The silence stretched, thick and heavy.
The man, this anomaly, simply waited, his crimson eyes holding a depth that felt less like looking into someone's soul and more like staring into the void between stars.
The memory of Toji Fushiguro was a cold blade twisting in Geto's gut, a ghost he'd thought long buried. But this was different.
Toji had been a void, yes, but a violent, predatory one. This man was… still. A placid, absolute zero.
Geto's mind, honed by years of manipulation and survival, clawed its way past the shock. Information. He needed information.
A charming, disarming smile, the one he used on nervous politicians and potential converts, spread across his face. It felt brittle on his lips.
"My apologies," Geto said, his voice smooth, layering warmth over the icy curiosity within. "I didn't mean to trespass. The architecture is quite striking under the moonlight. I'm something of an enthusiast." The lie flowed as easily as he breathed "I'm Geto Suguru. And you are?"
The man didn't react to the offered name or the feigned friendliness.
His head tilted a fraction of a degree, a motion so slight it was barely perceptible, yet it felt like a full-body dismissal.
"This facility is closed to enthusiasts after hours" The man stated, his tone unchanged. It wasn't a rebuke. It was a simple recitation of fact, devoid of any concern for who Geto was or why he was really there.
The dismissal was more unnerving than any threat could have been. Geto's smile tightened. He needed a reaction.
Any reaction. A test.
With a thought so swift it was nearly subconscious, he summoned one of his curses. Not a powerful one, a Grade 4, a skittering, multi-limbed thing made of shadows and spite.
It materialized from the folds of his robe, launching itself silently from behind his leg, a blur of malice aimed at the stranger's back. A probe. An insult. Something to gauge a defence.
It never reached him.
It got closer. It was within arm's reach of the man's pristine shirt.
And then it was gone.
There was no puff of smoke, no cry of pain. One moment the curse was in motion, a dedicated projectile of hatred. The next, the space it occupied was empty. It was deleted from existence in the time it takes a synapse to fire.
The man hadn't moved.
His eyes hadn't left Geto's face.
He hadn't so much as blinked.
There was no flicker of effort, no surge of hidden power, no satisfaction.
It was as if he had simply… willed an error in reality to be corrected.
And in that horrifying, effortless nullification, the final piece clicked into place in Geto's mind.
The patterns of erased curses.
The perfect, clean voids where his carefully placed curses should have been. The reports of 'no residual energy, no sign of a fight.'
It wasn't a technique. It wasn't an exorcism.
It was him.
This placid, empty man standing in the moonlight was the cleaner.
He wasn't just the cleaner of this school
He was a universal solvent for anything made of Cursed Energy that dared to enter his domain.
The charming facade on Geto's face finally shattered, replaced by a look of stark, naked realization.
The cold knot in his stomach turned to solid ice. He wasn't facing a sorcerer or a curse user. He was facing a natural law he had never known existed.
The anomaly finally spoke again, his voice still perfectly calm, as if a Grade 4 curse hadn't just been unmade a foot from his body.
"Your business," the man repeated, the words a soft, final pressure in the silent night. "Does it involve releasing more of those... pests?"
The way he said it, 'pests', with the mild disdain of a man noticing a fly in his kitchen, broke the last of Geto's composure. He took a single, involuntary step back.
The man's question hung in the air, dripping with an insulting, casual disregard. Pests. The word echoed in Geto's mind, fracturing his carefully constructed calm.
This... thing was dismissing his life's work, his power, as nothing more than an infestation.
A cold, furious resolve solidified within him.
A test. He needed to see the limits of this nullification.
With a flicker of his will, he didn't summon one curse. He unleashed a volley.
A Grade 3, a shrieking monstrosity of fused teeth and claws, materialized from his right sleeve.
Simultaneously, from his left, a Grade 2, a hulking brute with stone-like skin, erupted from the shadows, its fists already swinging toward the man's head.
They came from different angles, a coordinated assault designed to overwhelm.
They vanished.
Not in sequence, but in unison.
The shrieking was cut off as if by a guillotine. The massive stone fist ceased to exist a hair's breadth from the man's temple.
There was no collision, no dissipation of energy.
They were simply edited out of reality the moment they entered his personal space.
The night was silent again, save for the frantic beating of Geto's own heart.
