Don't forget to spare a comment or a stone, if it pleases you.
Without any further to do, enjoy!
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(Thousands of Years Ago)
(?'s POV)
The sun over Patch was lazy and gold, spilling through the leaves of the trees behind the Xiao Long house and painting the porch in shifting, dappled shadows.
The air hummed with summer bugs and the distant, rhythmic crash of waves on the cliffs. It was the kind of peace you could feel in your bones, the kind you had to earn.
The only other sound was the soft, metallic Shink of a whetstone on steel.
She leaned against the porch railing, a glass of iced tea sweating in her hand, and just watched him.
Akira sat on the top step of the entrance, his back to her, all that fierce, impossible focus poured into the simple act of sharpening his blade. He was using her father's old whetstone.
His movements were pure economy, no wasted motion, just the perfect, repeated whisper of stone on metal, a sound that promised a cut so clean you wouldn't feel it.
He'd been quiet today. But then, Akira was always quiet.
It wasn't the brooding kind of quiet, or the sullen kind. It was just… his default state.
A deep, solid calm that settled over everything around him.
The frantic energy of the city, the leftover jitters from the Breach
It all just… washed off him. He'd been the still, silent centre of that whole nightmare, and he carried that stillness with him like a second skin.
His skill? Well, that was just Akira. He was a fact of life, like gravity or Grimm. He belonged here. He just did.
From day one in Beacon Academy, he showed and masterful prowess in all forms of combat. Hand-to-Hand, weapon usage, gun usage (Though he didn't carry a gun with him)
Even Professor Goodwitch found a kindred spirit in him, for his discipline and similar Semblances. Even if he showed a prowess and understanding of it that even left the Combat Teacher wide-eyed
Her eyes drifted from his hands to the faint, disappearing line on her left shoulder. A Breach souvenir. Her mind drifted back, not to the scary parts, but to the parts that were already becoming legend
She remembered the chaos. The streets of Vale choked with Grimm, the deafening roar of that damn dragon circling above, making more Grimm just by existing.
She'd gotten cut off from her team, holding a line to protect a bunch of civilians when she got jumped.
White Fang Lieutenants, good ones. And then he showed up. Adam.
His presence was like a cold wave, and his blade was already glowing red with that bastard's Semblance of his. He moved like a red streak, too fast, aimed not to fight, but to kill. To take. She braced for it.
Then, the air changed. The sound of the fight just… died.
Akira was just there. He didn't crash in
The world just sort of made space for him. He was between her and Adam, his back to her, his katana still in its sheath. He hadn't even drawn it.
Adam's swing, all that rage and stored-up energy, just stopped dead in the air.
The red glow around his sword sputtered and died like a doused match.
Adam strained, muscles bulging, but his arm was locked solid, held by something invisible and absolute.
Akira didn't even look at him. He was looking at the other Fang guys, and they just froze under that flat, red gaze.
He lifted his empty hand, a casual little flick of his wrist, and they were thrown back into a busted-up storefront like ragdolls, out cold. They were nothing. An afterthought. Handled.
Then he turned his head, just a fraction, and looked at Adam. That was it. No words. No big threat. Just a look.
And Adam Taurus, the big, bad wolf of the White Fang, actually flinched. He took a step back. All that fight just drained out of him. He turned and ran, vanishing into the smoke, his stupid vendetta forgotten.
But the big show wasn't over. The dragon was still up there, a black stain on the sky.
Akira's hand finally went to his katana. The draw wasn't flashy. It was… final. The blade came out without a sound, and it didn't shine. It seemed to suck the light right in, a sliver of perfect darkness against all the fire and chaos.
He didn't jump. He just… stepped up. Like he was climbing stairs nobody else could see. The air got thick around him, solid. The dragon turned its huge head, those burning eyes locking onto this tiny, stupid thing walking toward it.
Akira stopped right in front of its face. He didn't swing for the fences. He just made one, single, precise cut through the air in front of it.
There was no boom, no explosion. Just a line. A thin, black seam in the world, connecting his blade to the dragon.
The giant Grimm hung there for a second, totally still. Then, along that line, it started to come apart. The evil energy pouring off it, the stuff that was making more Grimm, just got cut off at the root.
The thing didn't die; it unravelled, turning into black dust that blew away on the wind. Silent. Total.
The Breach was over. Just like that.
He was the Hero of Vale because what else do you call that? But he never talked about it.
She figured that for him it was just a job that needed doing. A messy problem that required a clean solution.
A soft click brought her back to the porch. Akira had set his blade aside, its edge now perfect. He didn't turn around.
"Your father's oil is adequate. But the stone is glazing. It needs to be dressed."
Yang smiled and pushed off the railing, going to sit beside him on the step, her shoulder pressing against his. She handed him her tea. "I'll tell him."
He took the glass, his fingers brushing hers. His skin was always cool. He took a sip, his red eyes scanning their peaceful, sun-soaked yard. "It's quiet today."
"It is," she agreed, leaning her head on his shoulder.
She felt the solid strength of him.
This was the guy who walked up to a dragon and erased it, now perfectly happy to sit on her porch and judge a whetstone. It should've been weird, but on him, it just made sense.
