Chương 14: Biology

Met by the sight of thirty students talking over one another, scraping chairs, and dropping backpacks onto tabletops as the door swung open, Kurisu tightened his jaw. In the front of the room, a man looked up from a cluttered desk.

"I'm Mr. Welter," the instructor said.

"And you are?"

"Nodaichi."

"Ah, the ESL student. Pick a seat anywhere there's space. We're just getting started." Scanning the room, Kurisu ignored the collective gaze of the other students as the class gradually fell into a curious silence, locking his focus on only one person. In the back of the room sat a boy with an oversized gray hoodie pulled up over his head, the fabric concealing most of his black hair while dark sunglasses covered his eyes, his shoulders hunched inward as if he were trying to remain invisible.

There just so happened to be an empty seat right next to him. Kurisu walked straight to the back, staring down at him with a half-lidded gaze. Looking up as he shifted under the scrutiny, the boy asked, "Can I... help you?" With a contemptuous breath through his nose, Kurisu pulled out the chair next to him, claiming the space as his own. As Mr.

Welter began outlining the semester, pacing the front of the room and pointing toward various posters depicting safety goggles and lab procedures, Kurisu watched the other students slouching in their seats, tapping their phones, and ignoring the lecture. For them, this evidently was routine; for Kurisu, the man's English was a blur of meaningless syllables.

Kurisu tried to focus, leaning forward to pick out the few words he recognized— book, grade, safety —but the effort proved exhausting, especially while the boy in the gray hoodie kept bleeding his unmanaged power all over the place. The erratic flickers poking and prodding at Kurisu's senses. The physical static of it stacked atop the English syllables, blurring the teacher's voice into a high-pitched ring, while everything else faded to a hum. Shimatta, this is profoundly annoying.

Pressing inward on his skull, the pressure finally caused his temper to snap. Kurisu's own power flared. Above them, the classroom's fluorescent lights flickered. The sudden stutter of electricity caused the students to fall instantly silent, several of them looking up at the ceiling to investigate. Mr. Welter paused, staring at the bulbs.

"Well, that was interesting," the instructor said with a shrug.

"Oh well." In that quiet half-second, the pressure around Kurisu receded as he remembered to finally draw a breath. Shifting in his chair, Kurisu recognized there was nothing he could currently do about the English, but he needed to get this boy to stop. He cleared his throat, hoping to get the boy's attention. The whelp flinched, keeping his face angled down at the blank notebook in front of him, but his Ki flickered more, telling Kurisu he was being intentionally ignored.

Clicking his teeth, Kurisu reached out, his hand entering the boy's peripheral vision as he pointed a finger at his own chest, ensuring his movements were deliberate and visible.

"Nodaichi," he said, his voice low enough to stay under the radar of Mr. Welter's resumed lecture.

"Kurisu." The boy continued ignoring him, staring straight ahead. With a growl of irritation, Kurisu frowned; the flickering power was driving him mad, and this kuso whelp was acting as if he were alone in the room. Kurisu leaned in closer, pointing a finger toward him, searching for a way to communicate.

"Your..." Kurisu muttered, his brow furrowed in concentration. He tried thinking of the English word for family, but it eluded him. As he gestured toward the boy, he thought maybe he would understand if he mentioned the symbol or crest, but Kurisu hadn't yet learned what that was in English either, so he settled on his native word, hoping it was similar enough.

"Your... Mon." In the quiet of the back row, the boy snapped his head toward Kurisu, who could see his eyes widening through the tint of his glasses with a mix of shock and anger. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

"Your mom?" he scoffed, his voice cracking with disbelief.

"Did you seriously just 'your mom' me on the first day of school?" Kurisu blinked in confusion, feeling the boy's Ki flare even worse in response. Mom? What is 'mom'? Surely he does not mean haha. This is not the setting for that, and why would I bring up his mother anyway?

"Mom," Kurisu said with a shake of his head before nodding." Mon." What was the problem? The Mon was the clan crest, after all.

"Unbelievable," the boy called out, leaning back from his desk with a heated flush creeping up his neck.

"A discount, edgelord ninja trying out a middle school comedy routine in the first five minutes of High School Biology. What a joke!"

"Mr. Tetsuya, do you mind?" The instructor's voice cut through the air like a whip crack, silencing the room instantly. Mr. Welter had stopped pacing and was standing at the whiteboard, holding a dry-erase marker like a dagger while staring directly at the back row. Kenji shrank into his hoodie, pulling his hood down as if he could physically disappear.

