Academie Mystere - eleven: science class

eleven: science class

["Ha! Eye contact rule, we're partners now, little normal!~" ]


(Y/n) shakily raised her hand. Why were all the teachers in High Class so terrifying?

"Alright. I am Professor Kamishiro, your Science teacher. I expect appropriate behaviour in my class at all times, and if you're sickened by dissections, too bad, because I've always wanted to dissect a normal and I don't like it when students question my dissections. Understood?"

"Yes, ma'am." (Y/n) suddenly missed her old science teacher, who was a timid, forgetful woman that never spoke above her 'inside voice' and didn't stand out. In fact, she missed everything ordinary and unnoticeable about her normal life. In this new world she was shoved into, everything was so harsh and everyone was so loud. Everything demanded attention. It made (Y/n)'s brain hurt.

Professor Kamishiro went up to the chalkboard and erased a good chunk of the scribbles, then began writing something down. She turned back to the class, a wicked gleam in her eye.

"Our lesson today: do frogs feel pain when we dissect them? You have twenty minutes to come up with theories and proof, and you are allowed to work in partners or small groups of three or four. If the noise level gets too loud I will put you on an operating table. HURRY UP!"

(Y/n) turned hopefully to Saya, whom she was beginning to like the best, but someone suddenly hissed her name and she turned to them instead.

Juuzo grinned broadly, his teeth bared in a crazy, but not necessarily scary, smile. "Ha! Eye contact rule, we're partners now, little normal~"

(Y/n) started to complain, but Juuzo had already hopped over to her desk and slapped his paper down. To (Y/n)'s annoyance, Ayato joined them, and Amon, silently turned around in his seat without asking. Tsukiyama and Saya, the two people (Y/n) would rather work with more than anyone else, moved to work with Kaneki.

(Y/n) sighed. "Why are we even doing this? Of course the frogs don't feel pain in a dissection." She was very disappointed by this class. She'd hoped it would be a mixture of what she already knew with some Ghoul twist in it, like History. "I mean, the frogs have already been long dead before they even arrive in the classrooms."

Juuzo gave her an evil smirk. "Not in High Class."

(Y/n) gaped at him. "You don't mean―the frog is still alive when you dissect it?"

"Lets us blow off some steam," Ayato explained, but (Y/n) was too horrified to care why.

"THAT'S DISGUSTI―"

"LOWER THE VOLUME!" Professor Kamishiro roared.

A few students were looking at her and snickering meanly, but (Y/n) didn't care.

"That's animal cruelty," she said quietly, through gritted teeth.

"That's kind of hypocritical," Ayato observed with a sly look on his face. "You don't mind opening up a frog when it's dead, but you're mad at us opening it up when it's alive."

"Do you have any idea what animal cruelty means?" (Y/n) snapped, her temper rising when they shot her blank stares. "When it's dead, it feels nothing. When it's alive, it feels pain. It feels every cut we give it, every bone we break in it. How would YOU feel if you were tied down and cut open and someone started to remove all your internal organs until you die?"

Ayato paused. "Sounds pretty fun, actually. Besides, I'm a ghoul. Nobody can do that to me."

"GAH!" (Y/n) pulled out her braid, messed up her hair in irritation, then began to redo the braid, fuming silently. Ayato watched in amusement.

"Professor Kasmishiro loves making you think,"  Juuzo explained to (Y/n), as if she even cared. "She adores creativity and outside-the-box crap. So, come on guys, think of some factors. It would feel pain if we just tied it down and went loose―"

"But it won't feel pain if we overdose it with tranquilizers or something," Ayato suggested. "Like something that relaxes the nerves."

"I dunno. Technically, if we burnt all its nerves away, it won't feel anything afterwards."

"But it would have felt pain beforehand."

"Exactly. It's like, the ultimate paradox factor. Imagine trying to graph that."

The two boys high-fived and began to write it down. Amon had stayed silent throughout the whole thing.

"Don't you think it's terrible?" (Y/n) asked him. His eyes flickered up to her for the tiniest moment, then looked away. He notedly shrugged and wordlessly continued writing on his own.

Sighing, (Y/n) looked around the room. Touka was giggling with her friends as they traded ideas, and she lightly bonked one of them on the head as if they suggested something silly. Touka looked much prettier and gentler when she smiled, and it actually made (Y/n) kind of annoyed that she refused to extend that friendliness to her. Just because she was a normal.