Impossible. This wasn't a technique with a cost or a cooldown. It was absolute.
A law of the world specific to this man.
'He doesn't negate the curses' Geto realized, the truth chilling him to the bone. 'He negates the Cursed Energy itself. He erases the concept of it from his vicinity'
Which meant ranged attacks, his entire arsenal, were utterly useless.
They were made of the very thing this man deleted.
Fine. If Cursed Energy was meaningless here, then he would use the one thing that had always been a constant, the one thing that had defeated the strongest once before: pure, physical force.
The memory of Fushiguro Toji, the Heavenly Restricted Man, burned in his mind.
A man with zero Cursed Energy who had moved faster than sight, who had broken a Six Eyes user.
This nullity before him had no visible reinforcement, no aura of strength. He was just a man.
Geto's body coiled, every muscle tensed. He discarded all pretence, all strategy. He simply moved.
He was across the courtyard in a blur, his robes whipping behind him.
He was no slouch in hand-to-hand combat; he was a master sorcerer, his body enhanced and honed by Cursed Energy.
He aimed a devastating, reinforced kick at the man's knee, intending to shatter it and bring him down.
His foot never connected.
One moment, he was in mid-air, his attack a fraction of a second from landing.
The next, he was flat on his back on the cold, hard ground of the school courtyard, staring up at the moonlit sky.
There was no transition. No sensation of impact, of being hit, thrown, or dodged. No sound. It was a discontinuity in his existence.
One frame, he was attacking. Next frame, he was on his back.
The air was knocked from his lungs. He lay there, stunned, his mind completely blank, trying to process the lapse in reality. He hadn't been fast.
He hadn't been anything. He had simply... ceased his attack and commenced lying down, with nothing in between.
He turned his head, his neck aching with a whiplash that hadn't happened.
The man was standing exactly where he had been, in the same relaxed posture. He hadn't moved. His hands were still at his sides. He looked down at Geto, his head tilted slightly, those deep crimson eyes regarding him not with triumph, but with the mild, bored curiosity of a man who had just watched an insect try to climb a perfectly smooth pane of glass.
The utter, soul-crushing totality of his defeat wasn't in the power displayed. It was in the lack of it.
There was nothing to analyse, no technique to decipher.
He had been defeated by a fundamental, unassailable truth: in this man's presence, he was irrelevant.
The cold seeped through his robes, a grounding sensation against the dizzying void in his mind.
Geto pushed himself up, his muscles protesting not from injury, but from the sheer whiplash of the last few seconds.
One moment, action. The next, inaction.
A gap in his consciousness where a fight should have been.
He rose to his feet, his movements slow, deliberate.
The practiced composure was gone, shattered and replaced by a raw, humiliated wariness. He brushed the dirt from his sleeves, a pointless, automatic gesture to reclaim some shred of dignity.
He finally met the man's gaze again.
Those crimson eyes held no mockery, no anger. Only that same, infuriating, bottomless placidity. He hadn't even deemed the event worthy of an emotional response.
The man spoke, his voice unchanged, the same calm, conversational tone he might use to remark on the weather.
"You have overstayed your welcome," he stated. It wasn't a threat. It was a fact. "Leave this place."
He paused, allowing the weight of the command to settle in the silent courtyard. The moon illuminated the sharp lines of his face, making him look less like a man and more like a statue carved from ice and platinum.
"And," he added, the finality in his voice absolute, colder than the night air, "I will not ask a second time."
The words hung in the void he created. There was no implied violence in them, no surge of killing intent. That would have been something Geto could understand, something he could quantify and potentially counter. This was worse. It was a simple, undeniable statement of consequence. The next interaction would not be a request. It would be an execution of whatever law this being represented.
Geto said nothing. There were no words, no clever retorts, no veiled threats. Any attempt would be the pathetic chattering of the monkey he now felt himself to be. His pride, his ideology, his entire sense of power—all of it had been neatly and effortlessly dismantled.
He gave one last, long look at the anomaly standing guard over his quiet, cursed-energy-free kingdom. Then, Suguru Geto turned on his heel and walked away. His steps were not the measured, confident strides of the master manipulator who had arrived. They were the steps of a man who had stared into an abyss so profound it had stared back and found him utterly beneath notice.
