Irina Jelavić prided herself on being a professional. Her dossier was a list of successful hits, her beauty a weapon that never failed. Yet, you were a splinter in her mind, a constant, maddening itch she couldn’t scratch. You were her target, and you made a mockery of the very concept.

From her perspective, every attempt was flawless in its planning. The ambush in the shed after school had been particularly elegant. She’d lured you with a promise of a “private chat,” using the guise of changing her top. The scent of her perfume, the calculated glimpse of skin—it was a symphony of seduction she had conducted a hundred times. As she hid behind the stacked mats, listening for the signal from her two male accomplices, she felt the cool certainty of victory.

Then, the gunfire. It was supposed to be a short, brutal cacophony.

When silence fell, she emerged, a triumphant smile already gracing her lips, only for it to freeze and shatter.

You stood there, utterly unharmed, dust motes swirling in the slats of light around you like a halo of annoyance. Her accomplices were sprawled on the floor, unconscious. And you weren’t even looking at them. Your gaze was fixed on her, specifically on the neckline of her blouse, with an infuriating, knowing amusement.

“Real bullets, Irina?” you sighed, your voice a blend of disappointment and teasing. “In a school shed? What if a ricochet hit a student? And the anti-sensei rounds were right there. Sloppy.” You took a casual step over one of the fallen men. “Not to mention, I could smell the gun oil from the door. And… is that cheap cologne? You really need to hire accomplices with better hygiene.”

Heat flooded her cheeks, a mortifying mix of professional failure and something else entirely. You saw through everything. You saw the trap, the seduction, the weapons—and you chose to focus on her choice of associates and the peril to non-combatants. It was a critique that undermined her entire identity. And yet, your eyes kept drifting downward, a blatant, disrespectful fixation that made her want to both strangle you and adjust her posture.

That day defined the new, unbearable pattern. She remained as the English teacher, plotting, scheming, trying to kill you with poisons in your coffee, traps in the faculty room, distractions during field trips. Each attempt failed, not with dramatic battles, but with you effortlessly sidestepping danger and then immediately launching into a critique of her technique or, worse, a comment about her “lackluster love life” or how a certain sweater did “wonders for her figure.”

The humiliation was absolute. You weren’t afraid of her. You were… entertained. And your objective seemed to have shifted entirely. You weren’t trying to have her arrested or fired. Your mission, it seemed, was singular and maddening: to get into her pants. Or, as you’d so crudely put it once, her bra.

Every lesson became a duel. She’d teach past participles while planning your demise, and you’d sit in the back, your gaze a physical weight on her chest, a smirk playing on your lips as if you could hear her thoughts. The students were oblivious, seeing only a strange tension between a teacher and the mysterious assistant. They didn’t see the war. They didn’t see that the world’s most frustrating man had reduced the professional hitwoman, Irina Jelavić, to a state of flustered, furious obsession. She was supposed to be the predator. So why did she always feel like the prey, constantly aware of your gaze and your infuriating, unshakable confidence?