They sat like that for a while, not talking. The memory of what he did was just a quiet thing between them now. She never worried about where he came from. He was just Akira. Her Akira. The strongest guy in Remnant, who liked quiet moments after a storm.
"Ruby's new weapons magazine came in," he said after a while, his voice a low rumble she felt against her cheek.
She snorted. "Yeah. She's probably figuring out how to strap a grenade launcher to Crescent Rose without losing a finger."
"A logical progression. The area denial would be significant. The engineering is problematic."
Yang laughed. "You're as bad as she is." She looked up at his profile. "You gonna help her?"
"If she asks." He turned to the sky, like looking for something "You hungry?"
"Depends. You cooking?"
"I can provide a feast for my lady"
She grinned. " 'A feast for your lady.' You sure know how to make a girl feel special."
He finally turned his head to look at her, and a tiny, almost-there smile touched his lips. It was like seeing sunlight at the bottom of a deep well. "Well then, I better get started with that then"
It was basically his version of a sweet nothing.
And for her, it was enough. He was here. He was present. And, he was hers
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(?'s POV)
The school hallway was a text, and Utaha was its most dedicated reader.
Every giggle, every sidelong glance, every hushed whisper was a line of dialogue, a piece of character development, a plot point in the endless, mildly tedious slice-of-life series that was Soubu High.
Most of it was filler.
Today, however, a new and fascinating subplot had been introduced.
The buzz was unavoidable. It clung to the air around the staff room and the second-year classrooms like a potent perfume.
The subject: Yoshioka-sensei, the new English teacher, and his now-legendary dissection of William Blake.
From the fragmented conversations she'd expertly pieced together, Utaha had constructed the scene.
It wasn't the fawning over his appearance that interested her, though she could objectively appreciate the character design.
Platinum hair, crimson eyes, a jawline sharp enough to be a plot device? It was a cliché, really. The kind of design a rookie illustrator would overuse for a mysterious side character.
No, the interesting part was the writing. The dialogue.
"A question made of fire and muscle and fear."
"Perfection that inspires terror."
"The courage to stare into the burning eyes of the terrifying and magnificent."
This wasn't teacher-speak.
This was monologue.
This was backstory material.
This was the kind of prose you gave to a centuries-old vampire reflecting on his existence, or a war-weary mecha pilot gazing at the stars.
Her writer's instincts, usually languidly amused by the banality of high school life, were now fully alert. This was no longer filler.
This was a potential source material.
She found her opportunity after school, a chance encounter engineered with the effortless precision of a seasoned editor placing a comma.
She was returning a book to the staff room
A flimsy pretence, but a socially acceptable one.
As she approached, she saw the subject of her inquiry through the open door.
Yoshioka-sensei was at his desk, not grading papers, but simply… existing.
The late afternoon light framed him not as a person, but as a composition of light and shadow.
He held a cup of tea, his gaze fixed on some distant point beyond the window, his expression one of profound and absolute ennui.
It wasn't the tiredness of a teacher after a long day.
It was the weariness of a protagonist at the end of a trilogy, watching the credits roll on a story that had cost him everything.
Hiratsuka-sensei was nearby, watching him with a mix of concern and fascination that Utaha immediately catalogued for potential use
Utaha paused in the doorway, not entering, simply observing. She wasn't seeing a handsome teacher.
She was studying a character.
'His posture is too perfect, too still. Not the relaxed slump of exhaustion, but the conscious, energy-conserving stillness of a predator or a soldier. He holds the cup not for comfort, but as a prop, a tool to perform the mundane act of 'having tea.' His eyes… they don't scan the room for threats or points of interest. They are settled. They have already seen everything worth seeing'
A dozen tropes flickered through her mind. 'Reincarnated hero. Amnesiac assassin. Time-traveling survivor. Fallen angel on sabbatical'
Each one was deliciously absurd, and yet, the evidence was mounting.
He had spoken of "fearful symmetry" not as an academic concept, but with the weight of firsthand experience.
He had described societal chains not from a textbook, but with the air of someone who had broken them, or forged them.
Hiratsuka-sensei said something to him, pulling him from his reverie.
He turned his head, and those crimson eyes focused. The shift was infinitesimal, but to Utaha, it was as dramatic as a camera cut.
The distant, thousand-yard stare retracted, replaced by a neutral, polite mask. The performance of 'Yoshioka-sensei' resumed.
And it was a performance. She was certain of it now.
The economy of motion, the flat, measured tone, the utter lack of social frivolity
It wasn't just personality. It was control. It was a character he was playing, and he was playing it with a method actor's intensity.
A slow, knowing smile touched Utaha's lips. This was far more interesting than any rumour about his looks.
The students saw a mysterious, handsome sensei. Hiratsuka-sensei saw a compelling, tired man.
But Kasumigaoka Utaha saw a narrative
She saw a man whose every word and action felt like a line of dialogue from a much darker, more epic story.
A story he had left behind, but whose echoes haunted him in the quiet moments between grading essays and drinking tea.