He did not run. But he left. And he knew, with a certainty that chilled him deeper than any curse ever could, that the man would not have to ask again
---------------------------------
(Third Person's POV)
Akira watched the retreating figure of Geto Suguru until he disappeared beyond the school gate, melting back into the shadows of the normal world.
The encounter was already filed away in his mind, a minor plot point on the activity of a local antagonist.
The man was a problem, but a predictable one.
For now, he was someone else's problem.
And now, he knows better than to mess with the school
Turning, Akira walked back through the silent school grounds, the absolute void of Cursed Energy returning to its empty state the moment the threat had passed.
He instantly then moved into his apartment.
It was quiet, a space of ordered minimalism, but as he went to prepare his evening tea, he noted the tin was nearly empty.
An oversight.
Without changing out of his clothes, he left again, a solitary figure moving through the neon-lit streets.
His destination was a 24-hour convenience store a few blocks away, a beacon of garish light in the otherwise quiet night.
The automatic doors slid open with a cheerful chime.
The store was brightly lit, humming with the sound of freezers and soft pop music.
He moved through the aisles with the same efficient purpose he applied to everything, his focus on the beverage section.
As he turned into the next aisle, he raised his eyebrow
There, frozen in front of a shelf of instant noodles, was Mafuyu Kirisu.
But this was not the impeccably dressed, perfectly composed teacher from school.
This was a different Kirisu-sensei entirely.
She was wearing a faded, loose pink tracksuit, her usually pristine pink hair was tied back in a messy, lopsided ponytail. In her hands, she held two different cups of instant ramen, a look of intense, weary scrutiny on her face, as if deciding between them was the most draining decision of her week.
She looked up, perhaps sensing his presence.
Their eyes met.
A brilliant, horrified blush instantly exploded across her cheeks, spreading to the tips of her ears.
Her body went rigid. She looked like a soldier caught behind enemy lines in her pajamas.
"Y-Yoshioka-san?!" She stammered, her voice an octave higher than usual.
She quickly tried to straighten her clothes. She looked frantically from him to the ramen cups in her hands, as if considering hiding them behind her back.
Akira regarded her with his usual flat neutrality. "Kirisu-sensei" he acknowledged with a slight nod.
"What are you doing here?" She asked, the question bursting out of her, laced with a mixture of panic and a desperate attempt to regain some semblance of dignity.
Akira slowly held up the box of tea he was holding. "I am purchasing tea," he stated, his tone implying that the answer was the most obvious thing in the world. "It is, generally, the primary activity one engages in at a convenience store"
He glanced at the ramen cups in her hands. "The tonkotsu flavour has a higher sodium content, but the shoyu is lacking in umami depth. A dilemma."
Mafuyu just stared at him, the blush on her face deepening.
She was utterly exposed. Her perfectly curated professional persona shattered in the fluorescent glow of the kombini. And he was just… analysing her instant noodle selection.
"I… see," was all she managed to say, her voice barely a whisper. She quickly, and with far more force than necessary, shoved both ramen cups back onto the shelf, deciding on neither.
Akira gave another slight nod, as if their interaction was now complete, and continued on his way to the checkout, leaving a profoundly flustered Mafuyu Kirisu alone in the snack aisle, her evening of dishevelled solitude thoroughly and unexpectedly disrupted
Akira proceeded to the register, the box of tea in hand. The man behind the counter was a large, heavyset individual who moved with a surprising, fluid grace as he wiped down the surface of the store desk. He looked up as Akira approached, and for a moment, their eyes met.
There was no outward change in expression on either man's face.
But something passed between them in that glance, a silent, mutual recognition that transcended the mundane setting of the convenience store.
It was the understanding of two predators momentarily pausing in a neutral zone, each acknowledging the other's capacity for extreme violence without a single word or threatening gesture.
The cashier, Sakamoto as the name tag supplied, gave a nearly imperceptible nod, his eyes sharp and aware despite his relaxed posture.
Akira returned the nod with a slight dip of his chin. The transaction was completed in silence, the only sound the beep of the scanner and the rustle of a bag.
Along with his tea, Akira had picked up a warm pork bun.
He exited the store, the night air cool against his skin.
He found a relatively quiet spot just outside the circle of bright light from the storefront, unwrapped the bun, and took a methodical bite.