"Sorry," he muttered, the flush on his neck deepening to a painful red.

"Won't happen again." Sitting motionless, Kurisu kept his expression flat, but his mind raced as he dissected the exchange. He had heard the word Mister before; Steven used it constantly when speaking to people of status or strangers. It was a title, an honorific. Mister... San, Kurisu thought, locking the translation into place. If Mister was the title, then the word that followed was the identity, Tetsuya.

With the sound rolling over in his mind, Kurisu found it to be a solid name that fit the power vibrating off the boy. As he looked at Kenji out of the corner of his eye, he anchored the title to the erratic presence: Tetsuya-san. When the bell rang, signaling the end of the period, Kurisu glanced at the digital clock, 11: 15, the numbers matching the schedule on the paper Mr. Torres had given him.

He stood up immediately, slinging his backpack over one shoulder, and looked down at the boy in the gray hoodie, who was slowly packing his notebook with the lethargy of someone who dreaded the hallway. Without hesitating, Kurisu moved, recognizing the boy's flickering energy as a glaring beacon requiring immediate dampening before it drew more unwanted attention.

"Come," Kurisu commanded, the English flat. Tetsuya paused with his hand halfway in his bag, looking up slowly as his brow furrowed.

"Excuse me?"

"Follow," Kurisu added. Without waiting for a response, Kurisu turned on his heel and marched toward the door, expecting obedience. He made it three steps before he felt a hand clamp onto his shoulder.

"Hey!" Kurisu stopped, looking down at the hand on his shirt before slowly turning his head to look back at the boy. Tetsuya was standing now, his face flushed with what appeared to be a mix of embarrassment and irritation.

"You don't tell me," the boy snapped, his voice rising enough to turn a few heads near the door.

"You don't just walk in here, insult me, and then tell me to follow you. Who do you think you are?" Kurisu stared at him, the English too fast to properly decode. But,'you don't tell me?' It made no sense; of course he was telling him. Shifting to face the boy fully, Kurisu abandoned his clumsy English to speak plainly, assuming from the boy's appearance that he'd understand the language." Unu no Ki wa midaretari. Mezawari nari. Ware, seigyo o oshiete tsukawasan."

Tetsuya stared at him, his mouth slightly open as a long, painful second of silence stretched between them.

"Dude," Tetsuya whispered, looking completely baffled.

"I have literally no idea what you just said." Shoulders sinking ever so slightly, Kurisu realized with a sigh that apparently, he'd been wrong. With a step back, he held his hand out palm up and mimicked tapping it with his other finger.

"Phone," Kurisu said. Laughing, the boy adjusted his backpack straps as he rolled his eyes.

"You want to use my phone? Dude, I don't even know you." Kurisu stared back, his eyes half slitted, as he pointed at the pocket of the hoodie where the outline of the device was visible.

"Phone. Now." Grumbling under his breath about "crazy foreign students," the boy reached into his pocket and pulled out a cracked smartphone, unlocking it to reveal a translation app which he held out between them like a shield.

"Fine," he muttered, producing the phone, with the translation app open. Kurisu leaned in, raising a finger to his lips to signal the need for discretion.

"Shh." The boy rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, I got it. Just say it." Kurisu leaned close to the microphone, repeating his offer in slow, deliberate syllables." I will teach you control!" the robotic voice blasted from the phone's speakers at maximum volume, the words echoing around the room. Several students near the door stopped and turned around, while Mr. Welter looked up from his desk with narrowing eyes.

"Crap!" the boy hissed, his hands fumbling to cover the speakers as his face turned a deep, radioactive shade of red.

"Why is it so loud?" Noting how the whelp's Ki spiked with his panic, Kurisu shook his head as the boy shoved the phone back into his pocket.

"Okay," he whispered frantically.

"Okay, fine. Let's just get out of here before you get me yelled at again!" With a jerk of his head toward the door, the boy signaled for Kurisu to follow him. Kurisu nodded once as he fell into step behind him, and they stepped into the hallway, moving quickly to put distance between themselves and the biology room; as they navigated the lunch rush, Tetsuya glanced over his shoulder.

"My name's Kenji," he mumbled.

"Kenji," Kurisu repeated.

"Yeah, don't wear it out," Kenji grumbled, pushing open the double doors that led out to the courtyard.