She finally moved, entering the staff room to deliver her book, her heart beating with a quiet, professional excitement.
The boring high school setting had just introduced its most compelling character yet. She didn't need to know his secret yet. The mystery was the point.
The question wasn't who he was. The question was, what genre did he belong to? And more importantly, how could she, as an author, use him?
As she walked away, a title formed in her mind, a potential concept for a new series: The Teacher Who Stands in the Doorway of Dawn and Dusk.
Yes. That had a certain ring to it. She would be watching him very, very closely. Not with a schoolgirl's crush, but with a writer's hungry eyes, ready to take notes.
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(?'s POV)
Hayama Hayato leaned against the chair of the cafeteria, the chatter of his usual group a familiar, comforting hum around him.
The topic, inevitably, had turned to the new teacher.
"...and he didn't even smile once! But it was so cool," one of the girls from his class sighed, clutching her textbook to her chest as if it were a sacred text.
"It was just a poem," one of the boys grumbled, kicking lightly the polished floor. "He made it way more complicated than it needed to be."
Hayama offered a neutral, pleasant smile, the one that fit every situation. "I thought it was quite insightful. He has a unique perspective."
It was the expected response. The Hayama Hayato response. Agreeable, diplomatic, and utterly surface-level.
But internally, his mind was still, a rare occurrence.
The two-hour lesson had cut through the usual social noise with the precision of a scalpel. It wasn't that the concepts were new.
Hayama was smart enough to grasp them. It was the certainty with which Yoshioka-sensei spoke.
Hayama's entire life was a performance of calibrated reactions. He knew the exact smile to disarm, the right word to encourage, the precise tone to deflect.
He was a master of reading a room and giving it exactly what it expected from "Hayama Hayato."
Yoshioka-sensei didn't read the room. He redefined it.
He didn't seek agreement or approval. He simply stated truths as he saw them, with a chilling, absolute conviction that felt… ancient.
"The chains people make for themselves in their own heads. The curses they inherit and then willingly pass on."
The words had landed a little too close to home.
Hayama felt the pleasant smile on his face become a brittle thing.
Was that what he was doing? Passing on a curse of expectation, of perpetual performance? Was his entire persona a set of "mind-forg'd manacles"?
He watched Tobe try to impress a group of girls by mockingly reciting, "Tyger Tyger, burning bright!" and failing miserably. The performance was hollow, obvious. Just like his own.
For a moment, Hayama felt a surge of something ugly and unfamiliar, not envy, but a deep, resonant fatigue.
Yoshioka-sensei, with his terrifying symmetry and world-weary eyes, seemed more genuine in his disengagement than Hayama had ever been in his engagement.
He looked out over the school grounds, the perfectly manicured fields, the predictable flow of students.
He wondered what it would be like to have a core of such unwavering, unapologetic certainty that you could render a room silent not with charm, but with stark, unvarnished truth.
He doubted it was a skill one could learn.
It felt like something earned through trauma he couldn't begin to imagine.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. Another message, another invitation, another expectation. The performance demanded its lead actor.
He pushed off from the fence, his signature smile effortlessly back in place. "We should probably head back. Club activities are starting."
As he led the group off the cafeteria, the image of the platinum-haired teacher, a statue of stillness amidst the chaos, lingered in his mind.
A tiger, perfectly, terribly itself, in a forest of lambs.
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(?'s POV)
The Service Club room was quiet, a sanctuary of order and efficiency just for her (At the moment).
Yukino preferred it this way. The lingering emotional resonance from the English lesson felt like a dissonant chord in her otherwise logically structured world.
She meticulously did her homerwork, her movements sharp and precise. But her focus was divided.
"Innocence is not ignorance. It is a state of grace before the fall into knowledge. Experience is not wisdom. It is the scar tissue that remains."
The words were a virus, disrupting her clean mental algorithms.
She had approached the poem as she approached everything: a system of metaphors to be logically decoded, social commentary to be historically contextualized.
Yoshioka-sensei had dismissed that approach without ever saying a word against it. He had bypassed the academic and gone straight for the philosophical, no, the existential.
It was infuriating. And intriguing.
His interpretation wasn't just an analysis
It was a worldview. A dark, weary, yet strangely unwavering one.
Spoke of terror and creation not as concepts, but as tangible forces he had personally witnessed.
The teacher had dismantled everyone's defences, not through force, but through sheer, uncompromising clarity.
He was an anomaly. A variable her equations couldn't account for.
Her sister, Haruno, would likely find him deliciously mysterious and make a game of trying to fluster him. The thought was irritating.
Yukino placed her notebook in her school bag and closed it with a definitive click.
A question challenged her. A question made of fire and muscle and fear.
Who was he, to speak with such authority on the nature of darkness? What experience had granted him this perspective, and why was he here, in this most mundane of settings, dispensing it like bitter medicine?
She didn't crave his approval, as some of her peers might.
She craved understanding.
She needed to deconstruct his certainty, to see if it withstood logical scrutiny, or if it was merely the facade of a deeply cynical man.
One thing was certain
English Literature had suddenly become the most intellectually compelling subject on her schedule.