He had barely swallowed when the door chimed again. Mafuyu emerged, now looking marginally more composed, though a faint blush still dusted her cheeks. She clutched her own small bag like a shield.
"Yoshioka-san" she said, her voice firm but slightly rushed. "What you saw tonight… my… appearance. I would… appreciate it if that remained between us." The request was delivered with her usual attempt at authority, but it was undercut by a palpable vulnerability.
Akira finished his bite of the pork bun. "I have no recollection of what you are referring to" he stated simply. It wasn't an agreement; it was a statement of fact. Her disarray was irrelevant information, not worth cataloguing or disseminating.
Seemingly pacified, and perhaps because she had no other option, Mafuyu fell into step beside him as he began walking in the direction of their residences.
The silence that descended was heavy, broken only by the sound of their footsteps on the pavement.
Mafuyu fidgeted with the strap of her bag, the blush returning every time she glanced at his impassive profile.
After a block of unbearable quiet, she spoke again. "My apartment is three blocks ahead." It was an offering, a way to break the tension.
Akira looked straight ahead. "Mine is five."
And so they walked. Two colleagues, bound by a shared secret of instant noodles and tracksuits, moving through the sleeping city.
The silence was no longer heavy, but it was… tranquil. For Mafuyu, it was intensely awkward. For Akira, it was merely walking towards his home.
Finally, they reached her building. She stopped, turning to him. "Well. Goodnight, Yoshioka-san"
"Goodnight, Kirisu-sensei" He replied, his tone unchanged. He didn't wait for her to go inside; he simply continued walking, his figure soon swallowed by the shadows between the streetlights.
Akira continued the final two blocks to his own apartment building. As he approached his door, the one next to his opened.
His neighbour, a man with a sharp, stern face, an intimidating presence, and a full-body tattoo sleeve visible on his forearm beneath his rolled-up sleeve, stepped out.
He was wearing a frilly pink apron over his clothes, holding a small bag of trash.
Their eyes met. The man, Kuroda Tatsu, gave a single, grave nod, his expression deadly serious. "The night air is good for taking out the trash," he stated, his voice a low rumble that suggested hidden meaning.
"Indeed," Akira replied with a similar gravity. "A necessary domestic duty."
Of course, Akira knew there was no hidden meaning, it was just a househusband taking out the trash.
Tatsu headed for the garbage disposal, and Akira unlocked his door.
Inside, his apartment was as still and orderly as he had left it. He placed the new box of tea in the cupboard, aligning it perfectly with the others. His movements were ritualistic, calm.
He then walked to his living room and sat on the pristine floor.
From a small drawer, he retrieved a handheld game console, its design sleek and modern. He powered it on, the screen casting a soft blue light on his impassive face.
He selected a game, a complex-looking strategy title involving intergalactic empires.
"It has been a while since I played a game," he murmured to the empty room.
And for the first time that night, a faint, almost imperceptible hint of something resembling focus, perhaps even anticipation, entered his crimson eyes.
The screen loaded, and for a few hours, the destroyer of worlds and eraser of curses lost himself in the simple, structured conflict of a virtual one.
---------------------------------------------
(?'s POV)
The world was reduced to a symphony of thunder and dirt.
Each concussive blast of mortar fire was a kick to the chest, each crack of a passing bullet a lethal whisper. The landscape was a torn wasteland of sand and shattered stone, offering little cover beyond shallow craters and the husks of burnt-out vehicles.
And in the centre of it all was him.
Yoshioka Akira. A young man, barely in his 20s. His face, now hardened beyond its years, was covered in a film of grime and sweat.
He clutched an assault rifle with a white-knuckled grip, the metal warm against his cheek. The familiar weight was the only anchor in the chaos.
From the edge of their foxhole, their commander, a man with a face like cracked leather, screamed over the din. "Alright maggots, let's move! We push that treeline! And make sure to kill every single one of them!!"
A ragged chorus answered him. "AYE, SIR!"
Akira vaulted over the lip of the hole, his body moving on autopilot, drilled into him through countless hellish repetitions.
He ran, a low crouch, alongside his brothers in arms.
The air itself seemed to vibrate with the whine of incoming fire.
To his left, a man he knew only as Jenkins suddenly pirouetted and crumpled, a dark flower blooming on his chest. He hit the dirt without a sound.
