed?
‘Cats and dogs aside, I wasn’t even attracted to animals like snakes or spiders, so that says it all.’
How much further did we walk? Finally, I saw the end of the corridor.
There was a door with a crude shape, and the employee grabbed the doorknob and said,
“Now! Inside here is the white wolf you’re looking for, professor!”
With those words, he opened the door and.
Inside the room, a wolf with gleaming white fur…!
“…?”
Wasn’t there.
‘No, come to think of it, the walls in this room are a bit strange?’
But my confusion was brief. Noticing that the walls of the room had been magically treated, I looked at the employee.
“Please wait a moment! I’ll show you now!”
Saying this, he rushed to the wall and hurriedly started pressing several bricks.
I felt the magic hanging on the wall activate in response, and shortly after.
-Crack!
The wall began to split.
While I was momentarily lost in the presentation that seemed to stimulate a man’s romance, the man who had approached without me noticing pointed to the iron bars and said,
“Now, how is it, professor? This is the white wolf you were looking for.”
The wolf’s eyes shone with a brilliant golden light despite being trapped behind iron bars.
Its mane, whiter than snow, swayed gently in sync with the wolf’s breathing.
“Could you take it out for a moment?”
Unable to resist the fur that looked softer than I had imagined, I asked him to open the cage.
I’m going to buy it anyway, so I should be able to touch it a little, right?
“You can pet it as much as you want.”
The man opened the cage without a word, as if he understood, and as if it had been waiting for this moment, the white wolf rushed towards me.
“…!”
An ordinary person would have been scared, thinking the wolf was attacking them, but I didn’t avoid the creature lunging at me.
That’s because what flowed from its eyes was not intense killing intent, but affection.
“Heck! Heck!”
Perhaps realizing why I didn’t avoid it?
The creature that had rushed towards me soon started to snuggle up to me, panting.
The fur I stroked was really soft, just as I had thought.
A stunning appearance that perfectly matched my taste, with a playful personality that would snuggle up to a stranger at first sight.
For some reason, it was wearing something like a shabby straw mat, but that was a problem that could be solved by taking it off later or dressing it in new clothes.
Judging that I would definitely regret it if I didn’t buy it today, I found myself asking about its price.
“The price… With the hope that you’ll visit us often in the future, we’ll take just 10,000 gold.”
After feeling such softness, what does the price matter?
I opened my wallet without hesitation, with a happy heart.
…In fact, the reason it was only half the price I had expected before coming to the shop also helped.
“Heck Heck”
Is it naturally affectionate?
Even while I was making the payment, it stared at me intently as if wanting to be petted, and I gave it a small eye smile.
“By the way, I didn’t know that a renowned professor in the empire would be interested in something like this.”
“On the contrary, it’s because I’m a professor that I can’t help but be interested. As I mentioned earlier, the stress from the academy is not insignificant.”
“Yes, I understand. When I get stressed working here, I often relieve it by petting these guys too.”
“Thank you for understanding. Well, I’ll be going now. I need to name this one and prepare a room for it to stay in.”
“If there’s anything you need, please visit us anytime.”
Receiving a polite farewell from the employee who showed what the service of the empire’s best shop was like until the end, I returned to my office at the academy by tearing a scroll.
“Heck! Heck!”
Of course, with the wolf that had now become my pet.

“Finally got rid of that son of a bitch.”
A voice was heard behind the man who was looking at the spot where the professor had used the teleport scroll.
It was the contact person who had brought the professor to the shop.
“If it had just been fierce, we could have sold it to those nobles who like to subdue such bitches.”
The face of the man answering that voice had long lost the smile and politeness he had shown to the professor earlier.
“That’s what I’m saying. I wondered who would buy that cursed bitch abandoned even by its pack. That professor is quite strange too.”
Wolf beastmen typically have hair colors ranging from black to gray.
But the hair of the product that was just sold was white, so white it looked even whiter than snow.
It was what they call a cursed child.
They had bought it thinking to sell it to nobles who can’t resist rare things…
Perhaps because of the ominous rumors that exceeded its rarity? No one wanted to buy it.
It was a loss to keep an unsold product, so they were planning to dispose of it tonight.
But the professor who suddenly appeared bought it.
The sight of the professor willingly purchasing a product that everyone else had rejected was strange even to the slave traders, but.
“What does it matter? It’s good for us that we sold off the bad stock.”
“That’s true.”
To these people who only cared about selling their goods, strange customers like the professor were rather welcome.
“Still, I didn’t expect him to treat that bitch like an animal until the end.”
But even to them, the professor’s behavior was a bit unexpected.
The beastperson who lunged and bit his neck as soon as the cage was opened.
Even though there was no harm done, to treat it like that until the end.
“You know, there are sometimes humans who don’t treat beastpeople as people.”
“I know that. But I didn’t expect the professor to be like that, that’s what I’m saying.”
“Oh, my friend, you’ll get in big trouble if you judge people just by their appearance.”
The man who ended the conversation with his colleague as if to say the world is wide and there are many kinds of people, recalls the professor once again.
Those two eyes that you can’t tell what they contain.
The tone and behavior that seem to not even treat beastpeople as people, even though they’re slaves.
His demeanor of treating a beastperson lunging with killing intent like a pet showing affection even exuded a subtle madness.
‘Just look at him and you can tell, that’s a madman, a complete madman.’
Though he wore the mask of a respected professor, such a mere mask couldn’t completely hide his true nature.
Thinking that perhaps being disposed of would have been better for the product, he closed the shop’s door.