After five minutes of sitting there in silence by herself, (Y/n) felt the urge to talk to someone. The more she mulled in her thoughts on her own, the more time she had to let the concept of Ghouls sink in. (Y/n) wasn't lying when she told Ayato she might go crazy―she actually would, and (Y/n) was planning to stop at nothing to keep that at bay.

Desperately, (Y/n) turned back to Amon, trying to find something to say. "Do you like animals?"

Amon ignored her and still wrote. (Y/n) stared at him for a little bit. He had nice dark hair. And pretty eyelashes. That was completely unfair;

(Y/n)'s eyelashes were so short they were practically nonexistent.

"But don't you think it's cruel to dissect them alive?"

Amon shrugged.

"Are you ever going to answer me in words? Perhaps some full sentences?"

Amon glanced up at her. "Can't you talk to those two instead?" He sighed.

(Y/n) turned to the Juuzo and Ayato listening to their conversation, the two had somehow managed to divert the subject entirely in the course of five minutes.

They were now bickering over the quality of certain types of noodles.

(Y/n) turned back to Amon. "They're too busy talking about noodles. Are you really friends with them?"

Amon's mouth quirked up a little in the corners, and (Y/n) wondered if he was handsome when he really smiled. His eyes were the nicest shade of teal she's ever seen.She shook her head to clear those thoughts. Being surrounded by attractive people was messing her up, making her all gooey and romantic.

(Y/n) scanned the room again and realized many of the students were attractive, which was completely unfair. (Y/n) secretly used to think she was rather pretty in her old class of normal, everyday students, but she looked positively ordinary around Ghouls. Maybe their brain lesions also coded for a good looks gene.

"So, I heard that some students use something called a quinque," (Y/n) said. Amon stopped smiling, but still didn't look up. "Why can't you just use those tail thingy whatchamacallits?"

Amon finally sighed and put down his pen. He looked like he had written a novel on his paper. (Y/n) discreetly tried to read it, but he just as discreetly placed his hand over the page to block the words. "If I answer this question, will you stop bothering me?"

"Hey, I'm trying to distract myself," (Y/n) said defensively. She realized she was acting like the annoying nosy classmates she used to dislike, and felt embarrassed. But she couldn't afford to think about anything. She just couldn't. She was willing to let go of some of her pride if it meant saving her from a horrifying realization. "And I still don't want to talk to them." She gestured to Juuzo and Ayato, who had abandoned the topic of noodles and moved on to argue about which of them could lift more weights.

Amon smiled again, an amused, real smile that made (Y/n) feel a bit flustered. "I see your point."

"So? Why do some students us quinques?"

Amon sighed, still refusing to meet her eyes. "Because we can't use those 'tail thingys'. They're called a Kagune"

"My bad and why not?"

"We're just not fit for it."

"But why not?" (Y/n) couldn't help but become more curious.

"All ghouls have a kakuhou, a sack-like organ. The purpose of the kakuhou is to store Rc cells, kinda like how you store you're food. The nutrition contained in the Rc cells are absorbed by the ghoul. These cells are transported to the kakuhou in the blood and stored. Released cells form the kagune. I don't have enough Rc cells to do that." Amon calmly, as if he thought about everything before he actually said it.

"Are you crazy like them too?" She asked.

Amon looked back down at his paper, a serious expression on his face. "We're all crazy. Including you."

"What?" (Y/n) felt insulted. "No I'm not!"

Amon lightly tapped his pen against the surface of the desk, eyes fixed on the scribble of words he wrote. Another little smile appeared on his face. "Then why did you follow us in the middle of the night?"

(Y/n) couldn't quite come up with a satisfactory answer. "I … I had no choice. The moon―it started it. A-and I was curious. Can you blame me for being curious?"

"Curiosity is a necessary quality for being crazy," Amon responded. "They go hand-in-hand. Your curiosity brought you to bathe in moonlight, leave the safety of your room and follow us  boys outside in the dead of night. Your curiosity made you hide and watch as a crowd of students played in a twisted sort of fighting ring. Your curiosity brought you here. Say I'm wrong if that's not crazy."

Professor Kamishiro  called for everyone to share their theories. Amon turned around and, despite (Y/n) staring holes into the back of his skull, never turned around again.