To his right, another soldier screamed as a round took his leg, tumbling into the mud.
Akira didn't stop. He couldn't. Stopping was death.
He dove behind the crumbling remains of a stone wall, the impact jarring his teeth. His breathing was ragged, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs.
"Daniel!" he shouted, his voice hoarse. "You still with me?"
A grunt answered from a few feet away. "Barely, you bastard! This is a meat grinder!"
Daniel, a man with a crooked grin that was currently absent, scrambled over to him, his own rifle cradled close. Dust and blood streaked his face.
"Ammo" Akira said, the word short, clipped. "I'm running low."
Daniel didn't hesitate, pulling a half-empty magazine from his webbing and tossing it over. "Make 'em count. That's my lunch money you're spending."
Akira slammed the magazine home with a practiced click. "Noted. I'll buy you a steak if we get out of this"
"When we get out" Daniel corrected, a flicker of his usual bravado returning. "Flank left? That machine gun nest is pinning down the whole platoon."
Akira nodded, a quick, sharp motion. "Flank left. On three"
They moved in unison, a well-rehearsed dance of death.
They would sprint, one providing covering fire while the other advanced, then switch.
They weaved through the hellscape, the staccato rhythm of their own weapons adding to the cacophony.
For a few minutes, they were a perfect engine of war, a tiny island of lethal efficiency in the ocean of chaos. They reached a new position, a shallow dip in the ground that offered a slightly better angle.
"Alright, you son of a bitch," Daniel muttered, lining up his shot at the distant muzzle flash of the enemy machine gun. "Time to—"
The world ended.
There was no sound first.
Only a pressure, an immense, suffocating force that slammed into them from the side.
Then the sound came, a deafening, metallic CRUMP that felt like it would liquefy his organs.
The ground erupted.
Akira felt himself leave the earth, weightless.
Time stretched, then snapped back with brutal force.
He landed hard, the air driven from his lungs in a painful gasp.
Dirt and debris rained down around him. His ears rang with a high-pitched whine, muting the outside world to a dull roar.
Disoriented, his body screaming in protest, he pushed himself up onto his elbows. Smoke and dust choked the air. He blinked, trying to clear his vision.
"Daniel?" he croaked. No answer.
He looked around frantically.
His rifle. Where was his rifle? His hands felt naked, vulnerable without it.
His eyes scanned the churned earth, finally landing on it, a few meters away, half-buried in dirt.
Every movement was agony.
Something was wrong with his side, a hot, piercing pain with every breath. Ignoring it, he began to crawl. His world shrank to the few feet of torn earth between him and his weapon. His fingers clawed at the dirt, dragging his body forward, inch by painful inch.
The muted booms of the ongoing battle continued around him, but they felt distant now.
His entire universe was the rifle. It was survival. It was everything.
His fingertips finally brushed against the cold, familiar metal of the stock.
He closed his hand around it, a spark of grim triumph cutting through the pain and the ringing in his ears. He had it. Now he just had to find Daniel.
Now he just had to survive. He started to turn, to look for his friend, his movements slow and laboured.
The world began to swim at the edges of his vision. The metallic taste of blood was in his mouth.
"I need to go home," he murmured, his voice raspy, almost gone. "I need to go back to my... my..."
He trailed off, his gaze distant, as if searching the barren horizon for the memory of a place that felt like a dream itself.
Then, a name surfaced, clawing its way from the depths of his exhaustion, spoken not with love, but with the raw need of a drowning man gasping for a single breath of air.
"Shizuka?"
It was a question. A plea.
His voice grew louder, more frantic, cracking under the weight of a longing so immense it was physically painful to witness.
"Shizuka?!"
He stood up now, shouting at the uncaring sky, his fists clenched at his sides.
"SHIZUKA?!!"
---------------------------
"SHIZUKA?!!"
The scream of her own name echoed in her mind, yanking her violently from the sun-scorched wasteland.
She gasped, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. The coppery taste of blood was replaced by the rich aroma of coffee.
She realized she was standing frozen in front of the coffee machine, one hand holding a mug while the other had over-poured, sending a dark stream of liquid cascading over the rim and onto the counter below.
"Shizuka-san? Are you alright?"
Shizuka's head snapped up. Mafuyu stood nearby, her sharp eyes narrowed in concern, a stack of graded papers held to her chest like a shield. "You've been standing like a statue for a full minute. You called out... your own name?"
"I... what? No, I..." Shizuka stammered, her face flushing with a heat that had nothing to do with the coffee. She fumbled for a handful of tissues, mopping at the spill with clumsy, uncoordinated movements. The image of a young, grim-faced Akira, covered in grime and shouting for her, was seared onto the back of her eyelids. "Just... a daydream. A very vivid one. Sorry, Mafuyu-san"
Before Mafuyu could probe further, the staff room door opened. And there he was.
Yoshioka Akira walked in with his usual, unnervingly silent grace. He looked exactly as he always did: pristine, calm, and utterly composed.
The contrast between the battle-hardened soldier from her daydream and the man calmly placing his briefcase on his desk was so jarring it made her head spin. A fresh, powerful blush erupted across her cheeks.
"Good morning" He stated, his voice that familiar, flat baritone. It was a world away from the ragged, desperate scream still echoing in her memory.
"G-good morning, Yoshioka-san!" Shizuka said, her voice an octave too high. She couldn't help herself. The question tumbled out before her brain could stop it. "I was just... wondering. That's an odd question but... do you... have any scars?"
The moment the words left her mouth, she wanted to vanish into the floor. Mafuyu, who had been turning to leave, paused and shot her a look of pure, unadulterated bewilderment. 'What is wrong with me?' Shizuka screamed internally. 'I need to stop reading those sappy military romance light novels!'
Akira paused in unloading his papers. He turned those deep crimson eyes on her, and for a terrifying second, she thought he could see right into her ridiculous daydream.
"That is an odd question" He agreed, his tone analytical. He seemed to consider it for a moment. "Yes. I have a couple. One on my lower back. Another here." He gestured vaguely towards his abdomen with a single, precise finger.
The simple, factual confirmation was like a lightning bolt.
Her mind, already primed by the daydream, instantly supplied the image: a shirtless Akira, muscles coiled and defined, his skin marred by the pale, stark evidence of past violence. He would be looking at her, those crimson eyes intense, his voice a low command... 'Come closer, Shizuka...'
"EEP!"
A small, utterly undignified sound escaped her. Her face was now the temperature of molten lava. Mafuyu's look of bewilderment had shifted to one of dawning, amused horror.
"Coffee!" Shizuka blurted out, grabbing the overfull, spilled mug as if it were a lifeline. "I need to... drink this! Elsewhere! Now! Excuse me!"
And without another word, clutching the hot mug, she practically fled the staff room, leaving a very confused Akira and a deeply intrigued Mafuyu in her wake.
She leaned against the cool wall of the hallway, her heart still pounding.
She definitely, absolutely, needed to stop reading those books. But the image of that scar, and the man it might belong to, refused to fade.
-----------------------------------------
(Hikigaya Hachiman's POV)
The walk from the entrance to his classroom was a journey through a world stubbornly refusing to process what happened around them
The usual post-class chaos filled the halls, the scrape of chairs, the mindless chatter about lunch plans, the rustle of bags, but it all felt like a thin veneer painted over a profound silence. The kind of silence that follows a thunderclap so loud it leaves your ears ringing.
No one was talking about class. No one was dissecting the last teachings of their fairly well-paid teacher or a theory about existence and metaphysics, one the purposes the Greek created schools. That would require a level of emotional and intellectual engagement far beyond the capabilities of the common high school student. They were, instead, engaging in the much safer activity of discussing the man who had delivered the last lesson.
'And so the herd processes a predator not by analysing its ecological impact, but by fixating on the shine of its teeth and the sleekness of its coat. A perfectly reasonable survival tactic, if you're particularly stupid.'
He could hear the whispers, the same inane refrains on a loop
"...so cool, the way he just... knows things..."
"...his voice is kinda hypnotic, right? I didn't even doze off..."
"...do you think he's single? He has to be, with that aura..."
Yukinoshita Yukino walked ahead, her posture even more rigidly perfect than usual, a sure sign her brain was working at a million cycles per second, trying to deconstruct the two-hour philosophical bombs that had been dropped before in preparation for the new one that would probably be delivered today.
Yuigahama Yui trailed a little behind her own group, looking genuinely troubled, like a puppy that had been shown a complicated math problem.
Even Hayama's group was quieter than usual, their polished, social-ready banter replaced with a more subdued, contemplative energy.
Yumiko Miura, ever the queen of disinterest, was actually listening to her friends chatter about the teacher's "vibe" instead of immediately dismissing them. Her usual bored expression was tempered by a faint, almost imperceptible curiosity. She wasn't captivated by the lesson's content, but by the social disruption it caused, and the source of it. The new alpha specimen had registered on her radar, not as an intellectual puzzle, but as a significant variable in the ecosystem she ruled.
Tobe was uncharacteristically silent, which was perhaps the most telling review of Yoshioka-sensei's teaching method possible.
And then there was Ebina Hina. While others buzzed with a nervous energy, Ebina was preternaturally still, a small, knowing smile playing on her lips. Her eyes, usually hidden behind her glasses, held a peculiar gleam. She wasn't just watching the reactions of the class. She was studying them, her gaze flicking from Hayama's pensive look to Tobe's stunned silence, and back to the image of Yoshioka-sensei's large form. Her imagination, was already weaving a far more elaborate and scandalous narrative than any of them could possibly conceive.
The classroom filled and ready for the next period. English. Again.
The air in the classroom was different. It was charged, anticipatory. The usual pre-class lethargy had been replaced by a nervous energy.
It was the atmosphere of an audience waiting for a magician to return for his second act, unsure if he would pull a rabbit from a hat or saw a volunteer in half.
He slumped into his seat, the familiar wood and metal a small comfort.
His notebook felt heavier, the pages filled not with rote grammar notes, but with fragments of a worldview that felt both deep and terrifyingly immediate.
'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.'
Who thinks like that? Who sees like that? It wasn't teaching.
It was… autopsy. He hadn't explained a poem; he had laid its soul bare on the chalkboard for us to see, still beating.
Damn, if only he had a normal teacher that did the bare minimum, and didn't make him have to write too much or think too much. He preferred when he could pass by barely paying attention in class.
That's one of the reasons he has been watching him closely, to find what was his aim. What was the point of going so far as to break the minds of the weak-willed students and make them scared of their own shadows.
What is his purpose on all of that? Fun? Vengeance? Autism?
Is it even legal to hire autistic teachers?
The door at the front of the class slid open.
The effect was instantaneous.
Every conversation died.
Not a slow petering out, but a sharp, clean cut.
The nervous energy solidified into absolute focus. It was as if someone had suddenly turned off the soundtrack to the world and all that was left was the visual.
Yoshioka-sensei entered.
He moved with that same unnerving, silent efficiency, a shark gliding into waters that had just been chummed.
He carried a fresh stack of papers, his expression the same impassive mask of neutral observation. His crimson eyes did a slow, sweeping scan of the room, taking their measure. It felt less like a greeting and more like a headcount before a deployment.
The atmosphere didn't just change; it crystallized around him.
He was the sole gravitational centre in the room, and they were all just asteroids caught in his pull. He didn't command silence; he simply existed, and silence was the natural byproduct.
After the normal class greeting, he placed the papers on his desk and turned to face us. The late morning light caught the frames of his glasses, turning them opaque for a moment, hiding those unsettling eyes.
He didn't begin with an explanation. He simply picked up a piece of chalk and turned to the board. The sound of it clicking against the surface was absurdly loud in the perfect quiet.
He wrote a single name in that precise, machine-like script.
Howard Phillip Lovecraft
He finished the final 't', placed the chalk down neatly, and turned back to them. His gaze was flat, weary, and held a new, deeper undercurrent.
If discussing Blake had been an autopsy, the name on the board felt like the title of a coroner's report on the concept of sanity itself.
His low baritone filled the silent room, not as a sound, but as a vibration felt in the bones.
"Now," he said, his voice devoid of any academic preamble, "we will talk about another famous English author. Howard Phillip Lovecraft."
A shiver, cold and entirely unwelcome, traced its way down his spine. The bell hadn't even rung.
Class hadn't officially started. But it was already too late. They were already there, on his grasp
'Down the rabbit hole we go, I guess' He thought, the chill from his last class returning with the force of a tidal wave.